Pickups don't matter?

[Kosthrash]

Even different guitar picks (thinner/thicker, harder/softer, plastic/metal etc) make subtle differences in final tone, how come anyone believe there are no differences by changing the pickups...
However, if a guitar has already installed a decently manufactured pickup and not a cheap, mass production one, I'll try first to dial in my desired tone by using an 8 band eq pedal between the guitar & the amp (physical or modeling ones... ) and only if I don't manage to bring the tone in my liking, only then I'll change the bridge pu with a super distortion one

 

[laxu]

Do you guys believe the majority of people who watch these videos believe him? Or do most of the viewers know better?

People constantly quote that Jim Lill video about guitars as fact even though it is a flawed experiment just like most of his other videos. "Tonewood" is a marketing term, but Lill basically ignored that two tables are just as much a body and neck as some guitar shaped parts.

A lot of this stuff feeds the kind of people who:

• Want to feel better that they can't afford that super pricy guitar they really want. They feel vindicated that this guy on YT is debunking this stuff.
• Want to feel they are in some secret inner circle that knows how things really are. This is the same type that tends to latch onto conspiracy theories too.

With pickups these days there is a whole ton of marketing though. I haven't felt that pickups get truly better beyond the Seymour Duncan/DiMarzio price range. You don't need some exclusive rare pickups wound by a bearded guru on top of a mountain. Even SD has way too many models in their lineup nowadays, targeting specific niches like metal guitarists when we used to just throw in a Custom or Distortion or whatever into our guitars and happily played the heaviest stuff with those.

At the moment I have pickups from the following brands in my guitars:

• Seymour Duncan
• Suhr
• Kiesel
• G&L
• Fender
• Bare Knuckle
• Vintage Vibe
• Wolfetone
• Mastertone (an Australian active pickups manufacturer from way back)
• Tesla

All of them sound good in their respective guitars. My least favorite is probably the BKP Juggernaut in my 8-string Skervesen. I don't feel it's exactly the right pickup for it but replacing it is expensive since it needs to be slanted and everything. The BKP Mule in the neck position is great.

My take is that pickups do sound different and so do guitars. Pairing the right pickup in the right guitar is when magic happens. I've thrown the same pickup in a few different guitars and it didn't sound the same.

 

[Guitarjon]

People constantly quote that Jim Lill video about guitars as fact even though it is a flawed experiment just like most of his other videos. "Tonewood" is a marketing term, but Lill basically ignored that two tables are just as much a body and neck as some guitar shaped parts.

A lot of this stuff feeds the kind of people who:

• Want to feel better that they can't afford that super pricy guitar they really want. They feel vindicated that this guy on YT is debunking this stuff.
• Want to feel they are in some secret inner circle that knows how things really are. This is the same type that tends to latch onto conspiracy theories too.

With pickups these days there is a whole ton of marketing though. I haven't felt that pickups get truly better beyond the Seymour Duncan/DiMarzio price range. You don't need some exclusive rare pickups wound by a bearded guru on top of a mountain. Even SD has way too many models in their lineup nowadays, targeting specific niches like metal guitarists when we used to just throw in a Custom or Distortion or whatever into our guitars and happily played the heaviest stuff with those.

At the moment I have pickups from the following brands in my guitars:

• Seymour Duncan
• Suhr
• Kiesel
• G&L
• Fender
• Bare Knuckle
• Vintage Vibe
• Wolfetone
• Mastertone (an Australian active pickups manufacturer from way back)
• Tesla

All of them sound good in their respective guitars. My least favorite is probably the BKP Juggernaut in my 8-string Skervesen. I don't feel it's exactly the right pickup for it but replacing it is expensive since it needs to be slanted and everything. The BKP Mule in the neck position is great.

My take is that pickups do sound different and so do guitars. Pairing the right pickup in the right guitar is when magic happens. I've thrown the same pickup in a few different guitars and it didn't sound the same.

Dude! Some good points right there!

 

[STRHelvete]

Glen makes clickbait stuff to start fights with internet people who take the internet too seriously. That's how he makes his money. He's a YT music troll.
Now that being said I judge things based on recording since to me that's where the real proof is. I somewhat agree that pickups don't matter as much in the sense that in a mix you can't tell one from the other. In metal with several tracks and gobs of distortion and studio magic anything can be anything so getting super anal on pickups isn't really needed. That being said pickups DO sound different on their own and I believe a guitarist gets used to the EQ curve and feel of the pickup so they prefer it.

My go to is the SD Custom. It's on all of my guitars except one which has a Dean Time Capsule in it. Do I hear a difference? Yes. In a mix is it noticeable? Not really. It's only because I'm tracking guitars that I hear it but once the mix is done and I forget what guitar I used and stuff I have no goddamn clue what's what...BUT when I'm playing alone I prefer the feel and the EQ curve of the SD Custom, I break out the Time Capsule for some variety.

My main thing is, in an overall mix does it matter and in that context I DO agree that tubes and pickups and shit like that aren't important. Glen definitely has "old man yells at cloud" syndrome, but his main point is people do these swaps thinking new tubes or pickups will revolutionize their tone when that's simply not true. Hell the amp you use isn't even as important in a lot of situations. The right speakers and the right combination of things as well as your playing style make the real impact. In the studio anything can be anything so I've learned not to stress too much on the small stuff.

Also, kudos to you @Guitarjon for trying to be more active in the forum. You're one of the good ones, kid. <3

Oh and for the record, high priced boutique pickups is a con job and exactly the kinda shit Glen is talking about.

 

[jaxadam]

Pickups don’t matter because the EMG 81 18 v mod exists.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

Glen is like Louis Torres where he brings nothing actually useful to the gear conversation, he just want to clickbait people and enrage them with inflammatory statements.

I've spent the last few years on here demoing pickups in the same guitar with the same strings/pickup height, amp eq and IR choices, picks, riffs and they absolutely do make a difference. I even have a bunch of DIs floating around if people want to run them through their rig/reamp.


The pickup's voicing is the starting point of the overall eq profile imo. While you can absolutely make pickups sound relatively similar with a 10 band eq or post processing, it doesn't mean they don't matter. Approaching pickups as a one size fits all thing is the equivalent of dialing in every amp at noon and then complaining when one doesn't sound good. It's asinine and misleading.

 

[odibrom]

This Glen guy is a funny one. I'm personally tired of his constantly yelling but he made some points there. This video is not the best way to advertise his perspective, but I tend to agree with him to some degree. This subject is a matter of perspective and preferences, so it becomes very subjective to each one of us on how much important a pickup is in the overall sound.

Last guitar I got had a DiMarzio Illuminator set installed. I liked the sound of those pickups after my first electronics setup (new pots and switches), but there was some high frequency thing going on in those that made me sell them and get new ones on my go to formula. Aahh, what a peace of mind when the new pickups were installed, no more that annoying high frequency thing... was the tone that different? NO.

Where do pickups differ from one another? Output as said, harmonics response, compression / feel response... and obviously their "fixed" EQ curve. How hyped are these things is what makes people go mad and that's marketing. Is a BKP worth 200€? not in a life time in my opinion. A passive guitar pickup is not fairy dust made, it's just magnetized copper wire wound around a bobbin. The pickup's winding geometry (taller or wider, and the amount of winds), its wire gauge, the magnet type and strength, poles' type, shape and material (mass), its baseplate and cover (if existent) material, potting formula and potting time will all interfere on how a pickup sounds and reacts. But this is only the beginning, its distance to strings, pots used, caps used will also make a huge difference on how one perceives its tone.

Whenever I see a pickup comparison video, there always seems to lack these infos on how a pickup is setup, making said comparisons kind of nuked at start. When I play, I'm hearing a pickups' output, its EQ curve, its compression / feel, its harmonics overtones. One puts some dynamic FX (compressor, limiter, boost, EQ...) in the chain and all this goes out the window and becomes almost non relevant. Almost, because pickups are like the underpants of a guitar's overall tone and as so, they directly interfere on the player's balls/boldness/expression.

... but it's easy to sell the magic that this or that tone comes from a pickup since it's also a fairly cheap piece of hardware to swap (way cheaper than an amp or cab) and that's when the brands' marketing enters the game. For the player's perspective, pickups are one of their first tools to work with and one they cannot work without (unless they go for piezos, acoustic, MIDI or light sensors). For a producer, not so much, they're focused in overall or end of the line tone.

IMO, the cheapest way to improve a guitar's tone (which is what is spoken here) is its setup and the player's PRACTICE... and right after, the pots/caps setup, one swaps a volume pot or removes a tone pot and there's a huge difference... bigger than a pickup swap for another with similar specs and for way less wallet weight.

 

[Jon Pearson]

Glenn reminds me of this family friend that delivered bread for Arnold (a bread company). I really wish I had video to back this up, you would all be amazed at the similarities.

Anyways, who cares about the "empirical data" or whatever Glenn is trying to do here? The experience I have playing different pickups is different. Given that the only thing that separates me from some AI music generator is that human experience, I'd say it's a pretty big deal. I know we live in a world that claims to be driven by objective scientific observation, but at the end of the day we are all still irrational creatures more driven by personal experience than charts and tables. Leave that shit in engineering where it belongs - empiricising music is one of the ugliest things a person could do.

 

[technomancer]

It would be really nice if people would just stop reposting this crap and giving him clicks... it just feeds the circle of stupidity

 

[GunpointMetal]

I think they do sound different, just not enough for me to not just have EMGs in everything and not worry about it.

 

[Jon Pearson]

It would be really nice if people would just stop reposting this crap and giving him clicks... it just feeds the circle of stupidity

What else would we talk about though? I gotta get my pettiness put somehow, I got a family to think about.

 

[TheBlackBard]

I was about to say that @KnightBrolaire has produced plenty of evidence to accurately and definitively whittle down Fricker's claim to nothing more than a chunk of steaming dog shit, but our hero arrived without anyone summoning him. KB is not the hero we deserve, but the one that we need.

 

[STRHelvete]

I was about to say that @KnightBrolaire has produced plenty of evidence to accurately and definitively whittle down Fricker's claim to nothing more than a chunk of steaming dog shit, but our hero arrived without anyone summoning him. KB is not the hero we deserve, but the one that we need.

Glenn's point was never they all sound the same. What he's saying is in a mix, the overall bigger picture the pickups don't matter. He's right in that.

 

[odibrom]

Glenn's point was never they all sound the same. What he's saying is in a mix, the overall bigger picture the pickups don't matter. He's right in that.

The problem is the way he expresses that idea and what he also says between the lines... again, it's a perspective thing and therefore very subjective to each one os us...

 

[Marked Man]

Kids, you have your own ears, you don't have to be Johns to guitar camwhores who are always hungry for clicks. Anybody's clicks.

 

[STRHelvete]

The problem is the way he expresses that idea and what he also says between the lines... again, it's a perspective thing and therefore very subjective to each one os us...

Yep..that part. He purposely baits people into anger fits and makes clickbait overgeneralizing statements. I wish he'd just go back to acting like an adult because the shit he says makes sense (usually), it's just covered in 13 year old weblord nonsense.

 

[NoodleFace]

I hate Glenn

 

[ExMachina]

Guy buys 400 dollars of BKPs to replace EMGs, immediately puts OD pedal in front of amp turning 600 dollars of pickups and pedals back into EMGs.

 

[Shorts_Mike]

If people can't hear a difference between Seymour Duncan pickups, I'm honestly at a complete loss for words

 

[CanserDYI]

If people can't hear a difference between Seymour Duncan pickups, I'm honestly at a complete loss for words

I don't think one person in the forum said people can't hear a difference between pickups. At most people were arguing that in a full dense mix it doesn't matter.