Description
Built to Joe Duplantier’s spec for his own Silver Cord Recording Studio sessions, the Fortitude Bridge started with one non-negotiable: keep it passive and vintage-voiced. Duplantier didn’t want a pickup that flattens out his pick attack—he wanted every nuance of his hands on the strings to survive the signal chain, since that’s where he feels the real character of a performance lives.
Since most of his riffing happens on the bridge pickup, it had to earn its keep. The result is a humbucker that’s precise and cutting, with enough percussive snap to handle alternate tunings and heavy gain without turning to mud.
Under the hood, the Fortitude Bridge takes the PAF 36th Anniversary Bridge as its starting point, then reshapes the voicing to Duplantier’s requests: roughly a 1.5dB lift around 160Hz for a bit more low-end weight, paired with a dip around 500-600Hz to carve out clarity in the midrange. It’s low output, so the humbucker character stays open and dynamic rather than compressed—vintage tone with a purposeful twist, as Duplantier describes it. He picked the name Fortitude for what it stands for: straightforward, honest, and strong.
- Recommended for: Bridge position on solid body, hollow, and semi-hollow guitars
- Wiring: 4-conductor
- Magnet: Alnico 5
- DC Resistance: 9.54 kOhm
- Quick Connect: No
- Introduced: 2020
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