Seymour Duncan and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons team up for blazing new Tele and Les Paul pickups
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Seymour Duncan and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons have cooked up something super-hot to give your Fender Telecaster or Les Paul an all-new lease of life, with a pair of signature electric guitar pickups wound to give you a little more juice and sizzle.
You’ve all heard of Pearly Gates, Gibbons’ legendary 1959 Les Paul Standard, and the namesake pickups that give you its sweeter-than-thou PAF tone, well, take that core tone and imagine it a little hotter. Maybe something from the wrong side of the tracks.
That’s where the Hades Gates Pickup Set Comes in, a humbucker pairing that uses an Alnico II magnet at the heart of its design, offering more output so sparks fly on your Texan blues guitar lines.
Seymour Duncan is offering them with a variety of covering options, including the traditional uncovered with black bobbins (very Seymour), black covers, nickel covers, gold covers, and a radiator pickup option that has raw nickel with gold mesh inserts. That last one is very cool, very steampunk Billy Gibbons.
Other options include all-white bobbins, zebra coils, or reverse zebra. In short, you are sure to find a finish that complements your guitar.
The bridge bucker has a DCR reading of 8.90k, while the neck reads 8.06k, offering “a fiery take on the mid-forward, punchy sound Billy is known for”.
The Red Devil is a single-coil-sized humbucker designed to be dropped into your Telecaster’s bridge position, and it is wound to give you Gibbons’ trademark tones. “Whether you’re looking for cutting leads, tight pinch harmonics, or thick rhythm tones, it’s all at your fingertips,” says Seymour Duncan.
This little firecracker is designed around an Alnico V magnet, and like the Model T Ford it is only available in black. It’ll fit right in with your Telecaster. Seymour Duncan lists the DCR reading as “16.70k” but that looks like a typo; judging by the accompanying graphic, we would confidently say this should be 6.7k.
If you want your Tele to sound beefier, “this’ll do it,” promises Gibbons.
“By putting this into the bridge, it fattens up the bottom end,” he says. “You eliminate hum, you get a little more output. You get that extra stuff that makes these guitars sound so good.
The Red Devil is priced $129, while the Hades Gates is priced from $258 a set. Both pickups are handmade in Santa Barbara, California, and are available now. Head on over to Seymour Duncan for more details.
