Re: User Group Day - Your Accounts, Impressions and Photos
Re: User Group Day - Your Accounts, Impressions and Photos
UGD was
great this time around, even better than I thought it would be! Here's
a few shots I took--my camera was acting up, so probably every third photo
got messed up.
Excited crowd of SD Forum members waiting to the event to start:
Evan greeting the members and laying out the day's events:
Seymour welcoming the Forum members and looking good in his SD apron!
Since we got to pick and the choose each session and its schedule, I started
with the factory tour with Evan:
One of the custom winding areas:
5 minutes into the tour, I was paged to go to the Custom Shop to meet with MJ!
I had opted to wind my own SPB-3 (Quarter Pound for P-Bass) pickup. I didn't get to
wind my own last time, so this was a pretty cool experience! MJ walked me through
the process on this machine in the Custom Shop:
After I completed the winding and soldering phases, I rejoined the tour in progress
while MJ did the wax potting of my SPB-3:
I returned to the factory tour, with Evan describing each of the processes in creating
a pickup. I didn't get a lot of pics for this, hopefully someone else will have some to post:
Closer view of the wax potting machine:
A batch of Quarter Pounders ready for the next phase:
P-Bass pickups being wound simultaneously on a normal production winder:
One of the things set up for us was the chance to try out different pickups. This
arrangement was set up outside for this purpose:
Lunch was set up outside in the basketball court next to the factory:
I spotted this gentleman talking to Evan when I was getting my drink (Warren DeMartini, in case you didn't know!):
We also had an opportunity to purchase some b-stock pedals and lots of different pickups!
Dinner and jam down by the ocean in downtown Santa Barbara:
Our intinerary include some time to drink and mingle before we started eating. Here's Aceman and Seymour:
MikeRocker and more Forum members (sorry, I missed/forgot a LOT of people's names! :
The awesome french fries everyone's been praising in this thread (I agree,
they were unusually delicious) came from this truck, along with the rest of
our food (bahn mi tacos and sandwiches, etc.)!
After dinner, the drums were brought in and setup for the jam:
Awesome rhythm section of Donna Eveland (drums) and Jill Avery (bass):
Some familiar Forum members enjoying the festivities:
Fabian on the left,and again, I apologize for not knowing the gentleman on the right:
Anabel, Gearjoneser (Joe) and Robert the left handed bass player:
Robert played bass and sang a few tunes as well!
Dirtbagg (Dave) tuning up before joining the jam:
Ronny North (left) with another gentleman I didn't meet, but had a great voice!
Ronny's guitar from Ed Roman's:
MJ enjoying the music and looking
muy linda:
Duncan VP of Engineering Kevin Beller on the right—he sold me my first bass
30 years ago!
When the lights were turned down during the jam, none of my shots were coming
up--here's a couple that are closer to legible.
Seymour with his Schecter guitar (with Duncan pickups, of course):
Joe Gore (former Senior Editor at Guitar Player magazine) jamming onstage with Kat Dyson (not shown):
The jam with Joe Gore was one of the highlights for me--unique playing and sound! I don't know
what the tune was, but in the middle of it, he and Kat swapped instruments so that she could
play guitar and Joe could play bass!
Warren and Seymour:
This was another memorable event from a great company for their many "fans"--can't really
call them customers, as it goes a lot deeper than that. Besides the products, the people that
make up Seymour Duncan
the company are what make it special--and are an awesome
example of what happens when a company consistently exceeds their customers' expectations!
Thanks again to Seymour, Cathy, Evan, Dewi, Saulina, Kevin, Frank, MJ and everyone else for putting
this together!
