Same pickup, completely different results

[AdrianSD]

Sure. In general if im at a store say looking for a strat lets say. 10 strats generally 2 suck 6 or 7 are everage 1or2 have something special.
As I pick them up I put um up near my ear and give um a quick 2 to 3 knocks with my knucle in differant spots. A dead axe will just have a flat dead thud. Most will be average. But 1 or 2 will have a certain hollow "Cugg" sound. Its a certain depth you can hear. That is what Im looking for.
Im not trying to say other guitars are bad( and seems like everyone is getting iritated)its just when your looking for the best of the bunch. Its a good indicator.
And I can say 1st hand its not just body wood or setup.
I built a strat once alder body fender cs69 pups. I put a 70s maple strat neck on....sounded average. Didnt like the neck shape Tryed a differant 70s maple neck otherwise same thing. Same shim same setup. Imediatly came alive.
Maybe its to do with the 2 woods( body and neck coupling) maybe its the way the truss rod sits within the neck inself. But the differance was clear.
Same for the example of my 2 SGs same axes in everyway. One is good one is magic.

Thanks, appreciate it! I did a quick knock test on my guitars - all double locking floating tremolo - and it seems that:
- The one that sounds flat dead is the one I could only revive somehow with a Black Winter set. An old Korean Jackson PS-4, great player though, fantastic neck and the perfect body weight.
- All the others more or less over the place, the once I know sound great plugged in also "ring" nicely to my ear on the knock test (unless it's confirmation bias?)
- 2 Ibanez RGs - a 550 and a 470 - just barely pass the knock test, but sound great plugged in. Bite, crunch, rich harmonics, good sustain.
Bear in mind I'm playing mostly high gain - boosted overdriven amp - and I think that, while the knock test may be an indicator of how flat dead pi$4 poor a guitar will sound, for my use cases I have to plug into a tubescreamer pushing the drive channel of an amp whose basic tone I like, in order to see if the guitar and I can be friends.
To me the guitar is the sum of all parts, or more like the weighted average?

 

[Chistopher]

There is nothing wrong with knocking the wood on a guitar to tell if it has a certain characteristic. Much in the way there is nothing wrong with looking at the legs on a wine to see if your red has certain characteristics.

Me personally, to add a third metaphor, I believe advocating for knocking on a guitar is about as useful when buying a guitar as giving a race horse you are thinking about buying a prostate exam. Is it an indicator of a horses overall health? Maybe. Does not mean I'm going to go around telling people I gave 10 exams today and bought the one with the best results. I'm going to just buy the one that looks the coolest

 

[Sam SG]

Cool so you notice it a bit. Its not the be all end all. But its a good test.
I liken the " magic wood" to the one guitar " baby" players SRV Rory Claptons Blackie. Those guys especially in thier era could have bought other 50s/60s strats. BUT they choose to play that same one..over and over..refret it again and again etc... its that unexplainable mojo. My stupid knock test is just a helping indicator....and I cant remember who but i read along time ago there was another crazy guy(big player) that does it too.
Its not the only criteria for buying a guitar.
But damn people seem to be getting pissed off about it, Im just trying to pass along a little tip Ive found over my years of playing and 50 or so axes that have come and gone.

 

[freefrog]

I built a strat once alder body fender cs69 pups. I put a 70s maple strat neck on....sounded average. Didnt like the neck shape Tryed a differant 70s maple neck otherwise same thing. Same shim same setup. Imediatly came alive.

For the record, if I swap the necks of my two main Strats, both guitars sound dead. Each (ash) body cooperates with one of the two necks only.

An interesting link about necks, FWIW: https://frudua.com/neck_influence_in_guitar_tone.htm

To me the guitar is the sum of all parts, or more like the weighted average?

+1.

To come back on topic: a systematical comparison has been done here once, involving 3 sets of humbuckers and 3 guitars. On the 9 possible combinations, 3 sounded clearly better than the other. Each guitar had simply its favorite set.

That's why I tend to search what a guitar "needs" when it comes to transducers. Not rarely, it involves mods on the pickups themselves (magnets, poles, keeper bars) and/or their wiring, with various LRC components allowing to fine tune the tone.

Sometimes, the proper solution is tricky to find. As we're on the Duncan forum, let's evoke an example involving Duncan models...

An instrument caused many pulled hairs here a while back : the neck HB was always too dark and the bridge one, always too bright.
With various mods in each case, 12 to 18 pickups were tried in it (maybe more than this: I've lost the count).
The last recipe involved a no-load master tone pot, a Duncan Jazz (but with short A5) and a Duncan Hybrid in bridge position: the stronger Custom coil closer to the neck was the only way to tame an ice-picky narrow harmonic peak that all other pickups were reproducing. It was also a good idea to change the stop bar for a lighter one...
And finally the guitar sounded not only good but "right" (= as expected).

 

[AdrianSD]

Each guitar had simply its favorite set.

Couldn't have said it better myself. The last RG550 I bought sounds great with the stock pickups, couldn't believe how good it sounds. I have a blackened Black Winter set and a Distortion/Jazz ready for it, just don't feel like swapping the existing ones out yet, they're perfect in this guitar.

 

[Sam SG]

For the record, if I swap the necks of my two main Strats, both guitars sound dead. Each (ash) body cooperates with one of the two necks only.

An interesting link about necks, FWIW: https://frudua.com/neck_influence_in_guitar_tone.htm



+1.

To come back on topic: a systematical comparison has been done here once, involving 3 sets of humbuckers and 3 guitars. On the 9 possible combinations, 3 sounded clearly better than the other. Each guitar had simply its favorite set.

That's why I tend to search what a guitar "needs" when it comes to transducers. Not rarely, it involves mods on the pickups themselves (magnets, poles, keeper bars) and/or their wiring, with various LRC components allowing to fine tune the tone.

Sometimes, the proper solution is tricky to find. As we're on the Duncan forum, let's evoke an example involving Duncan models...

An instrument caused many pulled hairs here a while back : the neck HB was always too dark and the bridge one, always too bright.
With various mods in each case, 12 to 18 pickups were tried in it (maybe more than this: I've lost the count).
The last recipe involved a no-load master tone pot, a Duncan Jazz (but with short A5) and a Duncan Hybrid in bridge position: the stronger Custom coil closer to the neck was the only way to tame an ice-picky narrow harmonic peak that all other pickups were reproducing. It was also a good idea to change the stop bar for a lighter one...
And finally the guitar sounded not only good but "right" (= as expected).

Good read from Fradua. I once watch a video of his on keeping a strat trem in tune. After installing and stretching in the strings. He tunes to pitch then sharpens the bends of the strings. By pressing the strings down were they exit over tge saddles, press um down on both sides of the nut and pressing accross were they come off the last wind on the tuners. You can literaly go Blackmore on your strat trem.
.give it a light pull back up and it stays intune