Want Slash’s sound? Win your choice of his signature Seymour Duncan pickup set — built the way he uses them. One winner. One awesome prize. Enter today.
The legendary tone that powered Appetite for Destruction. When Slash’s decades-old Alnico II Pro humbuckers sounded different in his new GibsonLes Paul Signature models, Seymour Duncan accepted the challenge: craft a pickup that would make every Les Paul sound like his original AFD guitar.
The Slash Signature Model humbucker (APH-2) uses specialized mag wire and winding specs paired with Alnico 2 bar magnets to deliver the sustain, crunch, and aggressive midrange that made Slash’s tone iconic. Hand-built in Santa Barbara using the same ’80s methods, each set features nickel silver bottom plates, maple spacers, and wax potting.
This is the pickup Slash’s tech Ace Bergman installs in his guitars—pulled straight from production stock. Now available in modern configurations including 4-conductor wiring and trembucker spacing.
Evolution of a legend. After a decade of world tours with Guns N’ Roses and Slash Featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators, Slash needed a hotter version of his beloved APH-2 pickups for live applications. His directive to Seymour Duncan: “same tonality, same great clarity…but hotter.”
The Slash 2.0 Set delivers exactly that. Based on his signature APH-2 pickups, the hotter wind provides the familiar sound Slash loves while pushing his amps with the perfect balance of volume, drive, and compression. Hand-built in Santa Barbara using the same ’80s methods with nickel silver bottom plates, maple spacers, and wax potting.
Born from real-world touring demands, the Slash 2.0 gives you more firepower without sacrificing clarity. Now available in modern configurations including 4-conductor wiring and trembucker spacing.
Seymour Duncan Slash 2.0 Humbucker Pickup Set Black
Though the business of cloning pedals is competitive (and endless fodder for frothing Reddit denizens), I appreciate when a pedal company offers a useful twist on an established formula.Warm Audio accomplishes this with the Throne of Tone. It is clearly inspired by theAnalog Man King of Tone. But it is also very obviously a nod to the Marshall Bluesbreaker, the pedal that Mike Piera used as a departure point for his KOT design. The Throne of Tone, though, might mark the point at which the snake bites its tail. It cross-pollinates the circuits in a dual overdrive that opens up many, many tone-coloring avenues and options.
Split Personality
Mike Piera ripped up a friend’s Bluesbreaker to build the first King of Tone. But by the time he rewired it, it was a different pedal altogether. To the extent that the KOT and Bluesbreaker sections are accurate in the Throne of Tone, the differences between the original Bluesbreaker and King of Tone are easy to hear. It’s hard to accurately assess the accuracy of the Throne of Tone’s two circuits without a real-deal King of Tone or Bluesbreaker at hand. But I’ve played through both as well as excellent clones, and in both sound and feel, both Throne of Tone circuits are in the ballpark and better.
In very general terms, that means the “king” side is a bit less aggressive, darker, and more dynamically responsive to changes in pick intensity—especially when you want to go from gnarly to truly clean. The “blues” side is a bit more dynamite, revved up, and lively in the midrange. It’s more immediate and a bit harder to keep on a leash for dynamic purposes. But the Throne of Tone is a great multiplier—and mixer—of these qualities, because you can experience each basic voice through the lens of high gain and low gain settings, a boost, an overdrive or a distortion. Additionally, output from each side can be modified with a presence control which appears on neither pedal in its original form. Add up the possible tone permutations and, well, you’ll probably be less occupied with the accuracy of the circuits, and more excited about harnessing the copious killer tones here.
Pick A Door
Of the three modes, the boost is the most user friendly and easy to apply to a base tone that just needs heft and body. It’s also great for demonstrating the basic duality in the king and blues voices—which align along a Marshall/Fender divide. The blues, or Marshall-like side feels considerably more compressed as a boost, but it positively rings in the high-mid zone. If you want a guitar to be boss in a mix it dishes the goods. But it’s agreeable too, and flattered PAFs, Telecaster single-coils, Wide-Range humbuckers, and a Rickenbacker 12-string—lending all of them an infectious, excited edge. Matched with an EL84 amp it can feel a touch redundant, but with 6L6 amps it shines. The king, or more Fendery side, sounds comparatively scooped. It feels much less hyperactive, and it excels in the clean, low-gain range, but it also gets squishy when you dig in.
These same qualities are very apparent in the overdrive mode. Each voice sounds more compressed than the boost mode. But the higher reaches of the gain controls yield treasure. Here again, the blues side was explosive—sounding at many settings like Malcolm and Angus Young after consuming a bag of firecrackers. Angry but fun. The king’s OD side, at high gain range, sounds much more like a mid- to late-’60s Bassman at high volume: crunchy, but softer around the edges. Each of these voices can be nudged into more savage extremes by the high-gain toggle, which depending on your amp and guitar, can be surprisingly airy to downright sizzly.
The distortion mode kicks the high-midrange in the pants, but retains much of the overdrive mode’s basic coloration. It’s an especially cool match for 6L6 amps—especially on the king side. But the way the distortion modes remain responsive to dynamic input like volume and touch variation is impressive. Distortions can often sound quite binary—either raging or gobbling up midrange oxygen. Both distortions in the Throne of Tone give you gray area to work with that can range down to chiming clean tones.
The Verdict
The original King of Tone and Bluesbreaker pedals are revered for good reason. And if Warm Audio’s take on the two circuits represents even 80 percent of those pedals’ prime tonality, you’ll still hear and feel what makes them special. As a whole, the Throne of Tone is adaptive and versatile. The kind of pedal that could save your hide and solve problems in a studio. But it could work the same magic in a live situation, especially one with a backline surprise in store. In performance, the vertically oriented mini toggles, which are situated perilously close to the bypass switches, could be a liability. I accidentally switched the gain and mode switches with my toe more than once. That’s a shame, because they make experimentation so much easier than when DIP switches are in the mix. It’s hardly a dealbreaker, though. For $229, the Throne of Tone offers a very big bucketful of tone options that can span civilized and rabid.
Season 2 of Axe Lords kicks off with a legend: Lita Ford joins Dave, Cindy, and Tom for one of the heaviest, wildest, most guitar-nerd–satisfying episodes we’ve ever done. Lita talks about reinventing herself after The Runaways, why she insisted on a three-piece band to prove her guitar chops, and how she developed a voice on the instrument that producers once criticized—until legends like Billy Gibbons co-signed her sound.
And yes: Lita plugs in, cranks a Boss Katana, and rips a live performance that might be the most rock-and-roll ending to an Axe Lords episode yet.
Axe Lords is hosted by Dave Hill, Cindy Hulej, and Tom Beaujour. Produced by Studio Kairos. Presented in partnership with Premier Guitar. Artwork by Mark Dowd. Theme Music by Valley Lodge. Follow and subscribe to Axe Lords @axelordspod.
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The speed and accuracy with which you react to what’s happening around you musically is definitely not a competition, but I believe it’s the single most important element of any musical performance, and your ears play a pivotal role.
Through some brutally honest self-inventory of my own abilities over the past month, I’ve discovered a few things about my playing that are far from flattering.
Here are a few key takeaways.
I want to get better: I’ll be the first to admit that my abilities—although well-developed after 35 years of practice—can still be improved significantly. Whether it’s recognizing the exact notes in a chord someone is using over my bass line, or hearing a song once and playing it back immediately, there’s plenty of room to grow. As bass players, we get to hang out in the low end and “listen up” the harmony vertically. It’s a great place to be, and the nature of our fundamental role in the band to hold things down often gives us a little more space and time to use our ears. It’s good to be aware of that and make the most of that extra time to absorb more information.
Repetition of listening has never been more important: Depending on the time frame I have from an artist—or my own personal goals—I want to spend as much time as possible listening away from my instrument. I’m making drastic changes to how I allocate my practice time, and the results have been huge. My playing is already sounding more natural because I’m focusing more on my ear than on my chops.
Recording shows religiously: I’ve always had some kind of recording device running during live gigs and practice sessions. Lately, I’ve been leaning much more heavily on this process. The more honest I am with myself about a performance or a practice session, the better I can plan future practice time to fix weaknesses and accelerate growth—even after 35 years!
“No matter where you’re at, creating a positive feedback loop—recording everything we do, listening back, and being self-critical when needed—has enormous potential to make us better musicians right away.”
I think it’s essential to remember that we’re all at different stages of the journey and want different things from our playing and our music. But no matter where you’re at, creating a positive feedback loop—recording everything we do, listening back, and being self-critical when needed—has enormous potential to make us better musicians right away.
I’ve been comparing learning to hear “faster” and more accurately to how a successful athlete approaches their sport. In tennis, for instance, you need multiple specialized skills to become a top player: speed, agility, hand-eye coordination, physical endurance for long matches, and mental toughness to outthink your opponent under pressure.
Similarly, a musician needs great time, great tone, a fantastic ear, solid memory, social skills for working with others, and technical command to execute ideas. It’s no small list of requirements.
But I think the most striking similarity is the mental toughness and focus required to handle the pressure of being onstage or in the studio. The best musicians feel no pressure at all. As a result, their ideas flow freely, they absorb everything happening around them, and their ears catch every detail. That’s where I’m looking to improve: Feel no pressure, and take in as much as I can.
Listening faster has become somewhat of an obsession, and I suspect it will stay at the top of my priority list for life. In just a few weeks, I’ve become more relaxed onstage, uncovered dozens of new things to practice by reviewing old recordings, and started to feel what a great athlete must feel when they step onto the court knowing they’re in complete control.
Distractions are fading, focus and intent are way up, and I feel like I’m playing better than I have in years. I thought I would never get back to the feeling I had when I first picked up a bass in my early teens, but the past month or so has surprised me greatly.
It has actually been quite emotional at times because the past decade has had its fair share of self-doubt, including hitting several plateaus where progress felt nonexistent. But now I can confidently say there’s no end in sight when it comes to new challenges to tackle. The improvements may not come in leaps and bounds, but they’re coming—and that’s what matters.
Gibson, the iconic instrument brand, has shaped sound across generations and genres of music, becoming one of the most relevant, played, and loved guitar brands worldwide. As a true pioneer of the electric guitar and pickup design, Gibson’s nearly 90 years of research and manufacturing have defined the sound of countless musicians and music lovers. Since 1935, Gibson has been the source of the world’s finest pickups—standard-setting components wound in its own factories, though not widely known to the public. Gibson’s original “Patent Applied For” humbuckers™ from the 1950s are considered the holy grail of humbucking tone, highly influential and often imitated, and every modern Gibson pickup continues that tradition of superior construction, crafted in Nashville, Tennessee, from premium materials using time-tested methods.
Today, the Gibson Pickup Shop proudly introduces the 1959 Humbucker Collector’s Edition Series 3, limited to only 1,000 sets and available at authorized Gibson dealers, Gibson Garage locations in Nashville and London, and online at Gibson.com.
“With the 1959 Humbucker Collector’s Edition Series 3, we’ve pushed the boundaries of historical accuracy and tonal integrity even further,” says Jared Brandon, Pickup Product Manager. “Every detail—from the Double Vintage White butyrate bobbins to the Alnico 3 roughcast magnets—was chosen to honor the spirit and sonic magic of the original ‘Patent Applied For’ pickups. This set is not just a tribute; it’s a time capsule for tone purists and collectors alike.”
Explore your sound with the 1959 Humbucker Collector’s Edition Series 3 HERE, and view the full Gibson Pickup Shop Collection, HERE.
Revered by players and collectors alike, Gibson’s legendary “Patent Applied For” humbucking pickups have inspired countless replicas over the decades. The originals featured a range of Alnico magnet types—including Alnico 2, Alnico 3, and Alnico 4—and remain among the most sought-after vintage components in existence, especially when the rare opportunity arises to acquire a set.
Through a meticulous process involving 3D scanning, scientific analysis, reverse engineering of late-1950s examples, and reference to archival Gibson specifications, the Gibson Pickup Shop has crafted its most precise reproductions to date. This Collector’s Edition Series 3 set comes housed in a premium Lifton™ case and showcases Double Vintage White butyrate bobbins, Alnico 3 roughcast long magnets, historically accurate nickel covers, and aged Cream M69 mounting rings. Every metal component—from the silver-nickel covers and baseplates to the screws and springs—has been expertly aged by the Murphy Lab team. Only 1,000 sets will be produced, each serialized with 1959-style numbering.
