Anthony Stauffer
/Anthony is the owner of Texas Blues Alley, and is the author of a large catalog of blues guitar courses and free lessons. For 6 years he ran StevieSnacks.com, a site dedicated largely to teaching the style of Stevie Ray Vaughan. In 2014 he launched Texas Blues Alley to replace it, and widen the focus.
He uploaded his first lesson to YouTube in 2007. Two years, and several courses later, he left his job as a computer programmer to do it full time. Since 2007, he's authored over 70 hours of premium video courses, and over 200 free videos. His viewers range in age from 6 to 70+, and they tune in from over 180 countries. In 2014 alone, they watched over 11 million minutes of video.
He first tried Zexcoil pickups in late 2012, right after a frustrating video shoot that was nearly ruined by humming pickups. The next weekend he discovered Zexcoil pickups, a few weeks later he became an endorser, and has never looked back.
His bottom line on Zexcoil Pickups:
I was expecting (and prepared) to sacrifice a bit of character and brilliance in my tone in order to eliminate pickup buzzing. So when I put the Zexcoils into my strat and fired it up, I could hardly believe what I was hearing... and not hearing. The tone was as good as anything I'd ever played, but the hum was just... gone.
I've owned some of the best pickups money can buy, and their reputation is well deserved - they sounded amazing. But I'd take a set of Zexcoils over any of them. Once you get used to that tone, and no hum... you start to feel like other pickups are defective. If the Zexcoil design had been around when pickups were first introduced, nobody would call traditional pickup design "progress".
What He Plays
Anthony has used many Zexcoil pickups, but one of his first experiments resulted in the Texas Blues Set, which are still installed in his SRV strat.
- Neck: SV50
- Middle: SV2
- Bridge: SV5+
