Pickup EQ curves

[freefrog Super Toneologist Find all posts View Profile Close freefrog]

Re: Pickup EQ curves

That said, has anyone run a tone from a signal generator somehow through various pickups and recorded the results visually on an oscilloscope or EQ curve?

I do it for more than ten years now and have found it more than useful in my personal subjective tone quest. That said...

-it doesn't show how the guitar reacts;
-it doesn't translate the dynamic behaviour of a pickup - attack, decay, sustain, release;
-for these reasons, two pickups might exhibit the same spectrum when excited by a swept sine wave through low impedance coil, then sound extremely different when played;
-many people don't see how to decipher such screenshots so they trash it as useless.

FWIW, Artec pickups are described in this way, with frequency charts (which look close to what I obtain when I test a pickup):

http://www.artecsound.com/catalog/Pi...ARTEC_2012.pdf

They even show how the capacitance of the cable used alters the resonant peak of the passive pickup considered. IOW: they have done their homework. :-)

[uOpt Something Cool Find all posts View Profile Close uOpt]

Re: Pickup EQ curves

[Inflames626 Super Toneologist Find all posts View Profile Close Inflames626]

Re: Pickup EQ curves

Again, I think uOpt has settled this pretty soundly. The curves are all very similar, yet we hear great differences--similar to what I had experienced with the HZ4 and JB's high end differences not being reflected in the curve.

Yet I can also see extreme rolloffs on the EMG 81 on crunch so it sits well in the mix, and why, to my ears, the Blackouts sound better. Even though the output on the EMG 81 is less than the Blackouts, though, something tells me the EMGs sound more middy because the highs and lows are rolled off so much.

Still, a crunch curve, to me, muddies that waters a bit because amp settings and mic placement are so important. I'd prefer just direct response curves.

What's really distracting is the spike around 350-400hz. That is not a pleasant frequency.

The cuts are much deeper at 1.5k than I remembered. I thought they would not do that until about 2.5-3k.

Isn't all this pickup stuff kind of antiquated nonsense though in that, like a tube amp, these devices are mechanical and prone to a lot of variables. Tube purists said tech would never replace tubes, but the Axe FX is really making headway against traditional technology.

How long before we get rid of these ancient notions of magnet and copper wire, replace them with a digital pickup, plug in our gear with USB, and we get a consistent, but non sterile, sound every time?

[jericho guitars Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close jericho guitars]

Re: Pickup EQ curves

What if you took the impulse response sequence from a Kemper, mounted each pickup at a fixed distance from the impulse to mimic dynamic, and did all the top pickups. Then, laid them all on a graph together with db and fast Fourier analysis?

[Discharged Toneologist Find all posts View Profile Close Discharged]

Re: Pickup EQ curves

What if you took the impulse response sequence from a Kemper, mounted each pickup at a fixed distance from the impulse to mimic dynamic, and did all the top pickups. Then, laid them all on a graph together with db and fast Fourier analysis?

/Peter