Get the Best of Both Worlds with Duncan's Twang Banger

May 23, 2003

Click image for closeup

So you want both the twangy punch of a Telecaster; and the "quack" of a Stratocaster? That has meant hauling both a Strat and a Tele to your gig or into the studio, but Seymour Duncan is hoping to lighten your load with the APST-1 Twang Banger, a pickup designed to administer a twang injection into your Strat.

The Twang Banger takes an old Seymour Duncan design and updates it. Seymour's design was first used in the late '80s by Music Man on their Albert Lee signature model guitar and, in later years he modified it for Fender's Hellecaster Strat. One of the twang secrets is the copper-coated steel plate attached to the underside of the pickup. It disperses the magnetic field in the same way as the metal plate on the underside of a Tele lead pickup.

The Twang Banger improves on the earlier designs by using plain enamel magnet wire -- the same type that Leo Fender used on his early Telecaster pickups -- and a symmetrical magnet stagger that mirrors the fingerboard radius and achieves excellent string-to-string balance. Combine that with the aggressive coil windings, the Alnico II magnets wrapped in plain enamel wire, and the result is a high-output, single coil, twang-beast.

Specs: D.C Resistance: 8.27K Ohms, Resonant Peak:

For more information, visit their web site at www.seymourduncan.com.