Getting there....

Well, It's taking a lot longer than we figured it would. With Winter and the Holidays and some illnesses, progress has slowed to a crawl on the house rebuild and on getting the shop back in order. That's not to say we haven't made huge progress, it's just that next month will be one year since the flood and I'm starting to run out of steam.

I want to get back to doing what I do.

The V-90 single coil

I've been working with W. Jeffrey Jones on a lot of new designs lately. We have brought back the classic V-90 pickup from a few years back for some of his newest guitars like the Deamon Sassefrax .
There have been several new P-90 single coil pickups. One of them is the new Tap-90 that features an honest to god old school coil tap. It runs about 8K tapped and about 12.5 K un-tapped. I'm looking forward to seeing these put to use!

Words getting around...

Here's another amazing guitar from W. Jeffrey Jones. This model is called Proteus. It sports the new Saturn Set that were developed in a joint effort with Jeffrey. Here's is what Jeffrey had to say about the pickups.


One other defining feature of this particular instrument is the set of pickups, custom-made for this guitar by Clint Searcy of Searcy String Works. I can't say enough about them. I prefer a clean, clear pickup, especially in the neck position. The music I play myself consists of chords that are comprised of close harmonies and a pickup has to be capable of voicing those harmonies without turning them to mud. And the bridge pickup gets up and rocks when you need it. Clint never lets me down with his work. He also gave me black pole screws for an equally clean look, as well as full adjustability of all the poles spaced specifically for the string spread of the Proteus. These are incredible humbuckers that I plan on using regularly in many of my future instruments where humbuckers are called for. I can't say enough about them. They complete the whole package of this versatile guitar.



Check out more information about the guitar HERE

The Saturn Humbucker Set

We're getting the final production details worked out on some of the new pickups. Let me take a moment to tell you about the Saturn Humbucker set.

The Saturn Humbucker Set is comprised of the Anthe Neck pickup and the Janus Bridge pickup. Both of these pickup were born of a desire to offer a very evenly balanced and clear sounding humbucker with crisp response that was geared towards finger style players and jazz tones. Unlike the slightly mismatched coils on many of out rock humbuckers, the coils on the Saturn pickups are perfectly matched for dead silent operation. It was decided that these pickups would not be wax potted because many players feel that unpotted pickups impart a bit more touch responsive reaching to changes in the players approach. The magnetic structures on these coils are also identical to make sure the signal from each coils is a perfect mirror image. We decided to use screw poles in both coils to offer the player the ability to fine tune the poles to perfectly match their playing style and string choice. Four wire leads allow for many wiring options.

The Anthe uses an Alnico 5 magnet and has a DC resistance of about 7.5K ohms. The Janus is identical but weights in with a DC resistance of 13K ohms. Both are available in 50mm or 52mm string spacing. While some of our early prototypes and promotional units have been Zebra with chrome screws the production models will be double black with black screws.

More to come... Stay Tuned!

New VOV Revolution starts now

Maybe you remember the VOV humbuckers I made for guitar shredder J.A. Allen. They are some of the newest additions to the Searcy String Works line. Well, here we have a set of the new White VOV Revolution humbuckers. With 12 adjustable poles and powerful ceramic magnets they are a more modern design with great upper mids but not shrill sounding. The coils are what I would call hot without being too hot.
The original VOV Revolution humbuckers were all black but the new sets have a stunning contrast of white bobbins. They look right at home in this Michael Schenker Flying V.

Monster Pickup Part 3

Doing a little work on the ebony cover today. Once the holes are drilled and I have rough cut the cover on the band saw it's time to do some routing. One of the newer additions to the Searcy String Works shop is the Micro Mill. Its slow tool speed and X, Y axis table make it a lot easier to rout out the Ebony covers without blowing out the tops of the covers like a router table can do. But it does make the work go a lot slower. I'm thinking of converting this to CNC soon.

Antonella Mazza (part 2 )

I try to slow things down around the Holidays so I can relax a bit and enjoy things. It usually doesn’t work out that way but I try. This year it’s not too bad. I have a few custom jobs waiting in the shop but not too many. Winter is starting to take hold and I have never had good heat in the shop. "Install better heaters" is on the list of things to do to the shop but it never seems to make it to the top of the list. So I will just have to shiver while I work on this weeks projects.

I finally got all the parts in for Antonella Mazza's pickup system. This has taken some time because I'm building a totally new system for her bass and had to spend a good deal of time researching parts. This system will consist of a pair of piezo elements that will fit under the bridge feet. The signal from these will be sent to a small preamp that will be strapped to the tailpiece of the bass. I'm debating adding a magnetic pickup to the mix as well. I think that a small Neo powered magnetic pickups blended with the piezos and combined with the EQ of the preamp will offer the best range of tone control. However a magnetic pickup will require strings that have ferrous metal cores. Antonella Mazza is sponsored by LaBella strings so I need to see which of their sets would work best for magnetics. I’m thinking of leaving that option open by adding a small jack to the preamp that we can plug the magnetic pickup into later.

I should be testing this pickup system in the next few weeks.

Clint Searcy signing off...