I've been writing and recording under the band name San Andreas Fault for a few years. I write and produce the music and these days, I play everything except drums. I've been kicking around the idea of picking up a new guitar to add to the arsenal and help lay some tracks for the album I'm working on.

In the past, the Fault has opened for Dick Dale and the late, great Link Wray, so maybe this gives you some idea of the guitar tones involved. I tend to shy away from quacky or overly dark or sustainy tones, which naturally leads me to the brighter, lower-output single-coil side of things. I guess I'm a "bite, not grit" guy.

Which is one of the reasons the recent Fender Jaguar HH caught my eye. I have always liked the Jag but I've never owned one and it seemed like the HH would fit the bill for an inexpensive way to change that sorry state of affairs. The Jaguar is attractive to me because of its equally exciting applications either used clean (reverby twang, cool tremolo) or distorted/chorused (howling death gargle.)

Which brings me to the question of pickups on the Jaguar HH. The stock pickups are not single-coils, but a humbucker called the Dragster. (Actually, it's listed as the "MIJ Dragster", which means Made In Japan. It's a very entry-level pickup from Fender.) Generally, I'm not the biggest fan of humbuckers, so I naurally got to thinking about pickup replacement. But how to make a decision?

Enter the excellent website of Seymour Duncan, the famous manufacturer and designer of pickups. Duncan got their website right when they decided to provide recordings of their products and integrate them with charts describing what you're listening to .

I started checking out Duncan pickups on their website with the Tone Wizard, a super-useful page that collects anotated recordings of the full line of Duncan replacement pickups for Telecasters, Jaguars and Jazzmasters. The table allows you to quickly compare the different pickups and their manufacturing details with nice recordings done in a controlled, clinical manner. You can believe I bookmarked this one on my del.icio.us right away, but it turns out I wasn't done.

Looking closer at the copy on this page shows a link to the Tone Chart, a absolutely awesome resource that exposes all the Duncan pickups alonside each other, allowing super-fast comparisons of pickup characteristics including output level, coil architecture (single or humbucker), EQ curve, magnet type, cabling, DC resistance values in kilohms and resonant peak values (the point at which the pickup begins to see a loss in high frequency response - a high value more or less means a brighter tone).

This information, collected and published as it stands is already incredibly useful when researching pickups for any reason, but Duncan didn't stop there. They make it easy for you to reach out and compare the sound of their pickups. Select two pickups you want to compare side-by side and click their far-right column on the Tone Chart to load them into a page where you can compare up to four pickups simultaneously. Very neat.

I have't settled on which candidates would be best for the Jaguar HH, and really, I should play one before I finally decide I want to lose the MIJ Dragsters on it. There is one thing I can conclude after encountering Seymour Duncan's idea of a useful website: these people know what they are doing.