"Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

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Re: "Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

I was just lamenting in another thread that I can't say "something to look out for when buying XYZ guitar" without indignant replies "there's nothing wrong with my XYZ guitar!!!" People get really defensive over any perceived slight. I feel like we'd not be having this tone wood debate if I hadn't I not uttered the name "Rob Chapman".
 
Re: "Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

This whole debate, which has taken many forms over many threads in many websites, is something that could only exist in the age of the internet.

Are we seriously discussing creating "controlled strumming environments" to test, at best, relatively subtle changes on sound wave graphs, to determine whether different musical instruments sound different from one another?

I think it was Funkfingers who caught the truth of the thing. We are, as human musicians, going to adapt things like picking angles, and pressure to get the sounds we want. What do I care if a three inch mahogany body with a maple cap sounds 2% different that a one inch maple body with a mahogany cap, if a minuscule change in my picking angle or attack will get me the sound I want on either guitar?

This whole debate ends up a complete reductio argument. If you change the wood, people will argue there are differences in the hardware. If you use the same hardware, they will argue the hardware is not anchored the same in each guitar. If you can prove the same anchoring, they will argue the metal has somehow aged in the hardware from the time it was in the first guitar to the second. If you use the same pickups, they will argue that MJ winds them differently on Mondays than Wednesdays, etc. etc.

And that kind of anal adherence to the scientific theory is great if you're trying to cure cancer. Keep up the scepticism, humanity needs it! But it is a complete waste of time when it comes to something like music in general, and even more so in the context of the frigging electric guitar. I can't remember it right now, but there is a great word in German, that translates to "the study of that which is not worth knowing". I think that sums this debate up neatly.
 
Re: "Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

I am just waiting for Scott Grove's rant on "How case lining material can affect your guitar tone". Of course with the conspiracy storyline about how the big guitar companies are using substandard faux fur made overseas in the cases .
 
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Re: "Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

treyhaislip said:
From the perspective of a manufacturer, such as Rob Chapman, then yes they are the same.
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OK. Got it. All guitars of the same make and model sound the same.

treyhaislip said:
From the perspective of a guitar player, I quoted above and have said multiple times that of course no 2 guitars will 100% identical. We are dealing with organic materials that are never going to be 100% the same. That's why I think the non-measured test is not flawed because how many people out there only own one set of hardware, neck, pickups, and electronics and swap them out for a new body when they want Mahogany instead of Basswood?
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OK. Got it. All guitars of the same make and model sound different.


Wait. What? This is where your argument breaks down.

Perspective doesn't come into scientific testing. Either the guitars sound the same, and you don't need to control for sound as a variable, or they are not the same and you do need to control for individual sound. You can't have it both ways.

treyhaislip said:
Practically speaking, the guitars are the same except for the body wood. The test was simple and provided zero data other than audio. For all we know they could have overdubbed or messed with the mix, just because its on the internet doesn't make it true. But as a test of two stock ML-1s with the only difference being the tone wood, I thought the video did a good job showing off the two guitars.
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The video shows off the difference between two guitars nicely. You can't say that the audible difference between them is due to the difference in wood as you're trying to though, since you haven't controlled for variables. This is why the test isn't particularly useful regarding tone wood. I don't know how else this can be explained . . .
 
Re: "Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

voggin said:
This whole debate, which has taken many forms over many threads in many websites, is something that could only exist in the age of the internet.

Are we seriously discussing creating "controlled strumming environments" to test, at best, relatively subtle changes on sound wave graphs, to determine whether different musical instruments sound different from one another?

I think it was Funkfingers who caught the truth of the thing. We are, as human musicians, going to adapt things like picking angles, and pressure to get the sounds we want. What do I care if a three inch mahogany body with a maple cap sounds 2% different that a one inch maple body with a mahogany cap, if a minuscule change in my picking angle or attack will get me the sound I want on either guitar?

This whole debate ends up a complete reductio argument. If you change the wood, people will argue there are differences in the hardware. If you use the same hardware, they will argue the hardware is not anchored the same in each guitar. If you can prove the same anchoring, they will argue the metal has somehow aged in the hardware from the time it was in the first guitar to the second. If you use the same pickups, they will argue that MJ winds them differently on Mondays than Wednesdays, etc. etc.

And that kind of anal adherence to the scientific theory is great if you're trying to cure cancer. Keep up the scepticism, humanity needs it! But it is a complete waste of time when it comes to something like music in general, and even more so in the context of the frigging electric guitar. I can't remember it right now, but there is a great word in German, that translates to "the study of that which is not worth knowing". I think that sums this debate up neatly.
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Science is based on "anal adherence to the scientific theory". Glossing over the details leads to incorrect conclusions.

It is very hard to create a rigorous test to prove a theory that holds up to scrutiny. That's because you have to get it right. Advocating lower standards just leads to misinformation though, and there's an awful lot of misinformation in the music world already. I'm not sure why you seem to want more of the same.
 
Re: "Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

Securb said:
I am just waiting for Scott Grove's rant on "How case lining material can affect your guitar tone". Of course with the conspiracy storyline about how the big guitar companies are using substandard faux fur made overseas in the cases .
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It honestly wouldn't shock me. That guy's one step away from a racist rant and hanging up at Confederate flag.

Or did he do that already and I missed it?

Sent from my Moto X 2014 using Tapatalk
 
Re: "Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

Securb said:
I am just waiting for Scott Grove's rant on "How case lining material can affect your guitar tone". Of course with the conspiracy storyline about how the big guitar companies are using substandard faux fur made overseas in the cases .
Click to expand...

Thanks for the laugh :lmao:

GuitarStv said:
OK. Got it. All guitars of the same make and model sound the same.

OK. Got it. All guitars of the same make and model sound different.

Wait. What? This is where your argument breaks down.

Perspective doesn't come into scientific testing. Either the guitars sound the same, and you don't need to control for sound as a variable, or they are not the same and you do need to control for individual sound. You can't have it both ways.
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I will have to politely disagree. In view of a manufacturer, a stock Mahogany ML-1 is a stock Mahogany ML-1 regardless of what serial number it is. Perspective determines what is being tested and why. Variables are not constants held to the same control for every test, they are controlled at varying levels or ignored depending on the situation being tested (for a good scientific test the variables will be accounted for as controlled or not controlled.)

But just because a variable is not controlled to the most minute detail (in this test they were controlled in that the same strings, hardware, electronics, and pickups were used) means that the test is flawed. But again...the test never claimed to be scientific and never produced data other than, "definitely a difference." I still say it falls under the scientific method because you can reproduce the test and find the results for yourself–you can tweak it, make it more controlled, eliminate variables, etc. and get results that either support or disprove the original "hypothesis" that tone wood makes a difference.


GuitarStv said:
The video shows off the difference between two guitars nicely. You can't say that the audible difference between them is due to the difference in wood as you're trying to though, since you haven't controlled for variables. This is why the test isn't particularly useful regarding tone wood. I don't know how else this can be explained . . .
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So you don't think this test is useful–that is fine and you are entitled to your opinion as I am to mine. I would argue it is impossible to 100% reproduce the exact same guitar with only different tone wood in every possible way down to the exact pressure of the neck screws and exact pickup height across the entire pickup. I understand where you are coming from–and if he was using actual measurable findings then I would say yes, tighten up the testing. But for a YouTube video show casing his perosnal guitars, I say yeah he showed there is a difference between his stock Mahogany and stock Swamp Ash.

As I've said before and I say again, take the same loaded guitar and only change the neck from all Maple to Maple+Rosewood. Play those and tell me there isn't a difference. Take two identical Alder and Basswood Strats, use the same necks, pickups, hardware, and electronics and tell me a JB doesn't sound and react differently in the two. It is a repeatable, observable test.




...agree to disagree and get back to the OP?
 
Re: "Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

voggin said:
And that kind of anal adherence to the scientific theory is great if you're trying to cure cancer. Keep up the scepticism, humanity needs it! But it is a complete waste of time when it comes to something like music in general, and even more so in the context of the frigging electric guitar.
Click to expand...

The tone wood stuff might be a bit off topic, but when it comes to "pickup break-in", this is very much on topic.

"anal adherence" is basically a shaming way of saying "valuing accuracy", and it's a lack of accuracy that caused this guy Rich Menga http://menga.net/how-long-does-it-take-to-break-in-a-guitar-pickup to conclude that pickups "break in". In all likelihood, he's attributing string wear to the pickups (sound best within so many months, the lowest three string go first). He probably didn't control for the strings, he probably didn't isolate that variable. If asked, he'd probably say "the string still look clean though! Strings are supposed to last a year, it's been three months!". That's how personal experience and folk wisdom fail people.

There's a good two or three pages of people earlier in this thread chortling over this silly pickup breakin thing, but if you think guitar is exempt from scientific rigor, if you don't understand the importance of removing the "human factor", if you think the fact that the guitar is used for the purposes of art means that the scientific standards applied to guitar can be as equally "artful", then you're no better than Rich Menga.
 
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Re: "Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

GuitarStv said:
Science is based on "anal adherence to the scientific theory". Glossing over the details leads to incorrect conclusions.

It is very hard to create a rigorous test to prove a theory that holds up to scrutiny. That's because you have to get it right. Advocating lower standards just leads to misinformation though, and there's an awful lot of misinformation in the music world already. I'm not sure why you seem to want more of the same.
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The complaint I have isn't about misinformation. It's about the flood of useless information.

I really don't care if people want to sit around in their basements and perform a million tests on their sneakers. If that floats your boat, have at her.

What gets on my nerves is the constant use of appeals to scientific rigour to effectively diminish or disparage a wealth of experience of those who actually make instruments, or, God forbid, music. Using the tonewood example, simply because luthiers don't wear labcoats and write peer-reviewed papers, any clown on YouTube can post a rant saying how they don't know their own business. In other words, people like John Suhr and every other great builder who, through the experience they have gained as actual instrument designers and builders are, we are left to conclude, one of two things:

1..Idiots who don't know what they are talking about. This is insulting enough, but at least it is benign. On the other hand, the other possible conclusion is

2. They are liars, parties to a great fraud perpetrated by the guitar-building cabal, selling snake oil to poor musicians (who are themselves morons for buying into the fraud, like old grannies in a Ponzi scheme).

So, because of a few guys with a web cam, we are now seeking to set up rigourous scientific experiments in order to see who is right. Which means we are effectively equating brilliant artists and craftsmen with people who, if you watch their videos, are of questionable mental stability. That is demeaning, if not outright libellous, to a group of people who are at the top of their field. Hence my reference to the "study of that which is not worth knowing." There is nothing irrational or "anti-science" of choosing to take the word of people in a field whom you respect over the musing of some crank. If anyone is perpetuating a fraud, I would be more inclined to suspect the person who is laughing at all of us as his view count continues to climb, and he can shill his products because of the controversy he provokes by saying crazy things, usually in an offensive or deliberately controversial Jerry Springer-like way.

If you think an SG and a Les Paul with the same pickups sound exactly the same, great. If you think they sound different, great. If you think either one sounds good, then that's all you need to know. I know that sounds like luddite-ish, and I know it may be a position that could end a great deal of valuable inquiry into pieces of string on planks in sheds all over the world, but if Seymour Duncan, MJ, John Suhr and Tom Anderson have not felt compelled, after all these years, to do these experiments even though it is an enquiry directly related, however tangentially, to what they do in this world, maybe we should be asking ourselves why we feel it would be so valuable.
 
Re: "Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

voggin said:
The complaint I have isn't about misinformation. It's about the flood of useless information. ... If you think either one sounds good, then that's all you need to know.
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It only seems useless because it so happens that you don't care, but suppose you're buying a body from Warmoth, you think Ash looks better but you've heard Basswood sounds better, how do you make an informed decision, as opposed to a wild guess, a shot in the dark, a gamble, without access to what is truth and what is fiction?

voggin said:
There is nothing irrational or "anti-science" of choosing to take the word of people in a field whom you respect
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Let's be clear:

1) making a thing does not mean you necessarily understand the thing.

2) personal experience will never yield knowledge that is as absolute as a controlled scientific experiment.
 
Re: "Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

There's a third option you're not considering . . . like all human beings, they are remarkably easy to fool. If you spend any time learning about how optical illusions work you'll see what I'm talking about. The human brain is a pattern matching machine. We are naturally predisposed to seek cause and effect . . . it's baked in to the way you interpret data. If you perform an experiment expecting an outcome, you can easily change the outcome of the experiment even subconsciously. I don't think that people do this out of malice, but just because it's very easy to make mistakes and fail to account for variables. That's why rigor is so important in scientific testing. Information is never useless, the more information from a well designed test the better your conclusions should be.

Choosing to accept the word of someone in a particular field over empirical evidence is in fact anti-science and a well known logical fallacy (there's a name for this flawed reasoning . . . appeal to authority).
 
Re: "Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

I do not know why/how these threads get so heated. We all agree there is no such thing as pickup break-in. Done and settled. How we got onto this tone wood stupidity again is beyond me.
 
Re: "Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

If we don't talk about the bigger issue, why junk science proliferates so happily in the world of electric guitar, we'll be in the exact same place come 2025.
 
Re: "Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

DreX said:
If we don't talk about the bigger issue, why junk science proliferates so happily in the world of electric guitar, we'll be in the exact same place come 2025.
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So you plan on hanging around here that long, huh?
 
Re: "Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

Appeal to authority is only an (informal) fallacy if it isn't relevant. Bill is a PhD in physics, and he says WWI was caused by the Russian revolution. As opposed to, I'm getting a mole removed because my dermitologist says it's cancerous.

All of this scientific method talk is leaving out the biggest pitfall of this kind of enquiry, and that is confirmation bias. The "rigour" that is so often argued for is often being used as an excuse to "exclude variables" to the vanishing point to avoid conclusions which should have been reached earlier on.

Maple plank, JB pickup, grover tuner, Ernie Ball string: sounds like x, brighter than y
Mahog plank, JB pickup, grover tuner, EB string: sounds like y, not as bright as x.

Are we done? No, because that is not the answer we want. So, we want to eliminate the variable of two JBs. Same result? Better use the same tuner. Same result? Better use the same string.

Same result again? Oh, the string aged between test one and two. Devise some process for near-identical strings. Same result? Maybe the screw depths of the tuner in the different pieces of wood is inconsistent. And on and on. Changes in humidity in the room? Butterflies beating there wings in Australia?

Can't eliminate every variable? Well, I guess we'll call it a draw. Inconclusive. I can't establish that I'm right, but neither can those luthier guys.
 
Re: "Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

voggin said:
Appeal to authority is only an (informal) fallacy if it isn't relevant. Bill is a PhD in physics, and he says WWI was caused by the Russian revolution. As opposed to, I'm getting a mole removed because my dermitologist says it's cancerous.

All of this scientific method talk is leaving out the biggest pitfall of this kind of enquiry, and that is confirmation bias. The "rigour" that is so often argued for is often being used as an excuse to "exclude variables" to the vanishing point to avoid conclusions which should have been reached earlier on.
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I'm sorry... I can't find any coherence in this.
 
Re: "Pickup Break-in" Any truth here??

Anyway.. I'd hate to see another thread about the pursuit of truth and reason get locked, so let's stay on track.
 
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