« Extremely fat and vintage sounding »

The Seth Lover Neck is Seymour Duncan’s tribute to the very first PAF that a man by the name of Seth Lover created when he was working at Gibson. It’s a purely vintage pickup that features an Alnico II magnet, single conductor braid shielded wiring, adjustable pole pieces on one coil and is not wax potted.

The Seth Lover is a true and true vintage humbucker. They come in both neck and bridge models, so you can get a nicely calibrated set if you’d like. The neck pickup is extremely fat and smooth. When these are put in the neck, they really get that almost Air Norton kind of sound, but better. The lows are extremely fat sounding, the midrange is just perfect, and the highs have just enough bite to be clear without sounding overly trebly. I especially love how well they seem to respond to the tone control knobs. You can get a huge variety of tones out of these with proper manipulation of the neck tone pot.

As expected, these pickups tend to sound best in Les Pauls, but I find they can work in just about any wood you throw at them. They’re versatile enough to handle nearly anything you throw at them. The biggest drawback, however, is that they’re not wax potted. Because of that, they can really squeal under high gain, and that’s a big no-no for heavy metal players such as myself. Once you wax pot them, they sound quiet, but they seem to lose some of that great vintage style sparkle they were known for.

If you’re looking for a fatter ’59, I highly recommend checking these out. However, just be aware that they’ll probably squeal under high gain, and if you wax pot them, they’ll lose some of the more complex tones these are known for.