GuitarDoc, I expected less judgment without merit from you.
"As I see it, it all comes down to this...You are a guy who can't be bothered with fine tuning your instruments' tone. You want simplicity at the expense of variety. Give me ONE pup that I can slam into all of my guitars and that doesn't need any adjustments (plug and play)."
If I didn't care about my instruments' tones, I wouldn't be here trying to improve them. I also wouldn't be the one constantly talking about how to get ideal tones with the least (most economical) amount of experimentation. If I didn't care about my tone, I wouldn't experiment.
I often spend hours adjusting my pickups, pots, and caps. I try the same pickup in multiple guitars. I routinely (every few months) move pickups around to different guitars to add variety. I rebias my amps hot with JJ tubes. All of these things are unnecessary, but I do them to improve my tone. I have spent 100 hours or more on problematic song mixes.
My OP came from my experience with adjusting pole pieces for hours and how little this seemed to affect the tone, in my experience. I didn't see much merit in the poles vs. blades *if the poles made as little difference as they did in my case.*
So I thought to myself, "You know, these poles are kind of worthless if I'm going for balanced string volume and not for something wildly colored." The only time I did adjust the poles was slightly on my Distortion when the G, B, and E strings weren't ringing out nicely in stacked power chords (5th, root, 5th, octave, etc.). But even that was slight, since the Distortion tends to be fizzy and clarity is not its strong suit.
I also did not adjust the screws on my Gibson PAFs. String balance was even more important with them since their tone is far clearer than the Distortion's.
Some may say I don't know what good tone is because I'm a metal guy, not like many people in the guitar crowd who prefer 50s-70s classic rock. Metal arguably has a simple tone compared to 60s rock, but I also appreciate the good tone of vintage voiced pickups.
Most of the SD pickups that I enjoy are not the metal type pickups like the Distortion and Alt 8 but rather moderate output pickups. One of the greatest fallacies is that a high output pickup is the best metal pickup. IME, most passive SD pickups that I've tried tend to color the tone too much from the outset, with the JB being the worst offender. I tend to like flat voiced pups best and to do my tweaking in the chain, but if the pup can offer something so the chain won't have to, that's even better.
The metal pickups that I do love tend to be active because I find them more consistent and even. That said, I don't think I'll be replacing the nuance of my Full Shreds with Blackouts or EMGs any time soon. Different tools for different uses. I find passive pickups to be far more important in how they affect a player's touch (how hard to dig in, dynamics, harmonics) than in their actual tone.
Also, metal tone can be very complex for those of us deeply into the genre, especially as far as saturation. A boosted JCM800 does not sound like a 5150 or a Mesa or an Engl or a Diezel.
"I don't know why you can't just be honest and straight forward and just admit that you like simple pups and don't want to have to adjust them."
Because that's just not true. Almost every passive guitar I have at least splits. I have a Charvel LP copy planned that will have Triple Shots, phase switches, kill switches, and more.
"You do realize that their is more to live sound than just the guitar amp and cab?"
Yes. I also realize that many venues will inevitably sound like garbage because they are on a shoe string budget and that the player cannot rely on the sound man to fix everything. I've played in venues that were nothing more than cellars with a stage. All concrete. Wall reflections everywhere. People complaining because even an $8 cover charge is "too much." Lack of interest in merch and CD sales.
I'd love to have better sound, but because rock and metal bands are playing mostly dives due to lack of crowd turn out and inability to sell records compared to the 80s and 90s, I'm not going to set my expectations high. One is better off to try to address one's tone on the player's end than to expect the venue to invest in soundproofing, better equipment, or a sound guy that knows what he's doing.
As far as the Kemper, one of my former teachers at GIT now plays pop music as a guitarist/producer in China. He used to play Marshalls and Riveras. He tried both an Axe FX II and a Kemper and said that the Kemper has now replaced all of his amps. He's routinely playing for thousands of people (J pop and Chinese pop rock draw big live shows there). If the Kemper is good enough for him it will more than likely be good enough for my modest gigging. He liked the Axe as well, but found it less user friendly and more difficult to set up quickly than the Kemper.
I feel like a lot of the ire directed toward my opinion here is because of tone snob factor: blades are considered n00b pickups. Also, because I question the financial aspects of tone when so many people pride themselves on how much their gear costs. But cost is not quality. When I visited OIART and the Trebas Institute in Toronto and Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, their recording programs didn't emphasize the gear a person had, but what they were able to do with it. All three program directors told me that most people won't be able to tell the gear you're using to record and that throwing money at gear to improve sound quality was a losing proposition because of the downward pressure on recorded music sales.
In sum: yes, details do make a difference in tone, but more to me than to the listener. I care enough about these details to try different pups, but not enough to disassemble the pups. Some details are more important than others, depending upon the cost needed to go through all the permutations of those details. Music is a business, and cost of the signal chain is important in order to make a profit. Cost of signal chain does not mean quality. The value and flexibility of a $2000 rack unit is rapidly exceeding real amps for both live and studio use, especially as technology progresses. The cost of music production and performance must come down to offset the decreased purchasing of recorded music and demand for lower priced tickets. Those who insist in throwing money after diminishing tonal returns are either independently wealthy or not concerned about turning a profit with their music (serious hobbyists). In light of the above, modifying the actual environment (soundproofing a room, guitar wood) or modifying analog technology (pickups, metal, amp parts) makes less sense when software and modeling can do it more cost effectively and with greater precision.
I don't know what I would have had to do to the pickup to make my JB sound the way I wanted it to, but a high pass filter at 200 hz and some cutting at 300 hz did wonders, and it only took a few seconds. I can't say the same about screws, magnets, etc.
