A letter to SD regarding the New Active 7 string Pick up

[le_ackt]

Thanks in advance for reading.

In the seven string community any addition to the choices we currently have is always met with celebration. Your new Blackouts for 7 string are no exception, as many in the community already use your passive products with a degree of pride. However, we are troubled by your decision to encase the Blackouts in an EMG 7 string sized housing, as many in the community have already sworn off the EMG, simply because of the modifications a guitar would have to withstand in order to install them.

I understand that the current aftermarket demand for an active 7 string may be attractive to you, and I also understand that many of the guitar manufacturers you would want to supply OEM parts to are already tooled to machine guitars using the 707's pickup dimension, however as a passive 7 string pickup maker, surely you must see the INSANITY of forcing a player to possibly choose between passive pickup or a pickup that requires an install not easily reversible.

Currently, the only pickup maker making passive sized active 7 string pickups is Bartolini, which are difficult to obtain, and despite their standard size tricky to install. Your other competitors (Dimarzio and Bareknuckle) have resorted to retrofitting their current passives in order to achieve active tonalities, to various degrees of success. By making a passive sized active 7 string pickup, you would have this market virtually all to yourself, the choice for the passive player seeking an active solution would be automatic.

Making a passive sized active 7 string pickup also allows a player to potentially return to your passive product if they found your new active not to their liking. The way is it now, after modifying their instrument and installing a Blackout 7, if a player decided the pickup was not for him, his only choice is to go with an EMG.

Perhaps the best way to go about this is to make Blackout 7 in both sizes, thus satisfying of both your aftermarket and OEM customers, but if this is not economically viable for you, I would implore you to use this as an opportunity to redefine the standard for a 7 string active pickup dimension, and stop this insanity started by EMG once and for all.

Thanks again for reading.

copied from Tony Mallory
7 string guitarist
Member of sevenstring.org
thank you

 

[Evan Skopp]

Re: A letter to SD regarding the New Active 7 string Pick up

Wasn't it Yogi Berra who said, it's like deja vu all over again?

le_ackt, thanks for the second open letter to Seymour Duncan on this same subject in the past week.

Please understand this: not only has there been no decision as to what form factor to encase a 7-string Blackouts, there has been no decision to even make 7-string Blackouts. I would know.

True, we made one set and sent them to a high-profile artist to get his opinion on them. But that's it.

So again, thanks for the letter. Thanks for the interest in Seymour Duncan pickups. And thanks for posting on our board. You're more than welcome to stick around and become a member of this community as well -- we'd love to have you.

But there is no need to write additional open letters imploring us to "stop the insanity." We get the message. Your comments are duly noted. As were the other guy's.

If we start discussions on whether or not to make a 7-string Blackouts, we'll take this into consideration. If you ask the other members of this board, they'll tell you, we really do listen to our customers.

Thanks and peace.