Seymour Duncan 78 (Custom Shop) Review: More Than an EVH Pickup
- Baris Sahin
- 10 hours ago
- 14 min read
Introduction
Eddie Van Halen was the last prophet of the guitar world.
Yes, there have been—and still are—plenty of incredible guitar players after him. But no one since Eddie has had the same kind of impact on young people, especially in the United States, inspiring them to pick up a guitar and play rock music. He was a genuine social phenomenon, to the point that he even became part of the subject matter in movies such as Back to the Future and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
And he influenced people in every possible way: his stage presence, the way he held his guitar, his mimics, his stage antics, his songs, his solos, and, of course, his tone.
Eddie was playing things that perhaps no one had ever seen before, in ways no one had ever heard before, and with incredible tones. Inevitably, those sounds had an unparalleled impact on guitar players—and they still do. How he achieved his tones during different periods of his career has always been a subject of fascination.
There are, of course, historically plausible conclusions we can draw. However, when it comes to Eddie’s equipment and how he actually achieved his tones, I think there are very few things we can describe as “indisputable absolute facts.” The reason is simple: Eddie gave very different accounts at different points in his career.
For example, he could say in a 1979 interview, “This is what I did,” and then explain in a 1984 interview that he had actually done something completely different. Eddie clearly threw people off the trail from time to time. His comments about using a Variac, for instance, reportedly led quite a few people to destroy the transformers in their amps trying to replicate what they thought he was doing. :)
And as time went by, I think even smaller or technical details started to shift—the chronology of events, where certain things happened in the timeline, and so on.
For that reason, I am not going to discuss which period of Eddie’s career this pickup might represent or speculate about which songs he may have used it on. Apart from a few small references, I am going to try to evaluate this pickup independently of Eddie Van Halen. In other words, I want to judge it as if it were called the ’85 or the 1298 instead of the ’78. If you are looking for an article, debate, or theory about where this pickup fits into EVH’s tonal journey, then, honestly, this is the wrong article for you. There are still plenty of excellent articles, historians, writers, and, of course, speculators on the internet doing exactly that—and doing it far better than I intend to.
My focus here is going to be the pickup itself: a pickup I absolutely love, one of the best pickups I have tried in recent years, and, rather unexpectedly, a pickup that has become my favorite Seymour Duncan pickup. I will simply try to tell you why.
Test Guitar
‘78 i have still sits on my hand-made superstrat, Goldie, that has a Turkish alder body, a Q-sawn one-piece maple neck in a chunky Endur-Neck profile, Gotoh 510T-FE1 tremolo, 25.5” scale, steel frets, Bourns 500K volume and Alpha 500K tone pots, and 009-046 D'Addario NYXL0946 strings in E-standard tuning. The guitar has a Dimarzio Bluesbucker in the neck and custom wound middle (true single with coil tapping 5.5K/6.5K windings, now on 6.5K side is on) pickups. Its primary (unplugged) tone ranges from balanced to medium-bright.
Evaluation
The official info about the ’78 was like that when it was a Custom Shop model:
“The ’78 started life as a PAF rewind for a scrappy young player that all of us owe some thanks to.
The recipe for the pickup itself is traditional, but the special coil wind with 42 gauge plain enamel wire, hand-calibrated Alnico 2 magnet, and strict output tolerance makes sure that each one sounds like the original.”
After being a part of the regular production, it goes:
“In the late 70s, Seymour Duncan was well known as the go-to guy for players that wanted something custom. Sometime in ‘78, Eddie Van Halen gave him a P.A.F. to experiment with, along with instructions to rewind it with the intent to enhance the reproduction of artificial harmonics and “hot wind” a little for some extra “juice”. The Seymour Duncan ‘78 Model humbucker is the result of that experiment. Loaded with an Alnico 2 magnet and wound to the exact same hot specs as that original P.A.F. rewind, the ‘78’s magnet and output combination lends itself to a warm crunch with biting leads and overtone laden tapped runs. While the ‘78 Model was not the final destination for Eddie, it offers players the opportunity to revisit a waypoint in the early days of his legendary pursuit of the ultimate tone. If you’re a player who demands a high-performance tone and wants the classic hard rockin’ rhythm crunch, articulate picked harmonics for your tapped solos and whammy bar acrobatics, the ‘78 Model just may be your ticket.”
Want to see the measurements, right here!
Seymour Duncan Custom Shop ‘78
Magnet – Alnico 2
Advertised DCR: 9 K Ohm (Series)
Measured DCR: 9.211 K Ohm (Series)
Measured DCR: 4.6048 K Ohm (Screw Coil)
Measured DCR: 4.6001 K Ohm (Slug Coil)
Inductance @100Hz: 5.9062 H (Series), Q:0.4029
Inductance @100Hz: 2.4681 H (Screw Coil)
Inductance @100Hz: 2.5178 H (Slug Coil/steel spacer coil)
Measured C@100KHz: 119pF
Calculated Self Resonance Peak: 6.0033KHz
Output: Medium
EQ (B/M/T) – 7/5/7 (derived from the website graph)
Gauss: 270G screws, 340G slug (measured at top center of D&G pole pieces)
Ambient Measurement Temperature: 27C
As usual, let’s start by taking a look at the pickup from the outside and then move on to its measured values. The ’78 has the typical appearance of a modern PAF-style humbucker. There is no special mumbo jumbo going on visually. The one I have features short mounting legs and four-conductor wiring. The bobbins are made of ABS plastic rather than butyrate. I haven’t removed the protective tape around, so I can’t say whether the spacer is made of wood or not. The pickup is wound with plain enamel wire, and the coils look quite full to me. Looking at the individual coil DCR readings, I can comfortably say that they are very symmetrical.
The inductance is also quite impressive—actually, I measured a value that was even better than I expected: 5.91H. That is an almost ideal value for a pickup like this. Gauss strenght may look interesting but actually not. The gauss values do not get perfectly uniform across the magnet. When you move the probe across one side to other through the magnet you can see very different values, some peaks or bottoms, anyway. Just a tip from a pickup nerd :) Honestly, apart from what I have already mentioned, I didn’t find anything particularly unusual or out of the ordinary in its construction.
First Impressions
At this point, before getting into the actual details of its tone, there are a few things I want to talk about. I had been reading very different opinions about the ’78 for quite some time. Some people absolutely loved it, while others felt it didn’t live up to their expectations. Some described it as well balanced, while others insisted that it was simply too bright, harsh even. Since there was no official inductance or resonant frequency specification available, I honestly had no idea what to expect from it.
I only had some idea about the historical story behind the pickup. The story goes that Eddie contacted Seymour Duncan in the late ’70s and had him rewind a PAF he had acquired—possibly a PAF scavenged from an ES-335. Eddie apparently asked for a slightly hotter wind in the process. There were also some pretty serious claims that this was the pickup installed in Eddie’s black-and-white striped guitar during the recording of the Van Halen I album, and that the tone we hear in the sections where the tremolo arm is used came from this pickup. So, perhaps the criticism about the ’78 being bright was justified. On the other hand, I had also come across comments from a few people on various forums whose opinions I generally trust, saying that the Seymour Duncan 78 was not particularly bright. So, yeah, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect.
SEYMOUR DUNCAN ’78 The Perfect Fat PAF? SEYMOUR DUNCAN ’78 The Perfect Fat PAF? SEYMOUR DUNCAN ’78 The Perfect Fat PAF?
Eventually, I got my hands on one. And naturally, there was another reason I was particularly interested in this pickup: like pretty much everyone else, I’m, too, a huge fan of the Eruption tone. But there was another factor that made the ’78 especially interesting to me. I have always had a soft spot for overwound PAF-style pickups in the 9–10 kΩ range. I absolutely love pickups such as the Virtual Hot PAF, PATB-3, Mojotone ’59 Clone Hot, and Duncan Brobucker. With the ’78, I found myself facing a pickup that can genuinely go head-to-head with my Virtual Hot PAF. They are not identical, of course. Virtual Hot PAF is still my #1. Each has its own little nuances, and I may make a few small comparisons between the two later in the review.
But my first and perhaps most important observation about the Seymour Duncan 78 is this: It has pretty much everything I expect—and everything I love—in a medium-output bridge humbucker. And the things I don’t like are simply not there. The dynamics, the overall tonal EQ, the tonal character… all of it is exactly where I want it to be.
Plain Enamel Wire of Seymour Duncan Custom Shop ’78 Bobbins of Seymour Duncan Custom Shop ’78 Seymour Duncan Custom Shop ’78
When I evaluate the type of overwound PAF-style pickups I’m talking about, there are a few things I try to pay particular attention to. First and foremost, clarity. These pickups are not usually mid-scooped to begin with. They have a certain amount of midrange, and the lows also occupy a certain amount of space. In my opinion, what really makes the difference is first the overall clarity, and then where that midrange is positioned—whether it leans more toward the high mids or the low mids. That is why, despite having a similar DCR, I would put the Lollar Imperial High Wind slightly below the DiMarzio Virtual Hot PAF. The VHP is also a warm pickup, although perhaps not quite as warm as the Lollar, but it is considerably clearer at the same time.
The low end of Seymour Duncan 78 is relatively strong and clear, but interestingly, it doesn’t have the same spongy feel that I often associate with Alnico 2 humbuckers. For example, the Seymour Duncan Custom Custom feels considerably spongier. The Tonerider Rocksong Bridge does as well. The ’78 is tighter than both of them. The mids are clearly present. It isn’t particularly mid-forward or honky, but the mids are definitely not lacking, either. Nor would I describe it as scooped. The highs are lively as well. In particular, I would say that the high-mid region is very active and responsive. There is plenty of energy up there, but it doesn’t come across as simply bright or harsh.
Seymour Duncan Custom Shop ’78 Side View Seymour Duncan Custom Shop ’78 Baseplate Seymour Duncan Custom Shop ’78 Side View
So, can we describe the Seymour Duncan ’78 as a Fat PAF? Absolutely. That said, it isn’t overly fat. If we think of the 11–14kΩ examples of the Fat PAF category—such as the Custom Custom, Norton, Rocksong, and similar pickups, i even used that term for the Air Zone, remember?—the ’78 is not fat in quite that way. I think the simplest way to put it is that the ’78 is the fat version of a 7.5–8kΩ PAF. And this brings a major advantage in terms of clarity. At the same time, it avoids another common problem with typical PAF-style bridge clones: becoming too bright in Superstrat-style guitars with 25.5” scale.
What I Loved About the ’78
Now we come to the part I’m going to enjoy talking about the most: what did I actually like about the ’78? First of all, I can simply say that I really love its tone. Should I write one of those completely meaningless pickup reviews and just say, “It’s very balanced”? :) Joking aside, the liveliness of the high mids is one of the things I really enjoy about this pickup. They are prominent without being ear-piercing, and they have a smooth, rounded quality that makes the higher register—especially beyond the 12th fret—an absolute pleasure to play. With some pickups that have a scooped midrange, things can become less enjoyable once you get past the 12th fret. That isn’t the case here. The high mids are nowhere near as piercing or aggressive as those of the JB. This is particularly important to me because I used to love the Pearly Gates bridge but these days I can find it uncomfortably bright in brighter-sounding guitars. It works perfectly well in a full-mahogany, short-scale guitar, but in a Strat with a 25.5" scale, I now find that brightness a little too much. Everything feels more balanced with the ’78.
Those sweet, rounded high mids also make legato playing and tapping particularly enjoyable. You can get that same flavor whether you are doing EVH-style tapping à la Eruption or playing melodic passages. The pickup seems equally happy with both. I also really like how easily the ’78 makes its presence known in a mix, thanks in large part to its midrange character. And yes, I love how easily it produces those EVH-style harmonics playing.
I really liked the fatness level, too. Not too fat like a Tone Zone, not too thin like most of the low-wind bridge PAF clones.
Another thing I really like is its dynamic response. That probably won’t come as a surprise, but I’ll go into more detail about this in the section where I discuss compression.
I also love the fact that the ’78 somehow contains little traces of some of the qualities I enjoy most in several other pickups I like. There is a certain something from the Custom Custom in there. And no, no, no, absolutely not—I am not saying they sound alike. They are different pickups. If the ’78 is Van Halen I, the Custom Custom is Fair Warning. There is also a little something from the JB, and I can hear hints of the Pearly Gates and the ’59 as well. I actually find this quite special.
I like this pickup, okay? :)
Comparisons
If I compare the ’78 with some of the other pickups in this general category, the first one that comes to mind is the DiMarzio Virtual Hot PAF. I would say they are actually quite close in terms of their overall tonal character. However, because of some subtle differences—differences that are really more a matter of nuance—the Virtual Hot PAF still manages to hold on to its number one spot in my heart. I didn’t find quite the same three-dimensional harmonic richness in the ’78 that I hear in the Virtual Hot PAF. Perhaps that has something to do with the more symmetrical coil winds of the ’78. I honestly can’t say for sure. I would also say that the VHP has a little more clarity. And for me, that is another point in its favor.
When compared with the Lollar Imperial High Wind, however, the difference in clarity is much more obvious. The Custom Shop ’78 is noticeably clearer than the Lollar. It has roughly the same amount of output—perhaps slightly less than the Imperial High Wind—but it is considerably clearer.
Compared to the PATB-3, '78 feels a little bit boosted, a little bit more than PATB-3. I mean whole frequency bands i can hear but the highs. Higher frequencies sounds clearer with the PATB-3. That's why PATB-3 feels more versatile and '78 feels more focused.
There are actually three pickups that I would really love to compare the ’78 with. The first is the Seymour Duncan Brobucker. The second is the Seymour Duncan Saturday Night Special, another overwound PAF-style design wound with 42 AWG plain enamel wire to somewhere around the 9–10 kΩ range and using an Alnico 4 magnet. And the third is the production version of the ’78. Unfortunately, getting access to any of those three in the near future doesn’t look particularly easy. Maybe one day...
There's actually another pickup I found very similar to the '78: the modded Ibanez V7. I've mentioned it before and gave it a comprehensive review. Their tones are quite similar, but never identical. The V7 had more pronounced mids, and due to the typical weak Alnico 2 magnet, it was less sharp with rounder tones. It felt roughly somewhere between the '78 and the Custom Custom. Yet you can still achive it from your trusty used market with ease and affordable price tag.
Dynamic Range and Compression
Now let’s move on to my evaluation of the ’78 in terms of dynamic range and compression. The ’78 has a certain amount of natural compression of its own. With the volume pot fully open, it feels slightly more compressed to me than a ’59 Bridge or a Pearly Gates Bridge. That is certainly not unexpected. In fact, this amount of compression is actually beneficial. At the same time, it is nowhere near the point where compression starts to become a disadvantage. The pickup is also very responsive to manipulation with the volume pot. By rolling it back, you can access a surprisingly wide range of tones. Even with the volume fully open, however, there is still plenty of room to play with dynamics through your phrasing and pick attack. I mentioned earlier that I wasn’t planning to focus too much on the ’78’s connection to EVH, but I think this is a good place to make a small exception. To get the crunch-channel tone of early Van Halen material such as Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love, you need to hit the strings a little harder with your pick. With pickups like the JB, Custom Custom, or the Tone Zone, at least in my own experience, that extra effort is required to a lesser extent.
Cleans? Actually, i didn’t like them much. I would expect something better but not my type of tone. But splits very well.
So, what kinds of music and guitars does the ’78 suit best? Because the ’78 is not an overly focused or narrowly voiced pickup, I can honestly imagine it working well in almost any type of guitar. From Les Pauls and Fat Strats to Superstrats, I think it can find a very comfortable place in the bridge position. Considering that it represents at least a part of Eddie Van Halen’s own Tone Journey, there is little doubt that it can be an excellent choice for a powerful, Van Halen-style rock sound. But its versatility is one of its strongest qualities, and it can support you across a much wider range of tonal territory than just classic EVH-inspired sounds. That said, if you are specifically chasing the later Van Halen tones, you may be better off looking at something like a Custom Custom, AT-1, or Tone Zone. The ’78 simply has less output than those three pickups, and compared to them, it also leans noticeably brighter. In other words, the ’78 feels more at home in the territory between a traditional PAF-style humbucker and the hotter, thicker bridge pickups that would become more closely associated with later-era hard rock tones.
Finally, I should add that, in my opinion, the ’78 also has the potential to work in the neck position alongside a more powerful bridge pickup. With the right pickup height adjustment, I think it could create the kind of effect that the Air Norton does in the neck position: full and warm, but still capable of retaining enough clarity and articulation to work well with a hotter bridge pickup. Of course, this is purely an experimental idea at this point. I haven’t actually tried the ’78 in the neck position myself. But based on its tonal character, I think it could be an interesting combination worth exploring.
Conclusion
The Seymour Duncan Custom Shop ’78 turned out to be much more than just an EVH-related curiosity for me. Strip away the mythology, the stories, and the debates about exactly where it fits into Eddie Van Halen’s tonal history, and what remains is simply an excellent medium-output bridge humbucker.
To my ears, it sits in a very sweet spot: fatter and fuller than a typical 7.5–8K PAF, but nowhere near as thick, compressed, or overpowering as the hotter 12–14K Fat PAF designs. It has strong and clear lows, present but not honky mids, and lively, rounded high mids that make both melodic playing and more aggressive techniques such as tapping particularly enjoyable. Most importantly for me, it manages to do all of this while retaining very good clarity.
It also responds well to the player. There is some natural compression, but not enough to get in the way, and the pickup remains highly responsive to both volume adjustments and pick attack. It may not have taken the number one spot away from my beloved Virtual Hot PAF, but it came surprisingly close—and that says a lot.
So yes, I like this pickup. A lot. I will keep it.
Pros
· Clarity for a 9K overwound PAF-style humbucker
· Strong, relatively tighter low end without the typical sponginess I often associate with Alnico 2
· Sweet, lively, and rounded high mids
· Very enjoyable for legato, melodic playing, tapping, and harmonics
· Good dynamic response and useful natural compression
· Good versatility
· Works well in a wide variety of guitars, from Les Pauls to Superstrats
· A very convincing middle ground between a traditional PAF and a hotter Fat PAF
Cons
· Clean tones were not really my thing
· May not be the best choice if you are specifically looking for the thicker, more powerful sound of later Van Halen-era tones
· The Virtual Hot PAF still has the edge for me in overall clarity and three-dimensional harmonic richness
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