All user reviews for the Seymour Duncan Hot Rodded Humbucker SH-4 and SH-2 Set

This is the Seymour Duncan SH-4 Zebra pickup. I think its cool that they put out their popular pickups with different colored bobbins so you can get a different look for your guitar. The Zebra bobbins on this pickup give it a real 70s look and they look great in a Les Paul or SG. Under the surface this pickup is the classic Seymour Duncan JB originally designed for Jeff Beck. I guess Jeff Beck told them to make the best all around pickup and thats what they did. This pickup is usually found in the bridge with a Duncan 59 or Jazz in the neck although they do make JB's for the neck position. The best and worst thing about the JB is that it really brings out the natural tone of your guitar. This can be good or bad depending on if your guitar has good natural tone or not. This pickup seems to be voiced best to work in mahogany. It would make sense since its a humbucker and most humbucker guitars are made from mahogany. The pickup is naturally a bit bright and with a mahogany guitar this is balanced perfectly. The brightness gives the sound good clarity. The bottom end is not overly huge so it does not sound boomy. With the high end clarity each string retains a good clear sound even with high gain. If you put this pickup in an alder or maple guitar you might get an overly harsh sound. Bright wood and bright pickup does not equal a good tone usually. In mahogany or a neutral sounding wood this pickup works great if you want a wide open good overall sound. This pickup can do many styles but if you are just doing 1 specific style you may want a more specialized pickup. If you have a 70s Les Paul and you want to make it sound awesome while still looking 70s this Zebra JB might be the pickup you want.

Seymour Duncan has produced a set for what it thinks is a good combination in dual humbucker guitars. It has put out the Hot Rodded Humbucker set. This set features a Seymour Duncan Jazz in the neck and a JB in the bridge. These are some of Seymour Duncans most popular pickups. The Jazz is a classic neck pickup. Its output is pretty low at around 7k but this makes it able to do a lot more than a hot neck pickup could. It can do anything from rock leads to jazz and country. It has a great high end that makes up for the bass in the neck position. With its high end it never gets muddy in the neck. The JB is like the bridge version of this with more output for more bite. These pickups are voiced for the treble end so it seems this setup is intended to go in darker guitars like Les Pauls. I tried these in an Epiphone Les Paul and it really woke the guitar up. The Epiphone had typical Epiphone pickups which were low output and muddy. These pickups added a lot of clarity to the sound. The neck position was nice and creamy for my blues leads but still retained clarity. Roll off some tone knob and you have a nice dark jazz tone that still isnt muddy. The bridge position gave a lot of punch and bite. If you split the coil in the bridge you get a great single coil sound that you can get a nice country twang with. If you are looking to wake up your dual humbucker guitar but need pickups that can do almost every style, the Seymour Duncan Hot Rodded Humbucker set might be what you are looking for. The only thing bad about this set is that you only save like 10 dollars buying the set instead of buying them by themselves. If you can find these pickups used separately you can save a lot of money.