Pickups don't matter?

[woodsnstrings]

Agree. I think a lot of people are missing that. I think a lot of guitar players are also oblivious to that point. Easy example is the legions of people who thought Led Zepp was recorded with a Les Paul and a Marshall. Just because guitar player X said in an interview they used thus and such doesn't mean anything. Case in point - ed would either lie, or be too loaded to remember. I have said many times that we have no idea what actually made the noise we heard after an engineer gets done with it.

FYI I did see a guy who did a pickup into an amp into a Shure 57 as a response to this.

But also - are guitar players' opinions any more scientific? Less so I'd say. We are a superstitious bunch at best, and completely oblivious on the typical day.

Precisely. And he even demonstrated what they sound like without all the gain, and said unequivocally that yes, there are big, noticeable differences in tone when you play clean. But his audience, and his production, doesn't use enough clean tone for this to be worth investing huge bank in pickups when there are other factors that will make a difference.

The same goes for tone wood. Once you slap 3 tons of clipping in front of an already hotrodded, gained out amp, the impact of of your fretboard material, nut material, and tone wood becomes negligible. Differences in clean tones? Maybe...but that's not what he's testing. He's testing in the context of his specialty.

 

[GuitarDoc]

I tend to dismiss much of the claims coming from someone so extreme/opinionated/closed minded as he obviously is.

I think that different pups make a big difference in clean tones. But like most of us agree, under heavy distortion the difference is less. I still feel like different pups can give better articulation/separation of tones even under high gain. But here, again, the differences are small (but they ARE there).

1. I agree with him that the biggest tone generator is the speaker followed by the amp.
2. pups make a difference but mainly in clean settings.
3. Woods make a smaller contribution to the final tone and then mainly the woods in the neck/fretboard.
4. Body shape contributes ALMOST nothing to the tone.

 

[misterwhizzy]

I tend to dismiss much of the claims coming from someone so extreme/opinionated/closed minded as he obviously is.

And obnoxious. You forgot obnoxious.

 

[Mincer]

Some people make music just to make it and get people to listen to it, and there isn't anything deeper than that

I don't know if you can compare the 2. If he had something to say musically, he would say it.

 

[ICTGoober]

And obnoxious. You forgot obnoxious.

That's part of Glenn's special charm.

 

[Aceman]

I tend to dismiss much of the claims coming from someone so extreme/opinionated/closed minded as he obviously is.

I think that different pups make a big difference in clean tones. But like most of us agree, under heavy distortion the difference is less. I still feel like different pups can give better articulation/separation of tones even under high gain. But here, again, the differences are small (but they ARE there).

1. I agree with him that the biggest tone generator is the speaker followed by the amp.
2. pups make a difference but mainly in clean settings.
3. Woods make a smaller contribution to the final tone and then mainly the woods in the neck/fretboard.
4. Body shape contributes ALMOST nothing to the tone.

You are so WRONG!!!!!!! It's all in the hands!!!!!!!!

I defer to the mighty Frank Falbo, who gave this a good description.

There are "Gotcha" videos and videos that Emphasize differences. Or clips, demos, whatever.

The Emphasize vids can be done to show distinct differences between certain things, or they can be *ahem* given treatment in a dishonest way for, oh...I don't know, marketing.

The Gotcha vids can be done to demonstrate legitimate inability of our mere human senses to distinguish things that are pure hearsay, myths, and BS, or it can be done to make you feel angry and react badly at failing the test.

But I'm just gonna point out that we are indeed on a guitar pickup forum, and the pushback against this is immense. "Oh it's the compression, the recording, the upload, the blah blah blah." Or it's "He's loud, he's a jerk, he's blah blah blah". That doesn't make the message wrong. Just something to think about.

Lots of people blasting him for his opinion. Yet he did show up with a vid and examples. All most of us have is "anecdotes" which is another word for an opinion.

 

[Securb]

I was thinking about his video at practice tonight. I was playing a JCM 2000 DSL with a Wampler Dracarys Distortion and an EP-type boost. I would call that a reasonably high-gain rig. My Les Paul with WLHs, Parker with a DiMarzio Gen 1, Tele w/Hot Rails and Strat w/ a Black Winter all sound distinctly different. When I threw my Les Paul out of phase it really sounded different and even more so when I dropped the vol back a bit.

 

[AdrianSD]

if you're going to be spending 90% of your time with highly saturated overdriven gains, the bigger impact on tone is going to come from the speaker and the mic placement than the pickup.

Really, it's OK to be critical of the content. But you have to actually watch it and pay attention to what's being said, and the conditions around the experiment and demonstration. I would love to see someone here do a counter demonstration with the identical parameters and see if they can reproduce the results. THAT'S WHAT SCIENCE IS. He proposed the hypothesis, created a method, performed the experiment, and published his results. Now it's out there: you can use his methodology and determine if his conclusions were correct, or if his experiment was an outlier. But you MUST work within the parameters of the experiment.

I'm curious to see if anyone here is going to publish. To quote Glenn, "Evidence, or STFU."

Completely agree on the speaker and mic placement statement, hard to argue with that. On the counter demonstration, it's been mentioned already: KM's demos, or whatever they're called, that can emphasize differences between pickups under high gain. Both tests run in controlled environments with known inputs, yet each test have apparently achieved the purpose it was designed for. Besides, once in a band mix, the differences get less and less noticeable and I'm talking about not only the choice of pickups, but about the choice of amp or microphone placement.

 

[GuitarDoc]

You are so WRONG!!!!!!! It's all in the hands!!!!!!!!

I defer to the mighty Frank Falbo, who gave this a good description.

There are "Gotcha" videos and videos that Emphasize differences. Or clips, demos, whatever.

The Emphasize vids can be done to show distinct differences between certain things, or they can be *ahem* given treatment in a dishonest way for, oh...I don't know, marketing.

The Gotcha vids can be done to demonstrate legitimate inability of our mere human senses to distinguish things that are pure hearsay, myths, and BS, or it can be done to make you feel angry and react badly at failing the test.

But I'm just gonna point out that we are indeed on a guitar pickup forum, and the pushback against this is immense. "Oh it's the compression, the recording, the upload, the blah blah blah." Or it's "He's loud, he's a jerk, he's blah blah blah". That doesn't make the message wrong. Just something to think about.

Lots of people blasting him for his opinion. Yet he did show up with a vid and examples. All most of us have is "anecdotes" which is another word for an opinion.

I'm not sure, but I think you're being facetious...what do you think I said that was "wrong"?
But I also tend to agree a lot with you that a great deal of your tone is in your hands.

Also, I love Frank and respect his opinions and his talent, but was there anything he said that disagrees with what I said?

 

[GuitarDoc]

And obnoxious. You forgot obnoxious.

Oh, yeah. I did forget that one. Thanks for reminding me.

However, to be fair, someone can be obnoxious and still have a valid opinion. I don't think that's always the case with someone who is close-minded or extremely opinionated. And I actually even tended to agree with much of what he said. But not about pickups making "no" difference.

But, yes, he is very obnoxious. I had a really hard time making all the way through his vid.

 

[Aceman]

I'm not sure, but I think you're being facetious...what do you think I said that was "wrong"?
But I also tend to agree a lot with you that a great deal of your tone is in your hands.

Also, I love Frank and respect his opinions and his talent, but was there anything he said that disagrees with what I said?

Facetious = Tone is in the hands.

Everything else was serious.

 

[misterwhizzy]

I’ve watched quite a few of his videos, and I’ve realized I’m not really his intended audience. I think I’ll carry on as I was before.

 

[GuitarDoc]

That's what I figured

 

[chadd]

I’ve watched quite a few of his videos, and I’ve realized I’m not really his intended audience. I think I’ll carry on as I was before.

I've seen enough of them to know I'm going to disagree with a lot of his conclusions on anything. There are a lot of popular youtube guys whose fame far exceeds their value in my opinion. He's just one of them to me.

All of that said, I've always believed (and posted) that the more gain you use, the less anything else in your signal chain matters. Even more so once you start high passing and low passing on recordings or other EQ shenanigans.

 

[pskorz]

So I watched the whole video, and i have to say im a little surprised by some of the reactions here. I think he’s just pointing out to the metalhead crowd that they may be better spending their hard-earned dollars on things other than pickups. It’s a very prudent message, in my opinion.

He goes out of his way to show that these different guitars with the pickups do, in fact, have different sounds/tones. But after going through the high gain, then further production elements, those differences are much less noticeable. So you can budget your money to amps, software, pedals, or whatever before or instead of spending it on different pickups.

 

[GuitarDoc]

So I watched the whole video, and i have to say im a little surprised by some of the reactions here. I think he’s just pointing out to the metalhead crowd that they may be better spending their hard-earned dollars on things other than pickups. It’s a very prudent message, in my opinion.

He goes out of his way to show that these different guitars with the pickups do, in fact, have different sounds/tones. But after going through the high gain, then further production elements, those differences are much less noticeable. So you can budget your money to amps, software, pedals, or whatever before or instead of spending it on different pickups.

I agree, but that advice is more for Saturday warriors or amateur players. For those that are pros and especially who do lots of recording the small differences in the tone or definition/articulation in the pickups makes a big difference.

 

[pskorz]

I agree, but that advice is more for Saturday warriors or amateur players. For those that are pros and especially who do lots of recording the small differences in the tone or definition/articulation in the pickups makes a big difference.

Agreed. But I think his intended audience is largely the former.

 

[Aceman]

I agree, but that advice is more for Saturday warriors or amateur players. For those that are pros and especially who do lots of recording the small differences in the tone or definition/articulation in the pickups makes a big difference.

Is that really true?

Yes - in the room, through the speaker, knowing what you are using and what to expect - ok. You hear the nuance.

But his statement is that after the uber-gain, after the EQ'ing, after multiple forms of compression...what about then?

And then there is the argument that for a pro, it doesn't matter. I'm no pro. But, I can walk up to an idiot at GC making whatever solid state amp and epicene suck, as he complains about the junk gear, picket up, dial it in and rock it.

I'd say the pro is more immune to the delusions than most. They have played so many places with so much different gear that they may have preferences, but the gear really doesn't matter. For a buck and free gear, they will say whatever you are giving them is awesome.

I will agree - that when "in the lab" you may want to consider every nuance of the signal chain....

 

[Wound_Up]

Well, this is gonna be controversial....

Give it a watch, then discuss.

When you play music as crappy as he does, they dont matter.

 

[GuitarDoc]

But his statement is that after the uber-gain, after the EQ'ing, after multiple forms of compression...what about then?.

I can still hear a difference in note-to-note separation and clarity, but I agree that it is small compared to playing clean.

I'd say the pro is more immune to the delusions than most. They have played so many places with so much different gear that they may have preferences, but the gear really doesn't matter. For a buck and free gear, they will say whatever you are giving them is awesome.

I will agree - that when "in the lab" you may want to consider every nuance of the signal chain....

Yes, I agree.