Pickups don't matter?

[Shorts_Mike]

T

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.

In the video, theres a clip of each pickup in a mix and by itself. In both cases, the differences are very evident. I've always found the "you wouldn't hear it in a mix" argument for almost anything to be quite weak. The difference either exists or it doesn't.

 

[ExMachina]

Don't forget boobs... Big boobs...

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

Read that second paragraph, that's the point. You're going to end up turning a knob on the amp to counteract the differences anyway.

 

[Shorts_Mike]

View attachment 119035
Read that second paragraph, that's the point. You're going to end up turning a knob on the amp to counteract the differences

You can use EQ or different equipment to try to counteract some of the differences, but the fact is that the differences still exist and are quite evident when compared side by side.

 

[CanserDYI]

T

In the video, theres a clip of each pickup in a mix and by itself. In both cases, the differences are very evident. I've always found the "you wouldn't hear it in a mix" argument for almost anything to be quite weak. The difference either exists or it doesn't.

Im not arguing there's no difference? I said "at most, people were arguing that it doesn't matter in a dense mix" for what it's worth, I do think there are a lot of differences in that video, but most of it was going from Nazgul to something else.

At the end of the day, all the tones sounded great and I'd have an extremely hard time telling my "favorite" without playing it, because my point stands firm, the pickup is ultimately for the player. This videos' demo track, each individual one could be played to a non guitar player and I bet they'd thumbs up every single one of them, play them side to side, sure I bet they could tell a difference, but the demo track wasn't a very dense mix to be honest.


Edit: and also, just to be nitpicky, if he's changing pickups per track (obviously) do we know he's changing strings too? Did he have a lot of coffee on the Nazgul clip and was pushing through the strings harder? Was he using IR's or did he mic a cab? Did the mic get bumped? I'm honestly not sure on all that.

 

[ExMachina]

You can use EQ or different equipment to try to counteract some of the differences, but the fact is that the differences still exist and are quite evident when compared side by side.

No one said the differences didn't exist, that was never the point of the video.

 

[CTID]

once upon a time i was subbed to glenn's channel and used to feel like i learned a thing or two from it. once he started demoing and talking about gear that i'd personally used instead of just production techniques/gear that i'd never used, i came to realize he's full of bad faith arguments and/or completely inept at using guitar gear.

saw this quote on reddit about elon musk that while i'd never consider glenn a genius (or elon for that matter) can be a bit apt imo:

He talked about electric cars. I don't know anything about cars, so when people said he was a genius I figured he must be a genius.

Then he talked about rockets. I don't know anything about rockets, so when people said he was a genius I figured he must be a genius.

Now he talks about software. I happen to know a lot about software & Elon Musk is saying the stupidest shit I've ever heard anyone say, so when people say he's a genius I figure I should stay the hell away from his cars and rockets.

 

[odibrom]

(...) You're going to end up turning a knob on the amp to counteract the differences anyway.

Jackpot! Pickups matter as much as one wants them to matter. That is, I think, the whole point which most of us are trying to stand by. In the final mix, a non guitar player doesn't really care what pickups or strings were used, only that it sounds good to his/her ears. As for the player, it matters as with some pickups things may feel too much or lacking something.

It must also be said that if a pickup has too much high end, it can be dialed down, if not enough high end, it can also be compensated further down the chain, but it's not exactly the same thing. To some, it might be a grain of salt, to others might be the world.

 

[op1e]

You can't put "I'm fighting/not fighting my guitar" thru a tone spectrum analyzer. I had Titan neck pickup in the bridge of a cheap 7 string Warlock and it was amazing. I got rid of the Warlock and put it in an EC-257 and it was lacking somehow and replaced it with an 81-7. I played my buddies $100 Vendetta with a Dimebucker and new electronics in it and couldn't get it to move, but all my $200 guitars even stock were running circles around it. I'd put p90's in everything if I could. Make me a 7 string one and I'll lick your feet. Pretty much what John Browne said in a video while back.

 

[Marked Man]

T

In the video, theres a clip of each pickup in a mix and by itself. In both cases, the differences are very evident. I've always found the "you wouldn't hear it in a mix" argument for almost anything to be quite weak. The difference either exists or it doesn't.

A mix can be made into anything the mixer wants. Good or bad.

It's important for a player to feel that his sound is nailed to the highest possible degree. The extra little bit of mojo can come from different pickups. The rest is arguing with the soundman/producer, but that's a different discussion.

 

[wheresthefbomb]

Of course they do, but there's definitely sharp diminishing returns IME. For example, I had a cheap set of dragonfire p90s in my Bari LP for years. I finally upgraded them to BKP Supermassives, which were about 10x the cost. They were better, but were they 10x better? Hard to quantify, but I lean heavily toward "no."

 

[Dayn]

To me most of a pickups "goodness" is it's feel which is lost in recordings, which is all Glen does. Have you heard the dude play guitar? I hate ragging on people for talent, but you are just not allowed to brag about 30+ years of playing or experience in the field of guitar, then proceed to play like that. Just not allowed.

He's always talking about getting the best performance out of guitarists, and in my experience, a dull feeling pickup with no bounciness will get a way cruddier performance out of me. That being said, when I listen to pickup comparison videos I'm often left scratching my head if I heard many/any differences, but if I were to play all of them I bet Id find way more.

The 'feel' aspect is something I never knew was a thing until I felt it. The moment I noticed was when I had my RG2228's EMG808Xs with the 18v mod swapped out for Fluence Abasis. Everything responded quicker, like I was playing with latency on my EMGs. I never felt such a close connection to what I was playing. And that's not including the sound difference that I greatly preferred.

 

[Deadpool_25]

Exactly! The annoying thing is that once you make that claim to folks who believe Glenn, they'll say you're an idiot...

What I did find interesting though is that when I did a comparison of my own (with EMGs, Duncans and Fishmans) a lot of people said they couldn't hear a difference between the Duncans especially. I could hear a difference albeit perhaps subtle but there definitely was a difference between say the Distortion and the Nazgul. This is especially noticeable when you play them yourself.

Sometimes it baffles me a little bit how people can't hear differences between pieces of gear in general though. I had a comparison of 53 amps and some people claimed they all sounded the same while they clearly didn't. I guess it's hard for those folks to hear differences that perhaps are more on the subtle side.

Also keep in mind that YouTube compresses the crap out of videos so some of the differences, subtle or not, can easily be lost. Add that to the fact that a lot of people listen on devices that can also mask the differences, and the fact that a lot of people can't even hear those differences in the first place unless you point them out specifically and demonstrate them, and I'm not surprised by those comments.

 

[MatrixClaw]

I remember Glenn from the Sneap Forum long before he was a YouTube personality. He seemed to know his shit back then, but since he's moved to YouTube he's just become super clickbaity. Can't really take anything he says seriously anymore. Is he even recording bands anymore? I understand YT probably pays him more, but I wouldn't want to record with him after seeing his BS all over the internet.

Also, FWIW, this claim is total BS. Pickups definitely sound different.

 

[ShredmasterD]

fricker annoys the shit out of me. therefore, i will not watch him. anymore. as an aside, there is a pete thorn video using different pickups in the same guitar on the same song with the same amp and the same settings. there are differences. they are clear.

 

[tedtan]

Glen Fricker is like Rudy Guilliani - he used to be knowledgeable and competent (at least to some extent), but now he’s just a joke (at best), or worse.

 

[nickgray]

I'm not gonna watch 18 minutes of Glenn.

That being said, I do think pickups mostly don't matter. Having tinkered with digital stuff for years now, the amount of parameters you can tweak is insane. Pick between a pre-eq and a boost. Just this alone gives you a wealth of options. Try tweaking your bridge humbucker with a pre-eq to sound like a neck by boosting the lows and lowering the highs and the mids to get rid of that bridge quack, you can get closer than you can probably think. Dial the low end down to control the mud, dial the high mids just right to add or remove that honk and sizzle. Then it's the choice of amp (which plays together with the pre-eq/boost, of course), the amp's parameters, and the IRs. The IRs make the biggest impact by far, relatively speaking (as in, as long as we're not comparing a clean Fender to a 5150). Then it's post-eq. After all that, if we're talking about mixing, we still have just the guitars, so it doesn't matter how great they sound by themselves, they have to fit in a mix, and the mix itself has to sound good as a whole.

So that's why getting crazy about ultra minute details is, by and large, pointless, imo. Not to say pickups are unimportant, but thinking about a pickup change before you even got the guitar because it has OEM pickups is pretty insane. Similarly, I can get good tone out of all my guitars which all have different pickups. Amusingly, a cheap budget guitar with OEM pickups has one of my favorite tones for downtuning, but alas, they're OEM and not available for purchase.

More generally, hunting for that one ultimate tone is also pointless. Consider how different guitar tones can be, and how different they are on your favorite albums. That's because there's quite a large Goldilocks zone for guitar tone. A lot of stuff works. There is no one tone to rule them all, stop chasing it, it does not exist.

 

[that short guy]

In short I strongly disagree. Even something as simple as changing the thickness of your pick can cause an audible difference in tone. Pickups, unless you pick several that are voiced incredibly similarly, will definitely have a major impact on tone

 

[Dr. Caligari]

I don't like the "you can't hear it in the mix" argument. I think that's gonna lead to a lowering of standards, settling for things that shouldn't be settled for and ending up with a problematic mix that's not as good as it could have been. If it sounds good it sounds good, but I think the wrong pickups can make a mix sound worse for sure.

I'm not a pro mix engineer but if I paid someone for a good mix I'd be annoyed by that attitude.

And I think with pickups, often they're fine and sound "good" but they can also be wrong for the guitar. What if you have a guitar that by its nature has a dark tone with heavy lows and low mids and muted top end, and it's got a pickup with the same characteristics? Where will you get your treble? I think you'll struggle if you just try to turn up the presence on the amp, because the base tone of the guitar is so tilted towards the lows. And if the guitar/pickup combo is lacking body you can't dial that on the amp. You could try an eq pedal but I don't think that would sound as good as a balanced and good sounding guitar. I've been fucking around with eq pedals before and I don't like it.

But... whatever. I'm gonna use the pickups I like and I don't care if other people buy new pickups or not. The whole argument is pretty useless because everybody can do what they want. Why did I even write this? Oh well, might as well post it now.

 

[RevDrucifer]

My own experiences do not reflect Glenn’s vid. (I didn’t watch it because fuck him, I‘m going off the comments discussing pickup changes within a mix).

Mixing is the *only* time I get really nit picky about guitar tones. When I write a song, I use whatever is in the ballpark to get the demo done. When I re-record it, I spend a fair amount of time dialing in all the sounds so I’m doing less EQ’ing after. It’s these exact subtleties I’m paying attention to.

I can see if your general workflow is to toss an EQ on everything and make everything work by EQ’ing the shit out of everything, but I much prefer getting the sounds as close to the final product before I press the R button.

I had one song I tracked with my SZ with the stock pickups, once I changed them out to the Fishman’s, the first thing I did was re-record the song because if I were to match it in the mix, I’d need to add a little more distortion and EQ the shit out of the original tracks. It would have taken me longer to figure out how to match the tones instead of just playing it over again.

And with everything in a mix being relative to the other instruments in the track, where you’re getting as detailed as “I want 3db of 1kHz added to the guitars”, it seems quite daft to me to not acknowledge the subtleties in pickup changes.

Also, @Guitarjon, your pickup demo is what made me want to get a Nazgul for my Solar. Funny people said they couldn’t hear the differences. Some dude on RigTalk told me the other day I don’t need to worry about changing pickups because I play an AxeFX and they make everything sound the same. The funny thing about this is that he meant this as an underhanded dig that I don’t understand/appreciate tone because I use a modeler, but he’s the one who can’t differentiate different guitar tones.

 

[Guitarjon]

Also, @Guitarjon, your pickup demo is what made me want to get a Nazgul for my Solar. Funny people said they couldn’t hear the differences. Some dude on RigTalk told me the other day I don’t need to worry about changing pickups because I play an AxeFX and they make everything sound the same. The funny thing about this is that he meant this as an underhanded dig that I don’t understand/appreciate tone because I use a modeler, but he’s the one who can’t differentiate different guitar tones.

Awesome! How are you liking the Nazgul? I think it's a great pickup! In my old Schecter Merrow guitars with the ash bodies that pickup sounded really aggressive. In my LTD Phoenix the sound is more balanced but just great for rock and metal.