“That’s the true test!”: Joe Bonamassa once tested pickups in a Squier guitar to see if they were any good
Joe Bonamassa knows a thing or two about what it takes to make a guitar sound good – but when he was developing pickups with Seymour Duncan they used a secret weapon to ensure that what they were hearing was coming from the pups – a Squier guitar
Bonamassa has released a number of pickup sets with the brand, and for his 1950 Broadcaster replica set, they were trialled within the body of budget-friendly Squier. As Bonamassa says, “If your Squier sounds as good as that Broadcaster, then we’ve done our job.”
READ MORE: “Those guitars don’t need to be disturbed”: Joe Bonamassa explains why most of his guitar collection never gets played live or used in the studio
Speaking to Premier Guitar of his ventures as a “pickup archeologist”, Bonamassa explains why he chose to replicate the pickups of his vintage models rather than design something new.
“Some people have signature pickups where they want a certain winding that they want to go into a signature guitar, or some other design they spec out,” he states. “I’m not that original. I have a big guitar collection, and each guitar is a little bit different. And it’s like, ‘Why do I play the Nocaster or why do I think the Broadcaster is exceptional?’ It’s because of what’s in it: Not all flat poles and humbucking pickups are created equal.”
He goes on to add, “I’m not swapping pickups in my original Broadcaster that’s worth almost a quarter-million dollars, so I always have a ‘donor’ guitar. I have a generic Custom Shop Strat for the Stratocaster stuff, and I’ve got a template Les Paul. In the case of the Broadcaster, Seymour Duncan actually bought a Squier as the test guitar – and that’s the true test. If your Squier sounds as good as that Broadcaster, then we’ve done our job.”
Aside from the Seymour Duncan Squier test, the Blues Titan usually chooses his pickups carefully, in the belief that they must work synonymously with the rest of the guitar: “Overall, if you’re going to really look at pickups, you’ve got to know what they do and don’t do.
“If you’re talking about a P-90, what P-90 are you talking about? Something that would go into a Les Paul Standard, a Junior? It could sound different in any context… There’s no putting a set of pickups in a guitar and thinking, ‘Oh, the guitar now sounds magical.’ They have a symbiotic relationship with the wood and with the strings. The great guitars are the ones where you have all the combinations going at once.”
You can shop Joe Bonamassa’s pickup range over at Seymour Duncan, or find out where he will be touring in 2025.
The post “That’s the true test!”: Joe Bonamassa once tested pickups in a Squier guitar to see if they were any good appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
