Single pickup guitar owners, have you noticed this tone difference?

[ErikH]

Re: Single pickup guitar owners, have you noticed this tone difference?

Good modelers don't kill detail. The technology has come a long way since its inception.

In regards to the OP, IME, it seems to be different from guitar to guitar. I own a few single-pickup guitars and one seems to exhibit this behavior more than the other. One has a tone control, one does not. One has a humbucker, one has a P-90.

 

[vinta9e]

Re: Single pickup guitar owners, have you noticed this tone difference?

Nope, you're wrong. A solid state driven ADC just can't match a tube stage's resolution. Think about it for a second.

Where a great tube amp delivers well defined harmonics, modelers deliver just a hazy, cloudy imitation.
Ever noticed how a good amp sounds different when you swap guitars or even pass the same one to another next player?

Now when I say a great amp, I mean a great amp - a sensitive one. An outstanding one, not just "any one".

 

[Securb]

Re: Single pickup guitar owners, have you noticed this tone difference?

Put the pipe down and try it again then tell us what you hear.

 

[ErikH]

Re: Single pickup guitar owners, have you noticed this tone difference?

Yeah, and I hear the same behavior out of my modeler as I do my tube amp. Is the feel different? Sure it is, but there's a definite difference from guitar to guitar through that amp.

The biggest problems with modelers is the noise gate. In almost every case, they are on by default. When I got mine, I got a tip to turn it off or turn it down as low as possible. When I did that, the amp came alive. After one gig, I had a guy ask me what tubes I was running in my amp. He had no clue it was a modeler.

 

[vinta9e]

Re: Single pickup guitar owners, have you noticed this tone difference?

Put the pipe down and try it again then tell us what you hear.

You talkin to me?

What we're talking about here is the harmonic structure. Depending on where you hit the string and how, the partials are going to appear in different proportions. A dog of a guitar is going to mask the phenomenon while a great one is going to respond to it, augmenting the effect. Same with amps.

 

[DreX]

Re: Single pickup guitar owners, have you noticed this tone difference?

I disagree with DreX that it is difficult to test. Record a clip through some modeler, change pickup, record again. You can even do self blind tests.

It's still difficult to test, though, you'd need an auto-plucking machine like SD supposedly used for their output tests in order to get consistent string plucking, otherwise you could chalk up any difference, or a lack of detectable difference, to human variability.

Besides that, as with a lot of things pickup related, sometimes differences are more felt than heard, a difference in how the guitar responds to input rather than what it outputs. Just because you don't hear a difference doesn't mean the person playing the guitar didn't feel one.

Bad idea, given how much detail modelers kill.

So long as the sampling limit is beyond human hearing and the amp is not doing a hard frequency cut off, then technically speaking, no detail is being killed.

The biggest problems with modelers is the noise gate. In almost every case, they are on by default..

This is just a theory, but this could be because the modeler gets farty and fake sounding at low input levels, and the noisegate is there to cover up the mess. The first gen Fender Mustangs has a problem like this.

 

[uOpt]

Re: Single pickup guitar owners, have you noticed this tone difference?

Auto-plucking?

It is pretty easy to do consistent play, especially fingerpicking, which is useful to compare things at clean or medium gain.

You play more than note, you know? Once you have dozens statistics kick in, too.

 

[DreX]

Re: Single pickup guitar owners, have you noticed this tone difference?

It is pretty easy to do consistent play, especially fingerpicking, which is useful to compare things at clean or medium gain.

I can't (and you shouldn't) trust your ability to know whether or not you're playing consistently. It like when you proof read your own writing and miss mistakes because they're your own mistakes.

 

[uOpt]

Re: Single pickup guitar owners, have you noticed this tone difference?

I can't (and you shouldn't) trust your ability to know whether or not you're playing consistently. It like when you proof read your own writing and miss mistakes because they're your own mistakes.

I can run spectrum analysis and whatever else I desire on the clips.

I can also tell you that I sometimes have difficulties telling things apart for very subtle changes, in blind tests.

I think the consistency of the playing isn't the problem here. At least not for fingerpicking. As long as you don't break a nail of course.

 

[AlexR]

Re: Single pickup guitar owners, have you noticed this tone difference?

If you play like you in both clips, chances are you'll hear whatever difference there is to hear.....lets face it, the nuances and note feel is where you'd expect to hear any of these differences anyhow. The sterility of autopluck may well neutralise a lot of the relevant differences.

 

[ErikH]

Re: Single pickup guitar owners, have you noticed this tone difference?

This is just a theory, but this could be because the modeler gets farty and fake sounding at low input levels, and the noisegate is there to cover up the mess. The first gen Fender Mustangs has a problem like this.

That's something I've heard on only a small handful of them. I have a Vox AD50VT and never experienced that. My bandmate just got an AxeFx and with it being on the other end of the spectrum from my Vox, it sounds amazing. A wee bit expensive for me though.

 

[DreX]

Re: Single pickup guitar owners, have you noticed this tone difference?

I can run spectrum analysis and whatever else I desire on the clips.

I can also tell you that I sometimes have difficulties telling things apart for very subtle changes, in blind tests.

The spectrum analysis will show variations depending on where along the string you pluck, and even what part of your finger or finger nail you pluck with, how you pull away from the string.. if not from just how hard you pluck the string, so as a measurement device, frequency analysis is not immune to the pollution of human influence.

Regardless, putting a human in the mix goes against the scientific method, so the results could only ever satisfy you, and you remain where you started, one guy and his opinion.

If you play like you in both clips, chances are you'll hear whatever difference there is to hear.....lets face it, the nuances and note feel is where you'd expect to hear any of these differences anyhow. The sterility of autopluck may well neutralise a lot of the relevant differences.

I know we're not being real technical here, but when you get to using terms like "note feel", words become useless. I can say it sounds like "red wine" and who's to say otherwise?

Sterility just means clean; free of unwanted outside influences, for the sake of a making an accurate comparison. When you describe sterility as a bad thing, it's as though your deliberately trying to avoid subjectivity objectivity .

 

[uOpt]

Re: Single pickup guitar owners, have you noticed this tone difference?

The spectrum analysis will show variations depending on where along the string you pluck, and even what part of your finger or finger nail you pluck with, how you pull away from the string.. if not from just how hard you pluck the string, so as a measurement device, frequency analysis is not immune to the pollution of human influence.

Yes it goes. Of course I don't vary where on the string I play for those clips.

This thread has some infuriating BS in it.

 

[beaubrummels]

Re: Single pickup guitar owners, have you noticed this tone difference?

For my purposes, I don't need scientifically-identical strums to determine if I'm getting a different response from a pickup and guitar. I play the way I play, after 35 years and playing some songs thousands of times, and humans being creatures of habit, I will hit the guitar with reasonable enough consistency for my purposes to tell if something is different between two guitars or two pickups. While we tout the flaws in humans as some unrepeatable unique character that AI cannot yet replicate, we also underestimate and undervalue the ability of humans to perform consistently after a great deal of practice and repetition.

I don't have a strong view on modelers and any detail loss. What I can comment on is I know my hands and I know my guitars and whether I plug into an amp or a modeler, both lose something or change something (usually in good ways) when compared to the original direct signal off the guitar. I can work with either well enough to ascertain if I'm getting more bass or high end when playing near the neck of a single-pickup guitar. I think either an amp or modeler would be a fair test. Using several of both alternately would be an even better comparison, which is what I tend to do. I will use a SansAmp PSA-1, a Line 6 Flextone, an Orange AD50, a Marshall JTM45 (clone), a Fender Champion, etc. comparing all. Somewhere between all that comparing I start to get to know what portion is the amp, what portion is the guitar and what portion is my hands at work.

Anyway, I'll pull the neck pup out of my Tele later and see what happens. I think this is a good and interesting discussion.

 

[AlexR]

Re: Single pickup guitar owners, have you noticed this tone difference?

I know we're not being real technical here, but when you get to using terms like "note feel", words become useless. I can say it sounds like "red wine" and who's to say otherwise?

Sterility just means clean; free of unwanted outside influences, for the sake of a making an accurate comparison. When you describe sterility as a bad thing, it's as though your deliberately trying to avoid subjectivity objectivity .

Thats true.....trying to get any scientific method without controlled conditions becomes less relevant....but part of the playing of the guitar isn't just in the absolute. Thats where the feel and tone descriptors come in. Your definition won't have changed between plays and neither will your style. Things like electronics and values need to be measured analytically - when you compare strings or pickups (or the absence of them) then this becomes perhaps a place where a double test is needed.