Duncan moved to Santa Barbara in 1975 and began working in the back of the historical Jensen Music, making pickups and doing repair work. Together with his wife at the time, Cathy Carter Duncan, they formed the Seymour Duncan company in 1976, specializing in handcrafted pickups. Constantly fixing, building, and improving pickups, demand continued to increase for his work, and the company eventually grew to become the world’s leading supplier of high-end, USA-made pickups, forging relationships with the top guitar companies in the world.