Spotting a fake Seymour Duncan Humbucker

[frets]

Hi Guys😸😸😸

I had the opportunity to pull a harness from a Les Paul that had fake Seymour Duncan Humbuckers. And I thought it would be good to explain the differences between a real SHN-4 and a fake SHN4 as I spot them. The differences are incredibly subtle and the Chinese fakes have become so good, that they are nearly indistinguishable. Others on the forum may have more insights, but this is how I spot them. I provide examples.

I have tried to do my best with the photos; but, it is hard to control the lighting in my shop.

Some believe that the easiest way to spot a good fake is the lettering of “Seymour Duncan,”. You can see a difference between the two I’ve depicted. But the fatter logo for the real one is a later font by Seymour. Remember, they are both pad printing. So trying to spot by looking at the lettering is relevant but Seymour did change the size of their logo. Usually, the quality of the font is one of the keys with the fake logo not quite as sharp. Also, fakes have more of a serif to them (usually). This is not always the case though. But if you have a set with the smaller font that looks new, with a very serif font, you could be looking at a fake. You have to take this in account with other clues.



Let’s look at the baseplates. The baseplates are near identical. The quality of the etching is so similar that attempting to spot a fake is nearly impossible using this method. The color is identical. But, the corners of the baseplate give us a clue. A real Duncan has a slightly rounder corner on the edges than the fakes. This might not show up in the photo; but, look at the edge of the two and you can see a rounder cut to the real Seymour. If you are looking at a slightly “squarer” corner, you probably have a fake.







In addition, the oblong lead hole is rectangular in the real Seymour. If you have a roundish oblong hole, you most likely have a fake. This is a good clue and the rectangular edges in the real ones is visibly squarer.








One of the biggest clues is the number label. The number label on the fakes are always in a smaller font. I’m not an expert on the size of fonts, all I know is if you’re looking at a really small font the likelihood is high that you have a fake. A font of say 3 is suspect.

In addition, my biggest clue on the serial number is the number “2” and the letter “S”. The 2 on the fake always has more of a serif where the right bottom of the 2 having a slight tail. I show this in an illustration with another real Seymour.

The S is also different where the fake has more of tail serif on the end of the S than do the real Seymour’s.

The weight of the font does not distinguish a real from a fake. Seymour has used light fonts and dark fonts.

A big clue to sighting a fake is the actual sheen to the label for the serial number. The sheen on fakes always has a slight “silverish” hue. You have to hold it in the light to see this upon reflection. Real Duncan’s always have a satin or flat sheen. It’s not a lot of difference between a fake and a real; but, if you have a little bit of a sheen that appears silverish when the pickup is examined under the light, you probably have a fake.

The actual number on the fakes can be different. So know that fakes often have differing number/lettering coding.




The pole pieces and the actual “thickness” of the pickup give no insights as they are the same.

The sheen and thickness of the plastic are identical. But the holes at the end of each bobbin are smaller by about a 1/2 mm on a fake. Real Seymour’s have large bobbin holes.

Next, on the fakes, the lead is fatter. And the individual pickup wires are fatter. I really only know a few gauges. So I can’t tell you the gauge difference. Sorry. Just know a Seymour has a slimmer lead wire. I’d say by about 1mm. So if it looks a little skinny, it’s most likely real.





There probably are more differences that folks in the forum will know. Just be aware that the difference to a fake and a real is so minimal that it is really difficult to spot a good fake from the real deal.

The boxes they come in are identical and I have wondered if the actual Seymour boxes are made in China. I can’t tell by the box.

I’m just sharing visual details that I have noticed.

But, if you measure a fake vs. real bridge model (usually the JB), you’ll find that the fake bridge always comes in in the 14k-15k region.  The real deal is going to be 16k+.  Unfortunately, on the neck pickups, there is not much of a difference in resistance.

If you happen to get a fake in the box (new) you will receive Phillip’s head mounting screws and regular gauge sprints, with real Seymour’s that are new, you usually get a fatter spring and a flathead mounting screw.  The spring is really fat.  However, if you find a Seymour used, the seller might have sold it with regular Phillip’s  head mounting screws.  But do look at the screws as the flathead slotted screws are usually what you see with Duncan’s.

What about sound differences? Yes, I can hear a difference between a fake and a real. But those not familiar with working with pickups would probably not recognize the differences. A fake has a thinner treble heavier sound. But again, this difference is audible only if you are accustomed to the Seymour sound.

To sum up, buying from reputable dealers is the best way to avoid fakes. But if you’re buying a used Seymour Humbucker on EBay or Reverb, these points may help. The differences between real and a good fake are slight but perceptible if you know where to look. You will be surprised by how good a good fake looks.

In the future, I’ll detail the differences in single coils.  As I think of more differences, I will edit this post.  I’m that way, people searching on the internet will be able to find this post.  Currently, there is not much out there about the differences.  And someone could easily end up with a fake when buying used.  

[newey]

Nice detective work, frets!

Sept 10, 2022 15:28:22 GMT -5 frets said:

Next, on the fakes, the lead is fatter. And the individual pickup wires are fatter. I really only know a few gauges. So I can’t tell you the gauge difference. Sorry. Just know a Seymour has a slimmer lead wire. I’d say by about 1mm. So if it looks a little skinny, it’s most likely real.

If it was solid wire, you could use an AWG wire gauge wheel to measure it, at least for the lead wires (the actual pickup winding wires are too small, the gauge wheels only go down to 35 AWC or so).

With stranded wire, it's the cross-section. A micrometer may show a difference in the wires, just don't crush the strands as you measure them. Never tried it myself but I can't think why it wouldn't work.

If the winding wires are of a different size, that could well explain a difference in sound, but I don't know how you'd measure that without dismembering the pickup. Even then, the size difference between, say 42 AWG and 43 AWG is so slight I'm not sure one can tell by feel anyway.

antigua may have some insight on that. Perhaps he would be willing to do testing, side by side, real vs. fake.

[thetragichero]

Sept 11, 2022 7:59:50 GMT -5 newey said:

Nice detective work, frets!


If the winding wires are of a different size, that could well explain a difference in sound, but I don't know how you'd measure that without dismembering the pickup. Even then, the size difference between, say 42 AWG and 43 AWG is so slight I'm not sure one can tell by feel anyway.

this is where an LCR meter would come in handy. i'd imagine they'd wind for a specific dc resistance (because your average guitarist views DCR as "output power") but since a smaller wire would have larger DCR per unit length, that would imply less wire around the bobbin and lower inductance

[frets]

Trag, et. al.,

You bring up a good point.  The two most popular models to be faked are the SH-2 Jazz and SH-4 JB.  I’ve also seen ‘59 fakes and Trembucker fakes.

The resistances on the neck pickups are very similar between real and fake; however, the resistances in the bridge models is always a big difference.

The JB bridge fake always measures in the 14k - 15k region; whereas, the real deal always measures 16.2 - 16.8k.  And this is the most frequent fake I see.

Thanks Trag, I forgot that and will add it to my post.

Newey,
I don’t have a gauge wheel.  But I will say that you can see the difference.  I know that’s not too helpful but the fakes have leads as thick as cheaper pickups, which I have found to be fairly thick.  A Seymour wire is just thinner.  I’ll try and get a gauge difference on them.  It’s slight but again, noticeable.

[Yogi B]

Sept 10, 2022 15:28:22 GMT -5 frets said:

Some believe that the easiest way to spot a good fake is the lettering of “Seymour Duncan”. You can see a difference between the two I’ve depicted. But the fatter logo for the real one is a later font by Seymour. Remember, they are both pad printing. So trying to spot by looking at the lettering is relevant but Seymour did change the size of their logo. Usually, the quality of the font is one of the keys with the fake logo not quite as sharp. Also, fakes have more of a serif to them (usually). This is not always the case though. But if you have a set with the smaller font that looks new, with a very serif font, you could be looking at a fake. You have to take this in account with other clues.

The fake's logo is based on the newer Seymour Duncan logo that uses a Clarendon-esque slab-serif typeface, and (in this case) its serifs aren't big enough.

You can particularly spot the difference with the bottom serifs on the "m", "r" & "n". Plus, overall, the serifs on the fake appear more bracketed (smoothed with the body of the letters), rather than the abrupt square corners of the real logo — I don't know if that's intrinsic to the font used on the fakes or if it's just due to the lower quality printing.

Assuming I'm talking about the same change, the new logo was introduced in early 2013 — that seems to tally with various pickups I've found for sale on Reverb: pickups from 2012 and earlier have a logo matching your (real) 2008 pickup (which uses what appears to be the "Century Oldstyle" typeface), later pickups have the slab-serif logo.

The above reference image for the real logo comes from the banner image atop Seymour Duncan's current humbucker pickups page. But a lot of websites, including elsewhere on SD's own site, seem to be using pre-2013 stock images with the old logo. The only store I've so far found that predominately uses photos of the individual pickup models, and thus shows the up-to-date logo, is Chicago Music Exchange (e.g. '78 model bridge).

[reTrEaD]

Gee, I wonder where these fakes are coming from ...

www.aliexpress.com/item/3256801141037510.html

Oh, and here are some with even less convincing baseplates:

www.aliexpress.com/item/3256802831134665.html

[frets]

Retread,

I completely forgot about the ones with no baseplate engraving. You’d be surprised how many times I have seen those things in guitars. I would say for me 1 in 15 are a fake, which is pretty bad ratio.

Thanks Yogi for your logo clarification. Forgot about the “m” in particular.

But I’ve seen some, ones I suspect are newer, with logos that look so close, with the near appropriate serifs. Sometimes, I can’t go by the logo alone. To me, if the logo looks good, the lead gauge, the squarer base plate edge and the oblong lead hole differences are the giveaway.

[kris]

Hi,

Last month I bought a Seymour Duncan SH-4 JB looked like this:







I was already installing on my electric guitar, is it fake or not?

Before bought the pickup I asked Seymour Duncan support and sent them the image or the photo from the online store page and they said they can't find the serial number from the box in their database, so I sent another image from different online store and again they said can't find the serial number on the box in their database, and they suggested that I buy from their official dealer stores (for online) in their page => Seymour Duncan Online Dealers.

But unfortunately some of the online stores can't send their items to my country there are some can but wow the shipment fees or the costs equal with buying one Seymour Duncan pickup. Lol.

But if the JB pickup I bought is fake I think I know the sellers strategies so that the buyer feels confident that it is genuine pickup from SD, the strategies is they will sell in real price or even a bit higher than the original SD pickup because sometimes the image or the photo in their page not the real item they had or took some image from google. My suggestion is if we want upload some image/photo anywhere and it's a genuine SD pickups we should put some mark or watermark on the image/photo so no one can't use it for scams.

[antigua]

It might be good to email Seymour Duncan Co. for more info about this, as I'm sure they've had to have some of these come back to them. They should confirm the tell tale signs of a fake, because little details can change between production runs. Like the size of the 4 conductor cable, they might source spools of it from different places to get better prices. I emailed EMG about the fakes and they were somewhat helpful. They've changed so much over the years that Seymour Duncan was even offering a reissue JB from the 80's, an acknowledgement that over the decades little details had changed to the point that the 80's originals were becoming sought after. 

I'm surprised at the idea that these are fakes, because the fakes tend to be such shoddy pickups, and it could be said that fake or not fake, those looks like decent pickups with presumably nickel silver baseplates. This reminds me a lot of the Epiphone Pro-Bucker fakes on AliExpress, the major shortcoming with those was that the covers were mixture of brass and nickel silver, and the hue of gold was all over the place. Since these Seymour Duncans in question don't have covers, the biggest point of variability in quality is off the table. It looked much like the fakes were QC rejects and OEM parts that were slapped together by a third party, which would explain why it was a grab bag of quality, rather than a consistent low-quality pickup. The brass covers were probably not OEM, while the nickel silver covers were probably OEM rejections.

I could see something similar happening here, where various parts are source from China and then finally packaged in the U.S., so that a counterfeiter in China would simply have to take the same raw materials and do the finish work on their own, which is where the shoddy looking logo comes in. I don't know if I agree that you can tell the logo apart based on the font details alone, but in the "fake" there is some smearing in the silver paint, and IME real Seymour Duncan pickups have a really precise logo on the top. Suppose the logo is applied in the U.S., or maybe it's applied in China, but these couple be OEM parts that never make it that far along the process, so the counterfeiter as to do the final steps of production on their own, and it comes out worse. They might do this work in a tiny apartment instead of at a factory with all the proper tools. 

As for the baseplates, I get the feeling the baseplates are authentic on both, because that's something the copy cats screw up so often so readily, they look more alike here than is typical with fakes. The hole spacing and even the screws look identical, and you usually don't see that attention to detail.  The fact that the JB / Jazz / '59 come as OEM pickups in so many import guitars would leave me not surprised to find that parts of the pickups are made overseas, like the guitars they end up in. 

Another thing to compare could be the coils, like if you pull back the tape, you might find the fake coils have a polyimide tape on them, as so many cheap pickup do. Drift in DC resistance between 15k and 16k might or might not be significant, DC resistance can vary for a few reasons. Inductance would be a better survey because the authentic version likely has a precise turn count, so the inductance should be consistent, but the fakes would probably have some different turn count and inductance values.

With so many U.S. based companies outsourcing the components, and then doing some final assembly in the U.S., the distinction between real and fake will probably get more blurry in the coming years.