Pickups don't matter?

I’ve been really loving the tones from some of the resurgent new wave of classic rock bands, specifically Dirty Honey and Goodbye June. I watched a Rig Rundown with John Notto, and he mentioned his pickups were from Righteous Sound, so I looked them up and basically found a set of Alnico 2 PAFs.

I realize the story is already long, but to get to the point, I pulled my 59 set out of its box, put a roughcast A2 in the bridge—the roughcast A3 is never leaving the neck—and swapped them back into my Les Paul. It was all there. The bloom, the growl, the wonder of a lower output pickup doing rock and roll into a Plexi style amp.

Pickups absolutely matter.
 
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Rewatched his video, and I have to say this has made me question Glenn as a source of advice. The pickups do sound different, not to the extent as if you were to go from say a single coil to a humbucker and some sound more distinct than others but they're still there. I mean the first two guitars are perfect examples of this; the second one is clearly driving the amp more and adds a tone of flub to the pull-offs. I've not seen a whole amount of Glenn's stuff, but he seemed reliable, but now I'm not so sure.
 
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