Interview (excerpt) - 2003 - Courtesy of Seymour Duncan.

Ben Harper : I never stop trying to better my tone. When you’re in constant pursuit of a tone that is perfect for you, you end up going through a lot of different guitar makers and pickup manufacturers. The way I came across Duncan was through a friend, Keith Nelson, guitarist from "Buckcherry". He met a guitar builder from New Jersey named Rob Mondell of Justin Sain Guitars who had made him some guitars. Keith called me up when he got his first one and he was floored. He said, "Man, you need to get in touch with this guy!" But it just never happened.

Then one day, Keith shows up at my house with two custom lap steels guitars that Rob had made for me. In the past, Rob only made standard roundneck guitars and these were his first lap steels. At the time I hooked up with Keith, I was right in the midst of a tour and was going to be away for the next eight months.

Because the guitars didn’t have flight cases and I hadn’t heard them yet, I left them at home. I wasn’t going to take out something that hadn’t been sound tested, and I already thought that I had the best-sounding lap steel. After the tour ended, I went into the studio to record Diamonds On The Inside. When I go into the studio, I bring every single guitar I have because you never know what tones are going to fit each of the songs best. There’s a song on it called "Temporary Remedy" that’s bass, drum, guitar — three-piece in the true Cream/Hendrix tradition. I was plugging in all of my 20 main lap steels, trying to find the right sound, but it just wasn’t happening yet. Then I plugged in one of Rob’s guitars and it just blew up. Everyone in the control room started jumping up and down in that sheer instinctual way that only good tone and good music can bring out, and they were just freaking. That’s the guitar ! It was a new sonic step forward.

Click on thumbnails to enlarge | photos © Demeter

The pickups in Rob’s guitars are Duncan ’59s that are wired for standard humbucker and split coils. For me, what’s amazing about these pickups is that you can split them to single-coil. Splitting the neck pickup is key because you get into very reverberant rooms where low end takes off and neck pickups naturally have a lot of low end resonance. The ability to split them to single-coil cuts down the low resonant frequency without you having to go to your bridge pickup. It allows you to still use both and get a rich sound without clashing with the bass. So it’s like having four or five guitars in one, being able to split each pickup in different patterns. These pickups are really kickin’ for all my electric stuff. They’re just putting out like none other. The better the guitar sounds, the better you’re going to be playing it, period.

What I love the most about the ’59s is how they’ve transformed my electric lap steel. As humbuckers, they give it a true Les Paul sound and when I split the coils to single-coil, they give me what I consider to be more of a true Strat tone. It’s not sort of like a Paul or sort of like a Strat, it’s nailing them. There’s no compromise. It’s finally brought me to the tone that I’ve heard in my head, as far as my electric slide playing goes and I can control them like no others.

A single-coil sound is sweeter. If there’s a verse that I want to be sweet, then most likely, I’ll pull the neck pickup up in single-coil. It gives a gentleness that works really well to complement my vocals. Then for a chorus, when I really want to crush or go into overdrive, I can just drop it down into double-coil and it’s just perfect for choruses and solos. So it’s a complement to my verse/chorus style of singing. A single-coil just has got a delicate nature that adds to a ballad, to the softer side of a song. In my music, it’s super important because the dynamics are jumping within the song, as well as from song to song. So I’ve got to be able to have different tones.

complete article | read

Celebrating Imperfection - Ben Harper Keeps It Raw
By Andy Ellis - www.guitarplayer.com

Ben Harper : "We started Temporary Remedy in that Hendrix/Cream trio tradition, except instead of guitar, I played a Justin Sain electric lap slide made by Rob Mondell. It has two Duncan ’59 humbuckers with individual volume controls, so I can do that stuttering rhythm by turning one down, and switching the pickup selector back and forth. I’ve been wanting to do that trick ever since I saw Tom Morello and Rage Against the Machine. I’m running through a chrome-top Vox wah into a cranked 100-watt Demeter head and a Marshall 4x10 cab. For the outro, we slaved up a second tape reel, and I overdubbed more than 20 tracks of slide harmony and feedback."