What kind of pickups would you guys recommend for crisp surf rock guitar?
- Thread starter MichaelScottPerkins
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ItsaBass
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Re: What kind of pickups would you guys recommend for crisp surf rock guitar?
Erroneously assigning different tones to different magnets is not knowing your stuff; it's spreading tired old pickup wives' tales.
Magnets don't inherently have general "tones" in and of themselves. A5 isn't "scooped and articulate with tight lows," A2 isn't "middy, warm, and less defined," and ceramic isn't "thin and harsh," in a vacuum.
Magnets have no tone of their own. They just provide the magnetic field strength desired to work within a particular pickup design. Not all designs are "pleasing" to the ear for every person out there...and the magnets tend to get the blame or the credit for a pickup's e.q., when it's really the overall design of the pickup. For example, people spread the "ceramics are brittle/thin/bright" line a lot. My guess as to why is because ceramics have been used in many a cheap, poorly designed and poorly built pickup over the years. But it's common correlation they are seeing, not causation. Put a ceramic magnet in a pickup that is well designed and fine tuned to use a magnetic field of that strength, and you can have a pickup that sounds as sweet as any old, sweet, "aged" (another terrible pickup myth) alnico 2 magnet.
The main thing that you are choosing when picking a magnet type is the strength of the magnet...not the e.q. How that magnetic strength works within a certain pickup design is what is important to tone. It's far more complicated than "A2 is warm" and "ceramic is brittle."
Erroneously assigning different tones to different magnets is not knowing your stuff; it's spreading tired old pickup wives' tales.
Magnets don't inherently have general "tones" in and of themselves. A5 isn't "scooped and articulate with tight lows," A2 isn't "middy, warm, and less defined," and ceramic isn't "thin and harsh," in a vacuum.
Magnets have no tone of their own. They just provide the magnetic field strength desired to work within a particular pickup design. Not all designs are "pleasing" to the ear for every person out there...and the magnets tend to get the blame or the credit for a pickup's e.q., when it's really the overall design of the pickup. For example, people spread the "ceramics are brittle/thin/bright" line a lot. My guess as to why is because ceramics have been used in many a cheap, poorly designed and poorly built pickup over the years. But it's common correlation they are seeing, not causation. Put a ceramic magnet in a pickup that is well designed and fine tuned to use a magnetic field of that strength, and you can have a pickup that sounds as sweet as any old, sweet, "aged" (another terrible pickup myth) alnico 2 magnet.
The main thing that you are choosing when picking a magnet type is the strength of the magnet...not the e.q. How that magnetic strength works within a certain pickup design is what is important to tone. It's far more complicated than "A2 is warm" and "ceramic is brittle."
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Re: What kind of pickups would you guys recommend for crisp surf rock guitar?
@itsabass true, but if you take a pickup, a humbucker, and change the ceramic for an alnico 2, the output will drop, the highs will be smoother, the low end will be a bit spongier and the midrange will be a bit fatter.
Just to name it for alnico 2. The phrase "magnet x sounds like..." implies a situation with all other things staying the same. Alnico 8 with an underwound humbucker, 42 awg, will of course be totally different than a2 in 44 awg.
Sorry if the shorthand ticks you off but it is easier to converse like that. If you want a specific tone, it's just easier to start with some known specs that will bring you to that tonal ballpark you're aiming for, rather than try to invent the recipe from scratch.
@itsabass true, but if you take a pickup, a humbucker, and change the ceramic for an alnico 2, the output will drop, the highs will be smoother, the low end will be a bit spongier and the midrange will be a bit fatter.
Just to name it for alnico 2. The phrase "magnet x sounds like..." implies a situation with all other things staying the same. Alnico 8 with an underwound humbucker, 42 awg, will of course be totally different than a2 in 44 awg.
Sorry if the shorthand ticks you off but it is easier to converse like that. If you want a specific tone, it's just easier to start with some known specs that will bring you to that tonal ballpark you're aiming for, rather than try to invent the recipe from scratch.