I think he specifically talks about this stuff in a recording setting. I can tell a difference between pickups in the room, but once it's recorded, those differences are essentially gone.
Yeah, Glenn had at least one video where he just moved the positions of mics and the tone was different even with the same exact guitar, pickup, amp, etc. So many variables in tone, with so many different ways to get 'there', wherever your 'there' is.
I think he fails to emphasize that enough tho, and that can be confusing for anyone not enough in the know. For live playing (which is still a thing surprising as it may be, life doesn't just happen on screens) everything makes a difference! Glenn is so adamant about these things as if it's generally untrue that pickups make a difference, or as if the sound in the room isn't something pretty valid to care about!
@@george.vasilev.reyner1916 Makes sense. Basically, the sound starts with your hands and the pickups -- they're the first 'hardware' in the chain, and because of that, they're bound to make a big difference.
@@george.vasilev.reyner1916, not a Glenn fanboi here (though I do like the man), but I think he's pretty clear that he talks from the POV of a recording engineer. He says that if the pickups are quiet enough and powerful enough for your music choice, then what pickup you use doesn't matter cos everything else in the signal chain is going to make a bigger difference and the audio engineer is going to manipulate your sound in order to make it fit into the mix. In short: However you end up sounding in the recording does not depend on your pickups. As for the sound in the room, yeah, the pickups are in the sound chain, but as long as they're above a minimum quality, your pedals, amp and speakers are going to matter so much more. Try this thought experiment: You have your favourite pedal(s) and amp settings that give you the in-the-room sound you like with your favourite guitar and pickups. Now, you swap out the pickups for some that are similar in output and quality (but allegedly, according to marketing, sound really different). Here's the question: Do you think you could make some changes in your pedal(s) and amp settings that would make your new sound (with the new pickups) sound the same as your old sound (with your old pickups)? Spoiler alert: The answer is 'YES'. And you probably wouldn't need to tweak much of anything. So here's the bigger question: If you can make different pickups sound the same simply by changing EQ and/or boost settings on your pedals and/or amp, do pickups really matter?
I watched this 2x. It is the best verbalization of what I have been after for quite a while. This is why I have several different amps along with several speaker cabs. Different guitars into different amp/speaker combinations. I knew what I wanted and I knew what I liked and now I know why. Many thanks.
Maybe just change the Eq of the Amp, or buy a Eq pedal. Your Pickup lacking Mids ? Answer: Increase the Mids EQ of the Amp. Your Pickup lacking output? Answer increase pickup height or increase the gain of the Amp. Also some pickups have height adjustable pole pieces. Adjust Polepieces side to be brighter or bassier
Ok, ok, nothing to say regarding your points BUT I have to say something about that amazing tone you coaxed out of the LPs neck pickup and the Princeton... Sweet lord!!!!
Little mistake: at about 6:23 you play the Les Paul on the bridge pickup (according to the toggle switch position), the text on the screen says "neck pickup". Nevertheless, great video as always!
I gotta say, between my stock ceramic pickups and the seymore duncan Black Winters I replaced them with... there was a massive shift in tone profile. Way less flabby bottom end, way more bite. Not to mention, the SDs are dead silent. Dead silent. The stock pickups were slightly microphonic and the amp had way more noise.
Glenn has never argued against that. Shitty pickups will sound different than properly constructed pickups. What he says is that if you replace one quality pickup with another quality pickup, the difference doesn't justify the expense. Pickups aren't hugely different between each other, when properly built. There is no point in replacing your pickups if they already sound good, as you won't benefit from spending the money. Change out your speaker instead. It's a very complex fixed EQ, and they all have their own unique response.
@greevar There's a massive difference between a Seymour Duncan Nazgul and a vintage spec PAF. Also actives are definitely very different. Nothing does tight percussive chugging quite like an EMG 81. He's full of crap.
@@Patrick-857 unless you can actually back this up with something more than "I think so" the argument you are making is not valid. Because it doesn't matter what you "think", what matters is what it "is". And to be honest, dude is destroying 99,9% claims like that by just providing the testing while people like you don't provide anything. This is the main difference.
@themeanmachine84 Did you check out the channel I mentioned? Best resource for choosing pickups online. I have 20 years of experience with this stuff, and pickups matter. It's probably the best upgrade to a guitar after giving it a good setup and fret job. I've had enough experience with cheap low wind PAF style pickups often found in import Fenders and the like to know there's no way to make these things do the high gain metal thing well. You can get close, by using too much gain, amplifying a bunch of noise ect, but even with a lot of pre EQ to boost mids and tighten it up, they still sound weak and that jangle still pokes through, bit then they can't compete with single coils for cleans. I get better chugs from P90s than those Korean made PAF copies. On the other end of the scale, I swapped out some Fender Japan Dragster pickups, extremely low wind PAF style pickups, for EMGs. The difference was radical. Even at much lower gain these things have so much more punch to them. They sound smooth, pinch harmonics and single note runs just jump out, they're not mushy or muddy, and you can hear every note even with a ton of gain. There's a reason they're on so many rock and metal records. And the best part? No noise. If you try to EQ one of the pickups I mentioned to sound like that you'll fail. It's not possible. Even if you get close, EQs add noise and other undesirable effects. Glenn is supposed to be an engineer right? So why is he promoting a "fix it in the mix" attitude? Every good engineer knows to get the best sound possible at the source. This especially matters with high gain guitar. If you have a weak signal from your pickups you need more gain to compensate, which means more noise. If the EQ curve is not ideal for the tone you're trying to get before distortion, you need to use a tubescreamer or an EQ pedal before the amp, adding noise. All to get something that's not as good as what the right pickup can do on it's own with much lower gain. EQ shouldn't be used to fix issues that are better fixed by getting it right at the source. Pickups are tools, like everything else, and it matters that you use the right tool for the job. Personally I don't see why anyone playing heavy stuff would bother with anything other than an EMG 81 or maybe an 85 in the bridge for something a little more rowdy. But that's a taste thing. Lots of players prefer passives because they don't sound as smooth and precise apparently, even though that's the sound everyone is trying to get with amp sims.
@themeanmachine84 Also I've been watching Glenn since the very beginning. He's not the most credible person. He's a nice enough guy, he does know a lot, but I remember when he was dunking on amp sims, until amp sim companies paid him money to promote them, and suddenly he was all about amp sims. He also does a lot of things that are in poor taste. Smashing up the Line 6 Spyder for example. Not cool, most beginner players can't afford a 5150. The Spyder was a wonderful beginner amp, and in the right hands can be used to get some pretty good tones. Same with what he mockingly called the "red bean". The original POD was used by some pretty reputable session players back in the day, and actually ended up being used on quite a few albums. The whole Thall genre pretty much revolves around the "Big Bottom" preset on the POD. He's totally wrong about pickups. I think they are of equal importance to the amp. Of course everyone knows speakers have the largest effect, but no speaker cabinet, no EQ, no amp, in the world can make the pickups on a Squire Bullet Strat sound right for modern metal. You can get close enough to fool people who aren't familiar with this music maybe, but it's not going to sound good. I know this, because that's where I started.
Good ol' Glen is right for his audience. They are all about very high gain. High gain pushes out the uneven harmonics as loud as the even order. With low to medium gain PU's and indeed low to medium gain you get a very rich tone from even order harmonics and especially the first harmonic. The first harmonic is to our ear a near octave up effect. It is what made those old wooden 30's radio's sound so pleasing and rich. Great video Dylan. More please :-)
A class D solid state amp will produce odd order harmonics as the gain increases. A class A tube amplifier will produce even order harmonics. It is imprtant to know the difference because "distortion" is actually harmonics and overtones.
He's not even THAT right for his audience. How many metal players do you know of that play exclusively high gain? That never go down to mid gain or clean? His latest review on the HB Headless was sonically USELESS because he only played high gain tones, which by his own admission doesn't really tell you anything. If you're only going to review high gain tones from guitars, you're basically giving a binary review on whether the EQ is sane and how good or bad the noise is. He's right that the speaker in general matters the MOST as it's the primary EQ in a chain that is after all the distortion.
I see it as kind of like roasting coffee beans. Past the full-city or double crack roast when you get to vienna or french roast, the variety, region and other characteristics of the bean don't matter as much any more. They all converge on the same flavor the darker you go. Fricker's not wrong -- he's just (and he's very clear about this) speaking to a particular segment of the market. High gain sound.
Even with high gain, the pickup tone matters. My first 7 string was a shitter Ibanez and there’s a clear difference between the pickups in it versus the pickups in my Jason Richardson 7 string.
Beautiful analogy....because folks are often ignorant and they love that triple cracked lol...burned as hell Gawwwwd awwful coffee and wouldn't know or even like a good light roasted bean if their Starbucks gift certificate depended on it. Huey Lewis said it best: " Went downtown to see my cousin, plays guitar; sounds like a chainsaw buzzin'" Sometimes bad IS bad.
@@thisguy2973 The choice of your OD pedal, settings and amp settings should be able to nullify most differences in actual tone or gain. Like clearly there is a difference between a 7k PAF and a 17K ceramic, especially when you plug em straight into the amp. But if you work from the other end, the tone you actually want to hear, most pickups should get you where you want to be if you know how to work your stuff. There also isn't any noticeable difference between your $15 overwound alnico 5 chinese pickup and an actual JB. Glenn's target audience is clearly not seasoned veterans who are scientifically testing their stuff. It's the poor shmucks who pick up their first $300 guitar, sound like shit (because they don't know how to set their amp), and then get recommended $250 pickups on a forum, that probably aren't all that different to what they already have. Turns out 50s era consumer technology consisting of wire wound around a magnet can be replicated pretty accurately in china nowadays. As always with any type of audio gear, people who haven't tested anything and have no idea of the physical processes talk out of their asses with authority the loudest. It's similar to the whole tube snobbery scene. Your 5150 will not sound "warmer" and "tame the fizzy high end" if you swap your stock sovteks with unobtainable NOS mullards. But obviously putting a 12AY7 in V1 is going to have a large impact. When we say "tubes don't matter", we're referring to the former, not the latter. If you are actually able to form a valid counterargument on a technical basis, you are probably not in the target audience anymore
I saw Glenn Fricker's video, and agree the different pickups in that context were mostly inconsequential. In the age of Modelers, digital EQ, and the surgical precision of tone shaping, Pickup designs seem less relevant in general to me.
It still matters. Can't EQ in what wasn't there in the first place. Also output matters a lot. Yes you can boost low output pickups, but the results are different and you'll get more noise than with a high output pickup. But then your high output pickup will suck for clean tones and again you won't be able to fix it fully with EQ and rolling off volume. The best of both worlds is actives, but they have their own thing. Glenn is confidently incorrect about a few things. I mean really, he claims to know high gain tone. Well let me see him getting a vintage spec PAF to chug like an EMG 81 can. I'll wait....
Great well laid out video, great point at the end. The thing people miss about tone and pickup comparison is that it’s all done in solo. That’s great if you’re just playing at home by yourself but once you step into recording with other instruments, everything changes completely. Instead of sounding great by themselves, guitars must now fit into a mix and your amazing solo’ed sound is now buried and muddy underneath the assault of frequencies competing with it. I feel we should also be considering this when choosing how we shape our tones as players.
Hey Dylan, as usual you give a really clear demo and a concise explanation about why we get the sounds we hear. I have found exactly what you demoed here in my home set up. This has helped me understand what;s going on. My clean amp is Fender Champion 50XL with a Jensen Neo 80 speaker upgrade on Deluxe Reverb mode, and the other an Eganater Tweaker (15 watt 6V6 Tube amp) on the edge of break up. Then when I want more gain I use different pedals into both amps. The Pedals for this are the Soul Food for Boost and/or Overdrive, a current MXR Distortion+ and a Tonebender Mk1 style Fuzz. (I don't dial in Metal type High Gain) My Player Tele, my Classic Vibe Jaguar and Starcaster sound completely different through each of my set ups. I use the Jag and the Tonebender through the Egnater and the Tele through the Fender. The CV Starcaster is a relatively new so it's sonically a work in progress. Cheers
As a pickup user for a few decades, other aspects of the signal chain have more impact on tone. As long as the pickups have clarity and sufficient signal, unless you want something hotter or less powerful, why change pickups? I have inexpensive guitars with OEM pickups, I have expensive guitars with high end pickups, no reason to change any of the pickups. When I got my first inexpensive guitar, I planned to make it a project guitar, starting with pickups, changing the controls, adding coil split, etc.; I even purchased the replacement pickups; but after playing the guitar for a few weeks I decided there's no need. Minor adjustments in my tube amp and/or effects controls and the guitar sounded good, and as good as my high end guitars with Duncans, DiMarzios and EMGs. It's your money, buy what you want. Speakers, cabs, amps, and any effects, cables, wireless, etc. will make a bigger difference in your tone than replacing pickups that already have clarity and usable signal strength, unless you want something hotter or less powerful. Of course, spending time practicing instead of spending the time it takes to select, buy and install pickups will do even more to improve your tone. IMO
Agreed. It's amazing what a different overdrive / dirtbox / EQ can do for a guitar's and pickup's sound. And most guitarists have at least one of those in their arsenal.
good advice and great explanation on how signal chain goes . . .. and I saw GLenn's video, and you guys are both right in what perspectives / end results you are after.
Just noticed that the other day with my new humbucker equipped Telecaster Deluxe Pro II, vs my Reverend Eastsider S. The Eastsiders Tele Style Single Coil Bridge Pickup was noticeably louder than the Telecaster Deluxe's Humbucker. I thought that there might have been a connection issue with my rig, but it was how the Telecaster Deluxe's Humbucker was compressing.
Same - immediately thought of Dylan so it's great to watch this video which is a considered and intelligent response. I guess not all of us want that Norwegian church-burning guitar sound lol 😂
Exactly. Good solution for a lead/solo sound is putting an eq pedal in the amps fx loop. You just have to boost the mids a little. Level can stay the same.
I have an old Jackson Kelly. It had the Jackson branded pickups in it and I was convinced it would sound even better with a Duncan JB in the bridge. The guitar sounded the same afterward. Apparently the Jackson pickup was designed to sound like a JB anyway. This was a swap I regretted since I already liked the sound of the guitar as it was. I also swapped a JB in an old ESP V and it made the guitar sound a lot better since the stock pickups were not great. I hated my EMG guitars at first until I learned how to EQ around them and now I feel like they are just as good as my go to JB/59 combo I normally used.
I like the sound of the Fiore pickups much more than the SS. They have a lot more of that scooped mid sparkly treble vintage Strat tone that I love so much from a Strat neck pickup.
I have several guitars with different pickup configurations and I noticed if I use the same patch with those different guitars, they don't respond the same way. Some of the lower K ohm humbuckers lose their clarity at higher gain settings. They lack any note definition. That's my take on this...
It’s not all about the sound what I miss in these explanations en discussions en Yell Outs is that they can feel different when playing even if that’s 5% or less that feel can make a difference for sure. Great video and Explanation and nice and relax!
In clean tones you do get more variation between pickup to pickup if they are of the same type, single to single, p90 to p90, humbucker to humbucker but that starts to narrow down as you bring in distortion and high gain at which point you only get a noticeable difference depending on the output/hotness of that pickup which make it more or less suitable for that kind of sound. The thrash/black/death metal or djent player won't benefit as much from pickups as they do from the amplifier and speakers, which was Glenn's argument.
At the 6:27 mark I noticed something wrong. Either your poker chip switch is installed upside down or the description was incorrect. Down position is not the neck pickup on any Les Paul I ever played.
Yes, at last someone with reason. People who believe that pickups don't matter get carried away too much with just listening to the pickups in the mix full of other instruments. When you actually play them you hear and feel the difference at the same time which makes them even more different from each other. How a pickup response feels when you play it, adds to the whole experience. Same with tonewood, when you actually play the guitar you feel the difference as well as hear it. I recently tested two strats made of different woods but same pickups, big difference in sound and response. Another trap these people fall into is that, they make blind sound tests as if they matter at all. What matters is how it feels when you play the different guitars (response + sound), not whether you'd be able to tell which guitar is which in a blind sound test. That's totally useless. As long as you can tell a difference in sound in those blind tests, that's enough to prove that they'll feel way more different when you play them. You don't need to know which one is which. That's only good as a guess game and nothing more.
The differences with high gain can be pretty slight compared clean tones but certain pickups have been designed for high gain and they definitely have a sound that’s different
@@damienalvarez2957 On most amps (the mesa mark series being the only exception, really) the tone stack is after the preamp. So if you are not talking about pure power tube distortion, turning the bass down does not influence the distortion character at all (pay if you get mushy distortion from bassy pickups). You tame the bass in the boost pedal. 80% of what OD pedals do in front of high gain amps is just cutting bass to make it tighter.
While I agree with Glen that if you're going to distort the shit out of a signal, then yeah pickups don't matter. On clean to overdriven tones it's going to make some difference depending on how the pickup is made and materials. However if you're trying to get a PAF sound for example, then most manufacturers are going to sound pretty similar (whether that be Seymour Duncan, Dimarzio, Tonerider blah blah blah). They're all going to use similar (if not the same) magnet types, wire gauge, amount of turns etc. BTW I did suggest Glen might want to contact you Dylan for a better explanation of why pickups matter than just "I don't hear a difference so don't waste your money".
You are spot on with the points you bring up. Knowing how to dial in the guitar, using volume and tone properly and dialing in your amplifier is very important. With so many digital modeling amps out there today I think a lot of the nuance of pick ups is being lost in the mix.
Thank you. Glenn will never agree but I definitely hear differences in pickups. Even in the demo that he did. He also lumped a P90 in with the humbuckers. I had a Les Paul and a Dean LP shaped guitar with reasonable humbuckers. The Gibson sounded way richer than the Dean. The Dean played way better and looked way nicer but the pickups in that Gibson were rich and creamy.
Lol you didn’t hear a difference you are just happy this guy made a video to counter Glenn’s because you spent money on your boomer ass Gibson guitar and have to justify that it’s a good guitar
Yeah but, nothing really matters other than the speakers at full volume high gain....most people know that without even testing and even that is debatable (if speakers even matter)
@Cougar139tweak Your high gain tone will suck with the wrong pedal and boosting and EQing is a band aid. Glenn is supposedly an engineer, and I disagree with his position. I prefer the Joe Barassi philosophy of getting the sound as good as possible as early in the chain as possible. There's a reason 80s players began demanding custom rewinds of PAFs before aftermarket pickups really took off, and a reason why EMGs absolutely took over in the 80s and 90s. Also why all the cool kids are using Fishman Fluances now. I recently bought a beautiful HSS MIJ strat, probably the nicest guitar I've ever owned. But for one thing, the pickups. They are super low wind vintage spec pickups. Cleans are great, apart from the singles having the vintage stagger, which causes my G string to stick out like dogs balls. The problem is no amount of boost or EQ can make them do the high gain sounds I want, which seems a waste considering it's got a nice Gotoh locking trem and a humbucker in the bridge. It only does clean and edge of breakup well, and it's very bright. So I'm changing the pickups. I have owned many guitars and have a huge variety of gear, and nothing can get it to really do the the thing I want. This is coming from someone who uses oddball pickups too. They're nice pickups actually, but wrong for an 80s style shred guitar.
IMO any aftermarket pickup just gonna have different colors, the thing that matter the most is the quality of materials and construction. Cheap pickups sound bad because they use the cheapest material possible, but after you got any known brand medium output pickups with great "definition" (which is the most important thing in a pickup for me) you can color that sound with anything after in the signal chain.
Once we're in the high-gain regime, things begin to sound somewhat or entirely homogenized. Subtlety and nuance are banished and distortion, volume and sustain rule. For a while now, I have preferred clean to slightly crunchy sounds best. Oh, I was once of the high-gain crowd and my amps and guitars reflected this. However, I have come to appreciate all of that that banished subtlety and nuance. I rejected many very good guitars and amps that were not high-gain enough producing and very much regret that I did so. Live and let live.
So instead of swapping pickups, get a 10-band EQ pedal and a booster (this if needed) you have every pickup in one :) The DI signal from the pickup is just an EQ curve with a set output mainly controllable at the amp's or audio interface's input. The guitars you demoed here all have different pickup placements, outputs, base output EQ curves etc. Ofc they will sound different when played through the same amp settings... that's why EQ and signal strength matter more than swapping pickups.
he said that Pick ups don't matter as much as people think it does in the total tone/sounds coming out of the total signal chain.. in certain circumstances... like in High gain distortion tones.. you can adjust the amp for different tone/sound coming out of the amp through it's speakers. the whole rig matters more than any single part of it.. I can make my tiny Blackstar ID Core stereo 40 sound really big or small depending how I adjust the controls on the amp as well as the guitar I plug into it.. a really extremely upgraded and modded Strat with it's 3 quad rail/coil humms and 6 pots .loaded into the custom made extended brushed stainless steel pick guard with the 6 pots all are audio taper 500K ohm .One each volume and tone with coil splits and the tone bridge tone pot also a P/P to activate the bridge and neck P/Ups together at any time.. to get uncounted tone variations add it to the variety available in the amp as well I have told you of all this before but I still like to Brage of my build anyway as it was my very first and I got what I wanted.. I finally finished the "Stellarcaster" named and made it myself and it works the way i designed it to and sounds better that I thought it would. a cool looking and great sounding unique guitar to begin my guitar making journey through literally building my collection myself. more to come.. n the Tele bridge P/Up you gave me in going into a vintage style "Esquire" (Tele) I will build especially for it and using non traditional materials to make the body and a bought neck.. i don't trust my skills making a good enough neck just yet.. wish me luck.
Great video and beautiful explanation of how hot and low output pickups drive amps. I really like lower output pickups for most guitar applications. And for bass I really like slightly lower output Jazz bass pickups but slightly higher output P-bass pickups. So quick synopsis: For 99% of situations pickups matter, but for that Swedish chainsaw sound not so much. Love your channel, and Glenn's too. You two should do a live q&a together. That would be interesting.
Even if I was playing death metal.. most pickups are going to suck in studio and live. Why? because they are noisy as hell when not playing..so an active EMG or similar pickups with a preamp and active circuit.. is normally a favorite among metal players.. so yes this glen guy is just some fat turd making divisive bullshit videos for clicks like the rest of yt. He isn't out here producing Defeated Sanity's albums no hes just a neckbeard troll.
I agree with your thoughts on clean setting of pickups. My thoughts on his gain, metal type distortion is that the tone is distorted so much that any guitar begins to sound begins to become a one note rhythm instrument, and the notes or chords being played are barely audible. This is the main reason I don’t like metal. hard rock, acid rock, the precusers to this phenomenon, are still musical and their tone is still audible. Now this is not the problem across the board. This is not the case with Bands like Metallica or AC/DC to name a couple. They use plenty of distortion but stop short of destroying their tone. These bands are among this old guys favorites.
As somebody who has replaced low quality stock pickups that were microphonic, with higher quality pickups that have an amazing signal to noise ratio-- high quality pickups are better than cheap pickups. Are they hundreds of dollars better? That's up to you.
I can only tell what I experienced by myself and I had the impression that even with distortion there can be a huge difference. My first guitar was a B.C. Rick Warlock. A cheap Taiwan one and the pickups sound dull with not many mids. Later I changed them to EMG 81 which hit hard on the heights and distortion but I didn´t like the sound. An average Ibanez with standard sounds way better and well-rounded. Currently, I play an Ibanez Bariton that sounds quite good but I question if a Seymour Duncan Invader or Nasgul may improve it. Especially because I play tuned down to C and I guess the average Pickup isn't made for those deep frequenzes
I took Glenn's video as not so much that pickups are all the same, I did notice subtle differences, but were the tones of expensive pickups worth the added several hundred dollar expense. I get that some cheap pickups are awful, and people have their preferences over pickups they've used and liked and why change if you do? But if they don't sound better (subjective) just different, then I don't see the point of paying $300 when under $100 will do. Great video, BTW!
I can appreciate this video response very much. My take on Glenn's essential point is not that there are not different frequency responses between pickups or pickup models, but that the frequency response of the speakers as perhaps the most significant "filter" in the audio chain, dwarfs any pickup nuance (not to mention so do effects and type of amplification). If one is behind a curtain with an LP equipped with a bridge (Gibson) '57 classic and then swaps for a Burstbucker and then a 498 for example, and all other things in the signal chain staying static, it would be almost impossible for anyone to know which pickup is being played; unless one is already familiar with any uniqueness each provides. Maybe said a better way, CHANGING aspects of the signal chain could make any of them sound like the others...hence the claim that they basically don't warrant the focus we place on them.
Glen talks about how it sounds in a MIX, not the sound you hear. Mic placement, speakers, and post production shape the tone more than the pickup. Can you name two song where you can tell different pickups are used? hot rails vs lace sensor or dirty fingers vs 59s. I know i can only tell a difference between single vs humbucker but even then it can be nearly impossible, never mind what style of pickup was used.
very good info. got to play my TTG thinline I built last year with your tele bridge and centerpunch for the first time through a PA and yep those mids push through. Thanks so much!
hope you can do a comparison that normalize volumes before going into the amp low output PUs will be louder and noisier than high output PUs (assume that low output PUs are typically brighter) because low output PUs have more higher base frequency that will mix with harmonies from the amp
Glenn says in his own way that if you look at your gear from above, as you say, the component in which will make less tonal difference (except maybe guitar material) are the pickups. My claim is that if you did tweak your amp’s settings and gain, you could have made most of them sound closely similar, even in clean and even on the edge of breakage. What I saw in this video are minor tonal shifts, mostly but not entirely by gain differences of pickups and tonal characteristics of other electric components in each guitar. Those tonal differences will probably be lost in the mix and/or in the conversion to modern digital media file. Does that justifies spending hundreds of dollars on new pickups? For me it doesn’t… if anything it’s a headache cause now i have to tweak all my amp settings to match the new pickups.
You can do pretty much all of the frequency manipulation with an eq pedal and output differences with the output and gain on something like an mxr 10- band. Not to say aftermarket pickups aren't ever worth it, but for most people, they could get the sound they want with an eq pedal and pickup height adjustment or at least get a better idea of what they want out of a pickup. (The obvious exception being certain pickups that lack clarity at every output, you're not polishing that turd with an eq)
@@bloomtikbloom9593 if you ever take look at a frequency analyzer you will see that most notes hit the full spectrum of the eq, just parts that are not overtones of the fundamental will be inherently lower as well as the beginning and end of the note. Boosting frequency 100% works, and you've clearly never used an eq, let alone a large 10 band plus. If you play a single note and move every slider on a 10 band, each band affects every note. When you play a note on the guitar you are not just hearing the fundamental. Edit: Before something stupid is said, I'm obviously not talking about the 24th fret and open low E. Your highest and lowest notes will trail before they hit the other end of the spectrum. But that's inherent to the note being played, not your pickups.
0:08 What he said was, "when you are playing high gain metal stuff, none of that sh*t matters...AT ALL!!!" What he didn't say was that there is absolutely no difference in pickups or tonewoods or tubes and how they shape a guitar players sound. He was relating it SPECIFICALLY to modern, high gain metal.
Hi Dylan!! There was one question. Some descriptions of stacked humbuckers state that the bottom coil is not involved into signal conditioning. Idea for research? 👁 🕵♂ 🧑🔧
I liked your explanations a lot and, I played many different pickups, I play high gain amps. When playing very fast riffs, you see it's the tight mid range you want. Yes they pretty much all sound the same but, when you get to play faster riffs than Fricker's video, some pickups are just not cut for the job.
Glenn says at the start of all of his pickup videos that he only cares about high gain tones, and that clean is completely different and larger differences do exist. He also says people can generally hear the difference between a single coil and a humbucker regardless of gain. Lastly, I'm pretty sure he gain-matches, because people usually mishear sonic differences when the 2 things are at different volumes, even if nothing else changes (no unintentional clipping of course). You briefly stated that for high gain you agree with him, but didn't include anything close to that in your examples. Most of this video has absolutely nothing to do with what Glenn was talking about in his videos about pickups. Still interesting though.
I ended trying it out when Glen came out with that video with gain and different distortions. My jackson pickups and emgs ended up sounding the same, except on low gains where they sounds somewhat different
Thank you. What people always seem to skip over in Glenn's video's is the fact that his advice is aimed at metal, and specifically recording metal. And he says so in every video, but they still miss this. Thanks for confirming his findings, and adding more nuance for other genres of music too.
Would be interesting to hear the higher gain pickups with the volume rolled down. I like a high output bridge pickup because then I don’t NEED an overdrive to get the level of gain I want. I can put one in line if I want to change the tone of the guitar to better match different songs. But I can always roll off some of the guitar’s output when I want to clean things up a bit, or just make a different sound. Yes, pickups make a difference, but I believe a lot of the difference can be made up for with the tone knob on the guitar, and tone controls on the amp.
the thing is NOT if there are any differences between single coil -P90 - humbucker - mini humbucker and jazz master pickups and so on. the thing is that if you got a (lets say) Strat with SSS pickups in it, no one will notice the difference in a full mix between those pickups and other after market pickups. if there are any differences they are so negligible that no one will notice them in the mix. actually, in the mix no one will notice if you played MIM fender or silver sky or MIA fender was the body made out of Ash or Poplar or Alder. so if you got 200$ and you want to spend it on your guitar tone you better invest on speaker or EQ pedal or good compressor or other guitar pedals or IR or Power Supply before you consider replacing your pickups. or save for a good mic. it is true to humbuckers as well though the over wound ones do hit the amp pre-amp harder and are (in most cases) compressed and less bright. but it is not a deal breaker and you can make over wound humbucker sound great even in cleans. they will not sound like a single coil pickups and they do not should sound like it. if you are into the single coil sound buy a guitar with true single coil (not humbucker with push pull - this doesn't work most of the time, it is just a gimmick.). if you are into P.A.F buy a guitar with P.A.F. style humbuckers and you would not need after market pickups.
i took a mim strat pickup the type that has steel slugs and two bar magnets one on each side and i pressed out the slugs and then i removed the alnico2 pole peaces out of a dead 50s era grey bottom and the pressed right in the holes witch i was surprised fit rather well..wen i put the pickup back into the guitar i was blown away how much better they sounded! its much bigger sounding and it can keep up with volume wise with the sd sh6 humbucker in the bridge...so i guess my question is what is the magic behind this and why dose it sound so much better? did i increase the output or did i change the electromagnetic field somehow? its amazing the difference it made!
This is an interesting video I know I'm a year late to the party. I was thinking of conducting my own experiment using four of my own guitars, all of which have different voicings. I haven't seen any comparison videos shooting out the voicings of pickups from manufacturers like Fishman, EMG, fender, etc. I'm running into a scenario personally with my schecter Keith Merrow 7 string mkIII. I like the guitar for higher gain tones, but I really find that it doesn't sound great in most clean or edge of breakup tones. I really have to work with the EQ and the volume level of the guitar itself to get anything acceptable.... In comparison I could plug in any other guitar I have on my rack and be far happier with those sounds. I'm wondering if there would be any benefit in changing the Fishman fluence open core classic, and installing something passive instead.
I have a lot of electric guitars and i never had a problem with the sound of the pickups. I have replaced a few but it was just a gamble and probably not better or worse and i play from clean to high gain
You just described how this whole music hardware industry survives. People not understanding that the signal chain is relative and malleable means they will focus on one part of it, change it based upon misinformation, and then result in needing to change the entire rest of the signal chain to compensate. Unless somebody pulls back and looks at the whole, they are forever doomed to stay on the treadmill of purchasing new shit.
I think it is important to understand that... The term 'high gain' means different things, to different people. When I think of high gain, i think of rich full sound, bristling with harmonics. Like the super modded Marshall sound. If you're just going to pin a 5150, or a Diezel... Yea, it makes very little difference, because you're compressing the shit out of it. All that nice rich harmonic stuff, is just squeezed out. You could literally take a Boss metal pedal, and shove it into the back end of a Fender Bassman... And you'd really be getting the same sound. Ola proved this recently. I've been saying this for years. But response matters MASSIVLY! I use a Bill Lawrence 500XL in the bridge, and.. That muted legato stuff just sings. It makes it easy to do. You end up dropping the amp gain too, because the pups are such high output. Which means less pre amp compression. Or a fuller, richer sound. I don't care how much a bit of gear is. The cheaper the better lol. The BL just works for how I play. I'm really digging the 5150 for rhythm sounds, and the red channel of the Bogner for lead, right now.
I think Glenn is 100% correct for the specific niche he works in - high gain metal - with the added caveat that his focus is for young/new artists to get the best value for their dollars to get the sound that they want in a recorded output. Will things like pickups make a difference? Sure. Is it worth the $$$ (you may not be able to afford) when perhaps a speaker change or mic placement change or different mic's get you to that sound? That's up to you. As he has said on multiple occasions - if you think a valve change or pickup change is all of a sudden going to completely transform your sound (in a high gain mix) - he has a bridge he'd like to sell you. I do agree with Dylan though, that the whole chain does contribute - and depending on what you are playing - the various elements will rise or fall in how important they are to the final sound. I do note the lack of mention of speakers though - whether analog and mic'd up or using digital and emulation - they really do influence the end sound as they are the thing that actually moves the air that you hear. For those saying that Glenn is outdated as the future is digital - I'm pretty sure the DI from an amp/emulated amp sounds like butts until you throw a cab/speakers onto the DAW. Then it becomes a factor of the IR that you use - and Glenn has shown that different IR's can really shift the output sound around - same as with an actual speaker. It's why there is the market for the IR's of well known cabinets/speaker combos so you can try and get that sound.
if you are using a metal zone with the dist all the way up mids all the way down it gets hard to tell one pickup from another. to me some pickups are more translucent than others. fender single coils are a good example vs a set of emg 81-85....the emg pickups have a sound of their own and it matters alot less what guitar you install them on.the single coil side the low output lends to sound cleaner and more accurately producing the sound of the vibrating string. so if you have a crap sounding guitar to start out with the emg are the way to go.
I don’t understand why pickups are such a huge topic today…in the old days, the artists just made music with the pickups that came in the guitars that were available to them…and we love that music…but today apparently the pickups that come stock in guitars are not good enough to make music…so you can see why I’m confused 😳
His is advice for a VERY select audience, I think. I play metal but like (because everyone is familiar) Metallica, I often add diversity in the middle or beginning of songs. I've never played a full session on full distortion. I know some do but I'd say *most want the option available, at the very least.
Gear and how you combine it, matters. That's why i don't like humbuckers with Marshalls or lower output single coils with blackface Fenders, pickups need to be balanced with the amp to sound in the right spot, and by example, Strats with a blackface Fender have a terrible problem with sitting in the mix and also, they sound too harsh, they need a much more mid forward amp, like a tweed or a brownface, while a humbucker will end up sounding like pure mud with a very mid forward amp, i like to have some sparkle to give humbuckers some nice definition and that's why i think that a blackface Fender and a humbucker equipped guitar is the perfect marriage.
I’d like to see a comparison where you somehow equalize volume. Volume difference do funky things to our ears and it would be nice to get that out of the equation.
The way I deal with this issue is matching certain guitars with certain amplifiers. I have a few great guitars that sound absolutely like garbage in a few different amps I have. But nobody will tell you this when starting out. I was a young guy and had moved from Ohio to Smyrna Georgia, and was making payments on gear trying to find the tone in my head and all these salesmen that were my buddies , just kept selling me more gear. Never telling me even when I asked about this topic.
The thing about Glen's video for me is all the pickups he compared are some degree of quality. But muddy pickups from certain cheap guitars are almost unusable imo. That's the real reason to change your pickups, and you don't need to get the best or most expensive to have better tone.
I use single coils to make modern metal, pick up sort of matter , but if you know enough, they dont as things be "adapted"and compensated by applying that knowledge i.e. "Single coils ? bro TRUST me you will never hit a pre amp as hard as an EMG with single coils" "I use an OD that adds up to 20 Db from unity, I can get several times louder than an EMG hitting a preamp, next broski myth please?" "but Bro Noise?" "sorry did you just say noise gate?" Honestly I find pick out put less important than the general EQ curve of the pick up itself, Tele pick ups work much better than Strat pick ups for modern metal, because the strat pick ups have much less mids, same with P90's they have far more mids than Strats so work much better for Modern High gain, which unlike many think is really mid heavy and not scooped like Metal was in the 80's
I was thinking that when I watched his video. With heavy distortion it does sound pretty much the same. I was waiting to see if he would do it clean and or overdriven breakup.
Also, the MAJOR thing you have to realize with Glenn is...he is a METAL channel. He says flat out he is ONLY talking about high gain METAL tones and that, yes, in cleans or even some lower gain situations there is a difference. His "test" was only referring to high gain metal.
Lol ya all pickups sound the same with enough gain in the same way all women look the same with enough grease on your glasses 😂 didn’t you see how high gain just clips your signal.. so ya.. all pick up sound the same if you clip enough of the signal🫠
A while back I commented to Glenn that some pickups had more harmonic content to them. He answered, "What's harmonic content? " That said, I like both of you, both of your channels and appreciate both of your sets of knowledge.
Someone is going to make a Harmonic Content pedal. Chock full of … It will actually just be a clean boost. I’ve seen several demos where the unicorn pedal of the week is engaged. The volume goes up, see, it sounds better.
He asked you what it was because allot of people just repeat what they've heard and he wants to see if people can actually explain their argument to him. Same thing when people say something sounds "compressed" he says he's asked several times and they just look at him blankly so I think he just does that to see if people actually know what they're talking about.
@@richardmorris363 musical notes are made up of harmonic content. Overtones, some emphasized more than others create what we call tone. Harmonic content is what tone consists of. Okay?
When it comes to tone pickups just alter the circuit, I don't know how many times it has to be said. If you don't have a actual signal issue as in the sensitivity of the pickups, you can recreate the EXACT SAME TONE by altering the signal ANYWHERE in the signal chain. Meaning, PICKUPS ONLY MATTER FOR PICKING UP THE SIGNAL. Now with that said, yes they can change tone the same way a eq can. But a majority of the tone comes from the AMP, whats in the signal after the guitar and Speakers. I've proven this to a few friends and they've sent back 200-300 dollar pickups. Don't waste your money on expensive pickups they are cheap to manufacture.
Man I really enjoyed that Fender sound (coming from a metal guy). My 2 cents on this, pickup's matter, but not as much as the companies want you to believe.
While I understood his point about Speakers, Cabinets, and Mic placement, I didn't appreciate the way he went about it. I was legitimately expecting to listen to the differences in the pickups, and he pulled some shenanigans on us with the mics and cabinets. As a guitarist (and not a studio engineer) I like hearing the differences in pickups, even at high gain. Now, in the context of a mix, it probably doesn't matter that much, which I believe is Glenn's point, but to the player it does matter at least somewhat. Hopefully though, by the time you get to the studio to record that metal album, you've got that situation sorted and it's the least of your problems.
@@DylanTalksTone So you can take a snapshot, look at them and compare. You can't hear them all at the same time but you can look at a graphic representation of them all at once and see the differences. Let's bust the myths and get to the science of it.
If you have to work that hard to tell the difference between two things… how much is there really ? And why not let those two things exist to be different
Great breakdown and explanation. Interesting that the hottest was the quietest. The old school reason for wanting hotter pickups is they hit the front end of the amp harder. More distortion and sustain.
Agrred, I put a Seymour Duncan Invader in the Bridge of Gibson sg , I think that the Invader is a misunderstood pickup I really drives the front end of a tube amp but when you back the volume down it cleans up nicer than people think.
@@rickycompton2610 I have an invader. I actually like it. I currently don't have it on any of my guitars but have in the past and liked it. . another great option is to have a series parallel switch. Parallel cleans it up for when brighter cleaner sounds are wanted.
To me when glen says all pickups sound the same, but dude using a heap of gain because he likes high gain is like going to a taste test. Dumping salt on all the food because you like salt. Than say all the food taste the same. If you really wanted to test, if pick ups make a difference, why would you use overdrive/distortion/ high gain. To me that is just disguising the data until they both sound the same
Thank you. This is educating people about pickups. I actually referenced your videos when talking to people on Glenn’s comments. What is interesting is guys with the best high gain tones actually know this stuff.
Thank you. Also....say what you want, but most guys I know or listen to with good high gain tones....they play one of the following: SD/Dimarzio/Fishman/EMG to name a few. So if you got the money, I always say, go for the name brand pickup. Unless your stock pickups are Kiesel Lithiums or sth 😅
Man, like you said totally different argument. You can hear subtle changes with softer music. Smash it with distortion and blast beats, and realistically it's not that obvious. I don't think he said there is no difference it's just that difference is imperceivable (99%) of the time in the mix. When you're playing, different story everyone has their preference and helps you play how you like to get the performance but in a mix... ? can you really tell? Maybe you can, but I'll guarantee you that most people won't know or hear anything.
I always preferred lower gain pickups because you can always layer more gain on top. Dylan, are you familiar with Evans noiseless pickups? Jeff Healey and SRV used them. They are my favorite noiseless pickups for Strats but hey are no longer in production. :-(
I watch Glen, but I play jazz…..with a metal-ish gain structure, …by backing off, playing really light, neck PU, which mellows the amp distortion. But doom or the metal Glenn produces in his studio, is a way narlier tone , his playing is also that way, at those levels PU differences becomes really negligible, except singlecoil vs humbucker. Play cleaner? the differences become more apparent, like the difference between coils in series, or coils in parallel, which is not talked about much, I find it to be far more useful than split coil, and have several guitars set up that way. Talk about that sometime, could you? 🙂 I like super hot pickups, to drive the front of the amp,, not to be louder. Amp is a MB mark 5/25 I use Amp distortion and mucho compression as well. brings Smooth legato and hammer ons, long sustain, think Santana, because I mostly downpick (not that Carlos does) I’ll never be fast with my right hand, so my thing is sustain, bends trills hammer and pull, only in recent years did I begin to back and forth pick, and I don’t run scales, so progress is slow, on the other hand because I downpick octave and third double stops come pretty easy, down is the way…. Bridge? Mostly SD JB’s it gets trickier, to pick a PU for a guitar with a neck PU, bridge at 14-17 Ohms, (I rock out too!) much lower for a neck PU, 8ohms is super hot in that position, it’s too easy to end up with a muddy sound there, power can equal darkness of tone…..
I think he specifically talks about this stuff in a recording setting. I can tell a difference between pickups in the room, but once it's recorded, those differences are essentially gone.
Yeah, Glenn had at least one video where he just moved the positions of mics and the tone was different even with the same exact guitar, pickup, amp, etc. So many variables in tone, with so many different ways to get 'there', wherever your 'there' is.
I think he fails to emphasize that enough tho, and that can be confusing for anyone not enough in the know. For live playing (which is still a thing surprising as it may be, life doesn't just happen on screens) everything makes a difference! Glenn is so adamant about these things as if it's generally untrue that pickups make a difference, or as if the sound in the room isn't something pretty valid to care about!
@@george.vasilev.reyner1916 Makes sense. Basically, the sound starts with your hands and the pickups -- they're the first 'hardware' in the chain, and because of that, they're bound to make a big difference.
@@george.vasilev.reyner1916, not a Glenn fanboi here (though I do like the man), but I think he's pretty clear that he talks from the POV of a recording engineer. He says that if the pickups are quiet enough and powerful enough for your music choice, then what pickup you use doesn't matter cos everything else in the signal chain is going to make a bigger difference and the audio engineer is going to manipulate your sound in order to make it fit into the mix. In short: However you end up sounding in the recording does not depend on your pickups.
As for the sound in the room, yeah, the pickups are in the sound chain, but as long as they're above a minimum quality, your pedals, amp and speakers are going to matter so much more.
Try this thought experiment: You have your favourite pedal(s) and amp settings that give you the in-the-room sound you like with your favourite guitar and pickups. Now, you swap out the pickups for some that are similar in output and quality (but allegedly, according to marketing, sound really different). Here's the question: Do you think you could make some changes in your pedal(s) and amp settings that would make your new sound (with the new pickups) sound the same as your old sound (with your old pickups)?
Spoiler alert: The answer is 'YES'. And you probably wouldn't need to tweak much of anything.
So here's the bigger question: If you can make different pickups sound the same simply by changing EQ and/or boost settings on your pedals and/or amp, do pickups really matter?
@@george.vasilev.reyner1916well he has a chanel about recording so context should be obvious
I watched this 2x. It is the best verbalization of what I have been after for quite a while. This is why I have several different amps along with several speaker cabs. Different guitars into different amp/speaker combinations.
I knew what I wanted and I knew what I liked and now I know why. Many thanks.
some of it is garbled nonsense but he mentions 'compression', which that other fricken idiot doesnt.
I think most people that play at less than insane volume levels know, no one can decern much if their ears are bleeding.
Maybe just change the Eq of the Amp, or buy a Eq pedal. Your Pickup lacking Mids ? Answer: Increase the Mids EQ of the Amp. Your Pickup lacking output? Answer increase pickup height or increase the gain of the Amp. Also some pickups have height adjustable pole pieces. Adjust Polepieces side to be brighter or bassier
Ok, ok, nothing to say regarding your points BUT I have to say something about that amazing tone you coaxed out of the LPs neck pickup and the Princeton... Sweet lord!!!!
Little mistake: at about 6:23 you play the Les Paul on the bridge pickup (according to the toggle switch position), the text on the screen says "neck pickup".
Nevertheless, great video as always!
I gotta say, between my stock ceramic pickups and the seymore duncan Black Winters I replaced them with... there was a massive shift in tone profile. Way less flabby bottom end, way more bite.
Not to mention, the SDs are dead silent. Dead silent. The stock pickups were slightly microphonic and the amp had way more noise.
Glenn has never argued against that. Shitty pickups will sound different than properly constructed pickups. What he says is that if you replace one quality pickup with another quality pickup, the difference doesn't justify the expense. Pickups aren't hugely different between each other, when properly built. There is no point in replacing your pickups if they already sound good, as you won't benefit from spending the money. Change out your speaker instead. It's a very complex fixed EQ, and they all have their own unique response.
@greevar There's a massive difference between a Seymour Duncan Nazgul and a vintage spec PAF. Also actives are definitely very different. Nothing does tight percussive chugging quite like an EMG 81.
He's full of crap.
@@Patrick-857 unless you can actually back this up with something more than "I think so" the argument you are making is not valid. Because it doesn't matter what you "think", what matters is what it "is". And to be honest, dude is destroying 99,9% claims like that by just providing the testing while people like you don't provide anything. This is the main difference.
@themeanmachine84 Did you check out the channel I mentioned? Best resource for choosing pickups online.
I have 20 years of experience with this stuff, and pickups matter. It's probably the best upgrade to a guitar after giving it a good setup and fret job.
I've had enough experience with cheap low wind PAF style pickups often found in import Fenders and the like to know there's no way to make these things do the high gain metal thing well. You can get close, by using too much gain, amplifying a bunch of noise ect, but even with a lot of pre EQ to boost mids and tighten it up, they still sound weak and that jangle still pokes through, bit then they can't compete with single coils for cleans. I get better chugs from P90s than those Korean made PAF copies. On the other end of the scale, I swapped out some Fender Japan Dragster pickups, extremely low wind PAF style pickups, for EMGs. The difference was radical. Even at much lower gain these things have so much more punch to them. They sound smooth, pinch harmonics and single note runs just jump out, they're not mushy or muddy, and you can hear every note even with a ton of gain. There's a reason they're on so many rock and metal records.
And the best part? No noise. If you try to EQ one of the pickups I mentioned to sound like that you'll fail. It's not possible. Even if you get close, EQs add noise and other undesirable effects. Glenn is supposed to be an engineer right? So why is he promoting a "fix it in the mix" attitude? Every good engineer knows to get the best sound possible at the source. This especially matters with high gain guitar. If you have a weak signal from your pickups you need more gain to compensate, which means more noise. If the EQ curve is not ideal for the tone you're trying to get before distortion, you need to use a tubescreamer or an EQ pedal before the amp, adding noise. All to get something that's not as good as what the right pickup can do on it's own with much lower gain. EQ shouldn't be used to fix issues that are better fixed by getting it right at the source. Pickups are tools, like everything else, and it matters that you use the right tool for the job.
Personally I don't see why anyone playing heavy stuff would bother with anything other than an EMG 81 or maybe an 85 in the bridge for something a little more rowdy. But that's a taste thing. Lots of players prefer passives because they don't sound as smooth and precise apparently, even though that's the sound everyone is trying to get with amp sims.
@themeanmachine84 Also I've been watching Glenn since the very beginning. He's not the most credible person. He's a nice enough guy, he does know a lot, but I remember when he was dunking on amp sims, until amp sim companies paid him money to promote them, and suddenly he was all about amp sims. He also does a lot of things that are in poor taste. Smashing up the Line 6 Spyder for example. Not cool, most beginner players can't afford a 5150. The Spyder was a wonderful beginner amp, and in the right hands can be used to get some pretty good tones. Same with what he mockingly called the "red bean". The original POD was used by some pretty reputable session players back in the day, and actually ended up being used on quite a few albums. The whole Thall genre pretty much revolves around the "Big Bottom" preset on the POD.
He's totally wrong about pickups. I think they are of equal importance to the amp. Of course everyone knows speakers have the largest effect, but no speaker cabinet, no EQ, no amp, in the world can make the pickups on a Squire Bullet Strat sound right for modern metal. You can get close enough to fool people who aren't familiar with this music maybe, but it's not going to sound good. I know this, because that's where I started.
Good ol' Glen is right for his audience. They are all about very high gain. High gain pushes out the uneven harmonics as loud as the even order. With low to medium gain PU's and indeed low to medium gain you get a very rich tone from even order harmonics and especially the first harmonic. The first harmonic is to our ear a near octave up effect. It is what made those old wooden 30's radio's sound so pleasing and rich. Great video Dylan. More please :-)
Agreed
A class D solid state amp will produce odd order harmonics as the gain increases. A class A tube amplifier will produce even order harmonics. It is imprtant to know the difference because "distortion" is actually harmonics and overtones.
If I read the previous comments correctly, even order harmonics are supposed to be more pleasing?
@@davidshafer6388 Why do people talk about things they have really no clue about?
He's not even THAT right for his audience. How many metal players do you know of that play exclusively high gain? That never go down to mid gain or clean? His latest review on the HB Headless was sonically USELESS because he only played high gain tones, which by his own admission doesn't really tell you anything. If you're only going to review high gain tones from guitars, you're basically giving a binary review on whether the EQ is sane and how good or bad the noise is.
He's right that the speaker in general matters the MOST as it's the primary EQ in a chain that is after all the distortion.
I see it as kind of like roasting coffee beans. Past the full-city or double crack roast when you get to vienna or french roast, the variety, region and other characteristics of the bean don't matter as much any more. They all converge on the same flavor the darker you go. Fricker's not wrong -- he's just (and he's very clear about this) speaking to a particular segment of the market. High gain sound.
Even with high gain, the pickup tone matters. My first 7 string was a shitter Ibanez and there’s a clear difference between the pickups in it versus the pickups in my Jason Richardson 7 string.
Beautiful analogy....because folks are often ignorant and they love that triple cracked lol...burned as hell Gawwwwd awwful coffee and wouldn't know or even like a good light roasted bean if their Starbucks gift certificate depended on it.
Huey Lewis said it best:
" Went downtown to see my cousin, plays guitar; sounds like a chainsaw buzzin'"
Sometimes bad IS bad.
@@thisguy2973 The choice of your OD pedal, settings and amp settings should be able to nullify most differences in actual tone or gain. Like clearly there is a difference between a 7k PAF and a 17K ceramic, especially when you plug em straight into the amp. But if you work from the other end, the tone you actually want to hear, most pickups should get you where you want to be if you know how to work your stuff. There also isn't any noticeable difference between your $15 overwound alnico 5 chinese pickup and an actual JB.
Glenn's target audience is clearly not seasoned veterans who are scientifically testing their stuff. It's the poor shmucks who pick up their first $300 guitar, sound like shit (because they don't know how to set their amp), and then get recommended $250 pickups on a forum, that probably aren't all that different to what they already have. Turns out 50s era consumer technology consisting of wire wound around a magnet can be replicated pretty accurately in china nowadays.
As always with any type of audio gear, people who haven't tested anything and have no idea of the physical processes talk out of their asses with authority the loudest.
It's similar to the whole tube snobbery scene. Your 5150 will not sound "warmer" and "tame the fizzy high end" if you swap your stock sovteks with unobtainable NOS mullards. But obviously putting a 12AY7 in V1 is going to have a large impact. When we say "tubes don't matter", we're referring to the former, not the latter. If you are actually able to form a valid counterargument on a technical basis, you are probably not in the target audience anymore
@@MaGariShun Glen is just a fat troll who made a divisive video and now people are talking about quantum physics.
I saw Glenn Fricker's video, and agree the different pickups in that context were mostly inconsequential.
In the age of Modelers, digital EQ, and the surgical precision of tone shaping, Pickup designs seem less relevant in general to me.
this is always an interesting perspective to me because everyone builds tone differently.
It still matters. Can't EQ in what wasn't there in the first place. Also output matters a lot. Yes you can boost low output pickups, but the results are different and you'll get more noise than with a high output pickup. But then your high output pickup will suck for clean tones and again you won't be able to fix it fully with EQ and rolling off volume. The best of both worlds is actives, but they have their own thing.
Glenn is confidently incorrect about a few things.
I mean really, he claims to know high gain tone. Well let me see him getting a vintage spec PAF to chug like an EMG 81 can. I'll wait....
Great well laid out video, great point at the end. The thing people miss about tone and pickup comparison is that it’s all done in solo. That’s great if you’re just playing at home by yourself but once you step into recording with other instruments, everything changes completely. Instead of sounding great by themselves, guitars must now fit into a mix and your amazing solo’ed sound is now buried and muddy underneath the assault of frequencies competing with it. I feel we should also be considering this when choosing how we shape our tones as players.
Great video..also thanks for not screaming at us while explaining this
Hey Dylan, as usual you give a really clear demo and a concise explanation about why we get the sounds we hear.
I have found exactly what you demoed here in my home set up.
This has helped me understand what;s going on.
My clean amp is Fender Champion 50XL with a Jensen Neo 80 speaker upgrade on Deluxe Reverb mode, and the other an Eganater Tweaker (15 watt 6V6 Tube amp) on the edge of break up.
Then when I want more gain I use different pedals into both amps.
The Pedals for this are the Soul Food for Boost and/or Overdrive, a current MXR Distortion+ and a Tonebender Mk1 style Fuzz. (I don't dial in Metal type High Gain)
My Player Tele, my Classic Vibe Jaguar and Starcaster sound completely different through each of my set ups.
I use the Jag and the Tonebender through the Egnater and the Tele through the Fender.
The CV Starcaster is a relatively new so it's sonically a work in progress.
Cheers
As a pickup user for a few decades, other aspects of the signal chain have more impact on tone. As long as the pickups have clarity and sufficient signal, unless you want something hotter or less powerful, why change pickups?
I have inexpensive guitars with OEM pickups, I have expensive guitars with high end pickups, no reason to change any of the pickups.
When I got my first inexpensive guitar, I planned to make it a project guitar, starting with pickups, changing the controls, adding coil split, etc.; I even purchased the replacement pickups; but after playing the guitar for a few weeks I decided there's no need.
Minor adjustments in my tube amp and/or effects controls and the guitar sounded good, and as good as my high end guitars with Duncans, DiMarzios and EMGs.
It's your money, buy what you want.
Speakers, cabs, amps, and any effects, cables, wireless, etc. will make a bigger difference in your tone than replacing pickups that already have clarity and usable signal strength, unless you want something hotter or less powerful.
Of course, spending time practicing instead of spending the time it takes to select, buy and install pickups will do even more to improve your tone.
IMO
Agreed. It's amazing what a different overdrive / dirtbox / EQ can do for a guitar's and pickup's sound. And most guitarists have at least one of those in their arsenal.
good advice and great explanation on how signal chain goes . . .. and I saw GLenn's video, and you guys are both right in what perspectives / end results you are after.
A graphic equalizer in your signal chain can replicate almost all of the differences we are talking about. Speaker placement, types of pickups etc.
Just noticed that the other day with my new humbucker equipped Telecaster Deluxe Pro II, vs my Reverend Eastsider S. The Eastsiders Tele Style Single Coil Bridge Pickup was noticeably louder than the Telecaster Deluxe's Humbucker. I thought that there might have been a connection issue with my rig, but it was how the Telecaster Deluxe's Humbucker was compressing.
This is supposedly a response to Glenn's video, yet it seems like you didn't pay attention to 95% of it.
So true 😂
I wondered what you thought when i watched Glenn's video being a pickup builder. Thanks for the video.
Same - immediately thought of Dylan so it's great to watch this video which is a considered and intelligent response. I guess not all of us want that Norwegian church-burning guitar sound lol 😂
Mids! That’s where a guitar lives. Boost that level and you’re heard.
Dylan- your Silver Sky pickups sounded great!
Exactly. Good solution for a lead/solo sound is putting an eq pedal in the amps fx loop. You just have to boost the mids a little. Level can stay the same.
I have an old Jackson Kelly. It had the Jackson branded pickups in it and I was convinced it would sound even better with a Duncan JB in the bridge. The guitar sounded the same afterward. Apparently the Jackson pickup was designed to sound like a JB anyway. This was a swap I regretted since I already liked the sound of the guitar as it was. I also swapped a JB in an old ESP V and it made the guitar sound a lot better since the stock pickups were not great. I hated my EMG guitars at first until I learned how to EQ around them and now I feel like they are just as good as my go to JB/59 combo I normally used.
I like the sound of the Fiore pickups much more than the SS. They have a lot more of that scooped mid sparkly treble vintage Strat tone that I love so much from a Strat neck pickup.
I have several guitars with different pickup configurations and I noticed if I use the same patch with those different guitars, they don't respond the same way. Some of the lower K ohm humbuckers lose their clarity at higher gain settings. They lack any note definition. That's my take on this...
It’s not all about the sound what I miss in these explanations en discussions en Yell Outs is that they can feel different when playing even if that’s 5% or less that feel can make a difference for sure. Great video and Explanation and nice and relax!
In clean tones you do get more variation between pickup to pickup if they are of the same type, single to single, p90 to p90, humbucker to humbucker but that starts to narrow down as you bring in distortion and high gain at which point you only get a noticeable difference depending on the output/hotness of that pickup which make it more or less suitable for that kind of sound. The thrash/black/death metal or djent player won't benefit as much from pickups as they do from the amplifier and speakers, which was Glenn's argument.
At the 6:27 mark I noticed something wrong. Either your poker chip switch is installed upside down or the description was incorrect.
Down position is not the neck pickup on any Les Paul I ever played.
Yes, at last someone with reason. People who believe that pickups don't matter get carried away too much with just listening to the pickups in the mix full of other instruments. When you actually play them you hear and feel the difference at the same time which makes them even more different from each other. How a pickup response feels when you play it, adds to the whole experience. Same with tonewood, when you actually play the guitar you feel the difference as well as hear it. I recently tested two strats made of different woods but same pickups, big difference in sound and response. Another trap these people fall into is that, they make blind sound tests as if they matter at all. What matters is how it feels when you play the different guitars (response + sound), not whether you'd be able to tell which guitar is which in a blind sound test. That's totally useless. As long as you can tell a difference in sound in those blind tests, that's enough to prove that they'll feel way more different when you play them. You don't need to know which one is which. That's only good as a guess game and nothing more.
Lol tonewood
with you till tonewood lol
The differences with high gain can be pretty slight compared clean tones but certain pickups have been designed for high gain and they definitely have a sound that’s different
I feel like those pickups have rather unruly low end, which I’d argue could be simulated by turning up your bass dial on your amp.
@@damienalvarez2957 On most amps (the mesa mark series being the only exception, really) the tone stack is after the preamp. So if you are not talking about pure power tube distortion, turning the bass down does not influence the distortion character at all (pay if you get mushy distortion from bassy pickups). You tame the bass in the boost pedal. 80% of what OD pedals do in front of high gain amps is just cutting bass to make it tighter.
While I agree with Glen that if you're going to distort the shit out of a signal, then yeah pickups don't matter. On clean to overdriven tones it's going to make some difference depending on how the pickup is made and materials. However if you're trying to get a PAF sound for example, then most manufacturers are going to sound pretty similar (whether that be Seymour Duncan, Dimarzio, Tonerider blah blah blah). They're all going to use similar (if not the same) magnet types, wire gauge, amount of turns etc.
BTW I did suggest Glen might want to contact you Dylan for a better explanation of why pickups matter than just "I don't hear a difference so don't waste your money".
You are spot on with the points you bring up. Knowing how to dial in the guitar, using volume and tone properly and dialing in your amplifier is very important.
With so many digital modeling amps out there today I think a lot of the nuance of pick ups is being lost in the mix.
Thank you. Glenn will never agree but I definitely hear differences in pickups. Even in the demo that he did. He also lumped a P90 in with the humbuckers. I had a Les Paul and a Dean LP shaped guitar with reasonable humbuckers. The Gibson sounded way richer than the Dean. The Dean played way better and looked way nicer but the pickups in that Gibson were rich and creamy.
Lol you didn’t hear a difference you are just happy this guy made a video to counter Glenn’s because you spent money on your boomer ass Gibson guitar and have to justify that it’s a good guitar
Neat, your test agrees with what Glenn said. Different pickups will sound different when played clean. Now try them all in a dimed Plexi...
Actually Glenn is now saying that even when played clean they sound the same
Yeah but, nothing really matters other than the speakers at full volume high gain....most people know that without even testing
and even that is debatable (if speakers even matter)
@Cougar139tweak Your high gain tone will suck with the wrong pedal and boosting and EQing is a band aid.
Glenn is supposedly an engineer, and I disagree with his position. I prefer the Joe Barassi philosophy of getting the sound as good as possible as early in the chain as possible.
There's a reason 80s players began demanding custom rewinds of PAFs before aftermarket pickups really took off, and a reason why EMGs absolutely took over in the 80s and 90s. Also why all the cool kids are using Fishman Fluances now.
I recently bought a beautiful HSS MIJ strat, probably the nicest guitar I've ever owned. But for one thing, the pickups. They are super low wind vintage spec pickups. Cleans are great, apart from the singles having the vintage stagger, which causes my G string to stick out like dogs balls. The problem is no amount of boost or EQ can make them do the high gain sounds I want, which seems a waste considering it's got a nice Gotoh locking trem and a humbucker in the bridge. It only does clean and edge of breakup well, and it's very bright. So I'm changing the pickups. I have owned many guitars and have a huge variety of gear, and nothing can get it to really do the the thing I want.
This is coming from someone who uses oddball pickups too. They're nice pickups actually, but wrong for an 80s style shred guitar.
It matters. Pickups, pickup height, rig, speakers - it matters @@Cougar139tweak
It is the other side of what I've been saying: clean tones reveal the differences in pickups and guitars best.
IMO any aftermarket pickup just gonna have different colors, the thing that matter the most is the quality of materials and construction. Cheap pickups sound bad because they use the cheapest material possible, but after you got any known brand medium output pickups with great "definition" (which is the most important thing in a pickup for me) you can color that sound with anything after in the signal chain.
It would be cool if you guys got on a video call and talked about different guitar stuff.
Once we're in the high-gain regime, things begin to sound somewhat or entirely homogenized. Subtlety and nuance are banished and distortion, volume and sustain rule. For a while now, I have preferred clean to slightly crunchy sounds best. Oh, I was once of the high-gain crowd and my amps and guitars reflected this.
However, I have come to appreciate all of that that banished subtlety and nuance. I rejected many very good guitars and amps that were not high-gain enough producing and very much regret that I did so.
Live and let live.
So instead of swapping pickups, get a 10-band EQ pedal and a booster (this if needed) you have every pickup in one :)
The DI signal from the pickup is just an EQ curve with a set output mainly controllable at the amp's or audio interface's input.
The guitars you demoed here all have different pickup placements, outputs, base output EQ curves etc. Ofc they will sound different when played through the same amp settings... that's why EQ and signal strength matter more than swapping pickups.
he said that Pick ups don't matter as much as people think it does in the total tone/sounds coming out of the total signal chain.. in certain circumstances... like in High gain distortion tones.. you can adjust the amp for different tone/sound coming out of the amp through it's speakers. the whole rig matters more than any single part of it.. I can make my tiny Blackstar ID Core stereo 40 sound really big or small depending how I adjust the controls on the amp as well as the guitar I plug into it.. a really extremely upgraded and modded Strat with it's 3 quad rail/coil humms and 6 pots .loaded into the custom made extended brushed stainless steel pick guard with the 6 pots all are audio taper 500K ohm .One each volume and tone with coil splits and the tone bridge tone pot also a P/P to activate the bridge and neck P/Ups together at any time.. to get uncounted tone variations add it to the variety available in the amp as well I have told you of all this before but I still like to Brage of my build anyway as it was my very first and I got what I wanted.. I finally finished the "Stellarcaster" named and made it myself and it works the way i designed it to and sounds better that I thought it would. a cool looking and great sounding unique guitar to begin my guitar making journey through literally building my collection myself. more to come.. n the Tele bridge P/Up you gave me in going into a vintage style "Esquire" (Tele) I will build especially for it and using non traditional materials to make the body and a bought neck.. i don't trust my skills making a good enough neck just yet.. wish me luck.
Great video and beautiful explanation of how hot and low output pickups drive amps. I really like lower output pickups for most guitar applications. And for bass I really like slightly lower output Jazz bass pickups but slightly higher output P-bass pickups.
So quick synopsis: For 99% of situations pickups matter, but for that Swedish chainsaw sound not so much.
Love your channel, and Glenn's too. You two should do a live q&a together. That would be interesting.
Even if I was playing death metal.. most pickups are going to suck in studio and live. Why? because they are noisy as hell when not playing..so an active EMG or similar pickups with a preamp and active circuit.. is normally a favorite among metal players.. so yes this glen guy is just some fat turd making divisive bullshit videos for clicks like the rest of yt. He isn't out here producing Defeated Sanity's albums no hes just a neckbeard troll.
I agree with your thoughts on clean setting of pickups. My thoughts on his gain, metal type distortion is that the tone is distorted so much that any guitar begins to sound begins to become a one note rhythm instrument, and the notes or chords being played are barely audible. This is the main reason I don’t like metal. hard rock, acid rock, the precusers to this phenomenon, are still musical and their tone is still audible. Now this is not the problem across the board. This is not the case with Bands like Metallica or AC/DC to name a couple. They use plenty of distortion but stop short of destroying their tone. These bands are among this old guys favorites.
As somebody who has replaced low quality stock pickups that were microphonic, with higher quality pickups that have an amazing signal to noise ratio-- high quality pickups are better than cheap pickups. Are they hundreds of dollars better? That's up to you.
I can only tell what I experienced by myself and I had the impression that even with distortion there can be a huge difference. My first guitar was a B.C. Rick Warlock. A cheap Taiwan one and the pickups sound dull with not many mids. Later I changed them to EMG 81 which hit hard on the heights and distortion but I didn´t like the sound. An average Ibanez with standard sounds way better and well-rounded. Currently, I play an Ibanez Bariton that sounds quite good but I question if a Seymour Duncan Invader or Nasgul may improve it. Especially because I play tuned down to C and I guess the average Pickup isn't made for those deep frequenzes
I took Glenn's video as not so much that pickups are all the same, I did notice subtle differences, but were the tones of expensive pickups worth the added several hundred dollar expense. I get that some cheap pickups are awful, and people have their preferences over pickups they've used and liked and why change if you do? But if they don't sound better (subjective) just different, then I don't see the point of paying $300 when under $100 will do.
Great video, BTW!
I can appreciate this video response very much. My take on Glenn's essential point is not that there are not different frequency responses between pickups or pickup models, but that the frequency response of the speakers as perhaps the most significant "filter" in the audio chain, dwarfs any pickup nuance (not to mention so do effects and type of amplification). If one is behind a curtain with an LP equipped with a bridge (Gibson) '57 classic and then swaps for a Burstbucker and then a 498 for example, and all other things in the signal chain staying static, it would be almost impossible for anyone to know which pickup is being played; unless one is already familiar with any uniqueness each provides. Maybe said a better way, CHANGING aspects of the signal chain could make any of them sound like the others...hence the claim that they basically don't warrant the focus we place on them.
Speakers are also unable to be duplicated in post.
Glen talks about how it sounds in a MIX, not the sound you hear. Mic placement, speakers, and post production shape the tone more than the pickup. Can you name two song where you can tell different pickups are used? hot rails vs lace sensor or dirty fingers vs 59s. I know i can only tell a difference between single vs humbucker but even then it can be nearly impossible, never mind what style of pickup was used.
very good info. got to play my TTG thinline I built last year with your tele bridge and centerpunch for the first time through a PA and yep those mids push through. Thanks so much!
Did you flip the switch on your LP? The clip said it was in the neck position, but the switch is in the bridge position.
hope you can do a comparison that normalize volumes before going into the amp
low output PUs will be louder and noisier than high output PUs (assume that low output PUs are typically brighter)
because low output PUs have more higher base frequency that will mix with harmonies from the amp
Glenn says in his own way that if you look at your gear from above, as you say, the component in which will make less tonal difference (except maybe guitar material) are the pickups.
My claim is that if you did tweak your amp’s settings and gain, you could have made most of them sound closely similar, even in clean and even on the edge of breakage.
What I saw in this video are minor tonal shifts, mostly but not entirely by gain differences of pickups and tonal characteristics of other electric components in each guitar.
Those tonal differences will probably be lost in the mix and/or in the conversion to modern digital media file.
Does that justifies spending hundreds of dollars on new pickups? For me it doesn’t… if anything it’s a headache cause now i have to tweak all my amp settings to match the new pickups.
You can do pretty much all of the frequency manipulation with an eq pedal and output differences with the output and gain on something like an mxr 10- band. Not to say aftermarket pickups aren't ever worth it, but for most people, they could get the sound they want with an eq pedal and pickup height adjustment or at least get a better idea of what they want out of a pickup. (The obvious exception being certain pickups that lack clarity at every output, you're not polishing that turd with an eq)
@@bloomtikbloom9593 if you ever take look at a frequency analyzer you will see that most notes hit the full spectrum of the eq, just parts that are not overtones of the fundamental will be inherently lower as well as the beginning and end of the note.
Boosting frequency 100% works, and you've clearly never used an eq, let alone a large 10 band plus.
If you play a single note and move every slider on a 10 band, each band affects every note.
When you play a note on the guitar you are not just hearing the fundamental.
Edit: Before something stupid is said, I'm obviously not talking about the 24th fret and open low E. Your highest and lowest notes will trail before they hit the other end of the spectrum. But that's inherent to the note being played, not your pickups.
0:08 What he said was, "when you are playing high gain metal stuff, none of that sh*t matters...AT ALL!!!" What he didn't say was that there is absolutely no difference in pickups or tonewoods or tubes and how they shape a guitar players sound. He was relating it SPECIFICALLY to modern, high gain metal.
Hi Dylan!!
There was one question.
Some descriptions of stacked humbuckers state that the bottom coil is not involved into signal conditioning.
Idea for research? 👁 🕵♂ 🧑🔧
I liked your explanations a lot and, I played many different pickups, I play high gain amps. When playing very fast riffs, you see it's the tight mid range you want. Yes they pretty much all sound the same but, when you get to play faster riffs than Fricker's video, some pickups are just not cut for the job.
Glenn says at the start of all of his pickup videos that he only cares about high gain tones, and that clean is completely different and larger differences do exist. He also says people can generally hear the difference between a single coil and a humbucker regardless of gain. Lastly, I'm pretty sure he gain-matches, because people usually mishear sonic differences when the 2 things are at different volumes, even if nothing else changes (no unintentional clipping of course).
You briefly stated that for high gain you agree with him, but didn't include anything close to that in your examples. Most of this video has absolutely nothing to do with what Glenn was talking about in his videos about pickups.
Still interesting though.
I ended trying it out when Glen came out with that video with gain and different distortions. My jackson pickups and emgs ended up sounding the same, except on low gains where they sounds somewhat different
Thank you. What people always seem to skip over in Glenn's video's is the fact that his advice is aimed at metal, and specifically recording metal. And he says so in every video, but they still miss this. Thanks for confirming his findings, and adding more nuance for other genres of music too.
Would be interesting to hear the higher gain pickups with the volume rolled down.
I like a high output bridge pickup because then I don’t NEED an overdrive to get the level of gain I want.
I can put one in line if I want to change the tone of the guitar to better match different songs.
But I can always roll off some of the guitar’s output when I want to clean things up a bit, or just make a different sound.
Yes, pickups make a difference, but I believe a lot of the difference can be made up for with the tone knob on the guitar, and tone controls on the amp.
volume knobs do different things to the EQ curve depending on wiring and parts values. it's not just a "reduce output" knob.
the thing is NOT if there are any differences between single coil -P90 - humbucker - mini humbucker and jazz master pickups and so on. the thing is that if you got a (lets say) Strat with SSS pickups in it, no one will notice the difference in a full mix between those pickups and other after market pickups. if there are any differences they are so negligible that no one will notice them in the mix.
actually, in the mix no one will notice if you played MIM fender or silver sky or MIA fender was the body made out of Ash or Poplar or Alder.
so if you got 200$ and you want to spend it on your guitar tone you better invest on speaker or EQ pedal or good compressor or other guitar pedals or IR or Power Supply before you consider replacing your pickups. or save for a good mic.
it is true to humbuckers as well though the over wound ones do hit the amp pre-amp harder and are (in most cases) compressed and less bright. but it is not a deal breaker and you can make over wound humbucker sound great even in cleans. they will not sound like a single coil pickups and they do not should sound like it. if you are into the single coil sound buy a guitar with true single coil (not humbucker with push pull - this doesn't work most of the time, it is just a gimmick.). if you are into P.A.F buy a guitar with P.A.F. style humbuckers and you would not need after market pickups.
i took a mim strat pickup the type that has steel slugs and two bar magnets one on each side and i pressed out the slugs and then i removed the alnico2 pole peaces out of a dead 50s era grey bottom and the pressed right in the holes witch i was surprised fit rather well..wen i put the pickup back into the guitar i was blown away how much better they sounded! its much bigger sounding and it can keep up with volume wise with the sd sh6 humbucker in the bridge...so i guess my question is what is the magic behind this and why dose it sound so much better? did i increase the output or did i change the electromagnetic field somehow? its amazing the difference it made!
This is an interesting video I know I'm a year late to the party. I was thinking of conducting my own experiment using four of my own guitars, all of which have different voicings. I haven't seen any comparison videos shooting out the voicings of pickups from manufacturers like Fishman, EMG, fender, etc. I'm running into a scenario personally with my schecter Keith Merrow 7 string mkIII. I like the guitar for higher gain tones, but I really find that it doesn't sound great in most clean or edge of breakup tones. I really have to work with the EQ and the volume level of the guitar itself to get anything acceptable.... In comparison I could plug in any other guitar I have on my rack and be far happier with those sounds. I'm wondering if there would be any benefit in changing the Fishman fluence open core classic, and installing something passive instead.
When you process everything through computer plug-ins that turn it all to homogenous mush, yeah, pickups don't matter.
I have a lot of electric guitars and i never had a problem with the sound of the pickups. I have replaced a few but it was just a gamble and probably not better or worse and i play from clean to high gain
edit?? video labels bridge pickups as 'neck'. even for the schecter, which had me wondering whether it had some kinda brad paisley hidden neck pickup
You just described how this whole music hardware industry survives. People not understanding that the signal chain is relative and malleable means they will focus on one part of it, change it based upon misinformation, and then result in needing to change the entire rest of the signal chain to compensate. Unless somebody pulls back and looks at the whole, they are forever doomed to stay on the treadmill of purchasing new shit.
I think it is important to understand that... The term 'high gain' means different things, to different people.
When I think of high gain, i think of rich full sound, bristling with harmonics. Like the super modded Marshall sound.
If you're just going to pin a 5150, or a Diezel... Yea, it makes very little difference, because you're compressing the shit out of it. All that nice rich harmonic stuff, is just squeezed out.
You could literally take a Boss metal pedal, and shove it into the back end of a Fender Bassman... And you'd really be getting the same sound. Ola proved this recently. I've been saying this for years.
But response matters MASSIVLY!
I use a Bill Lawrence 500XL in the bridge, and.. That muted legato stuff just sings. It makes it easy to do. You end up dropping the amp gain too, because the pups are such high output. Which means less pre amp compression. Or a fuller, richer sound.
I don't care how much a bit of gear is. The cheaper the better lol. The BL just works for how I play.
I'm really digging the 5150 for rhythm sounds, and the red channel of the Bogner for lead, right now.
Always like your technical explanations. Thanks Dylan.
Great explanation, this is an area where I could afford to learn more about tone and what is truly affecting it. You have a new subscriber!
I think Glenn is 100% correct for the specific niche he works in - high gain metal - with the added caveat that his focus is for young/new artists to get the best value for their dollars to get the sound that they want in a recorded output.
Will things like pickups make a difference? Sure.
Is it worth the $$$ (you may not be able to afford) when perhaps a speaker change or mic placement change or different mic's get you to that sound? That's up to you.
As he has said on multiple occasions - if you think a valve change or pickup change is all of a sudden going to completely transform your sound (in a high gain mix) - he has a bridge he'd like to sell you.
I do agree with Dylan though, that the whole chain does contribute - and depending on what you are playing - the various elements will rise or fall in how important they are to the final sound.
I do note the lack of mention of speakers though - whether analog and mic'd up or using digital and emulation - they really do influence the end sound as they are the thing that actually moves the air that you hear.
For those saying that Glenn is outdated as the future is digital - I'm pretty sure the DI from an amp/emulated amp sounds like butts until you throw a cab/speakers onto the DAW.
Then it becomes a factor of the IR that you use - and Glenn has shown that different IR's can really shift the output sound around - same as with an actual speaker.
It's why there is the market for the IR's of well known cabinets/speaker combos so you can try and get that sound.
What about the pots? Pots are part of the circuit. Wouldn't a 500k linear pot have a greater affect on the output than say 250K alpha?
if you are using a metal zone with the dist all the way up mids all the way down it gets hard to tell one pickup from another. to me some pickups are more translucent than others. fender single coils are a good example vs a set of emg 81-85....the emg pickups have a sound of their own and it matters alot less what guitar you install them on.the single coil side the low output lends to sound cleaner and more accurately producing the sound of the vibrating string. so if you have a crap sounding guitar to start out with the emg are the way to go.
I don’t understand why pickups are such a huge topic today…in the old days, the artists just made music with the pickups that came in the guitars that were available to them…and we love that music…but today apparently the pickups that come stock in guitars are not good enough to make music…so you can see why I’m confused 😳
His is advice for a VERY select audience, I think.
I play metal but like (because everyone is familiar) Metallica, I often add diversity in the middle or beginning of songs. I've never played a full session on full distortion.
I know some do but I'd say *most want the option available, at the very least.
Gear and how you combine it, matters. That's why i don't like humbuckers with Marshalls or lower output single coils with blackface Fenders, pickups need to be balanced with the amp to sound in the right spot, and by example, Strats with a blackface Fender have a terrible problem with sitting in the mix and also, they sound too harsh, they need a much more mid forward amp, like a tweed or a brownface, while a humbucker will end up sounding like pure mud with a very mid forward amp, i like to have some sparkle to give humbuckers some nice definition and that's why i think that a blackface Fender and a humbucker equipped guitar is the perfect marriage.
I was shaking my head up and down through this video, agreeing with everything you were saying.
what is your daw doing in the background? looks like it is auto compressing the waves?
I’d like to see a comparison where you somehow equalize volume. Volume difference do funky things to our ears and it would be nice to get that out of the equation.
All volumes were normailzed to -2 db… like in all my videos. The difference you are hearing is frequency…. Not volume.
The way I deal with this issue is matching certain guitars with certain amplifiers.
I have a few great guitars that sound absolutely like garbage in a few different amps I have. But nobody will tell you this when starting out.
I was a young guy and had moved from Ohio to Smyrna Georgia, and was making payments on gear trying to find the tone in my head and all these salesmen that were my buddies , just kept selling me more gear. Never telling me even when I asked about this topic.
The thing about Glen's video for me is all the pickups he compared are some degree of quality. But muddy pickups from certain cheap guitars are almost unusable imo. That's the real reason to change your pickups, and you don't need to get the best or most expensive to have better tone.
Someone kept commenting on my videos and told me to go watch Glenn. Once I saw it was high gain related, I did not agree with him.
Lol. That’s so funny. I watch when he comes across my feed… maybe.
I’d totally have a beer w him though.
I use single coils to make modern metal, pick up sort of matter , but if you know enough, they dont as things be "adapted"and compensated by applying that knowledge
i.e. "Single coils ? bro TRUST me you will never hit a pre amp as hard as an EMG with single coils"
"I use an OD that adds up to 20 Db from unity, I can get several times louder than an EMG hitting a preamp, next broski myth please?"
"but Bro Noise?"
"sorry did you just say noise gate?"
Honestly I find pick out put less important than the general EQ curve of the pick up itself, Tele pick ups work much better than Strat pick ups for modern metal, because the strat pick ups have much less mids, same with P90's they have far more mids than Strats so work much better for Modern High gain, which unlike many think is really mid heavy and not scooped like Metal was in the 80's
He also says that he's specifically talking about humbuckers and heavy gain. he admits there'll be a difference between a humbucker and single coil.,
I was thinking that when I watched his video. With heavy distortion it does sound pretty much the same. I was waiting to see if he would do it clean and or overdriven breakup.
Also, the MAJOR thing you have to realize with Glenn is...he is a METAL channel. He says flat out he is ONLY talking about high gain METAL tones and that, yes, in cleans or even some lower gain situations there is a difference. His "test" was only referring to high gain metal.
Lol ya all pickups sound the same with enough gain in the same way all women look the same with enough grease on your glasses 😂 didn’t you see how high gain just clips your signal.. so ya.. all pick up sound the same if you clip enough of the signal🫠
A while back I commented to Glenn that some pickups had more harmonic content to them. He answered, "What's harmonic content? "
That said, I like both of you, both of your channels and appreciate both of your sets of knowledge.
Someone is going to make a Harmonic Content pedal. Chock full of … It will actually just be a clean boost. I’ve seen several demos where the unicorn pedal of the week is engaged. The volume goes up, see, it sounds better.
He asked you what it was because allot of people just repeat what they've heard and he wants to see if people can actually explain their argument to him. Same thing when people say something sounds "compressed" he says he's asked several times and they just look at him blankly so I think he just does that to see if people actually know what they're talking about.
@@hxclambfan I hear you, but no he actually didn't know what I was talking about.
@@richardmorris363 musical notes are made up of harmonic content. Overtones, some emphasized more than others create what we call tone. Harmonic content is what tone consists of. Okay?
@@216trixie oh ok lol.
Hi,
Would the pickup heights come into play,
like lowering a bit reduce the clipping?
Yes.
Carvin 22 point pickups sound totally different when I put them on my les Paul at the same settings
When it comes to tone pickups just alter the circuit, I don't know how many times it has to be said. If you don't have a actual signal issue as in the sensitivity of the pickups, you can recreate the EXACT SAME TONE by altering the signal ANYWHERE in the signal chain. Meaning, PICKUPS ONLY MATTER FOR PICKING UP THE SIGNAL. Now with that said, yes they can change tone the same way a eq can. But a majority of the tone comes from the AMP, whats in the signal after the guitar and Speakers. I've proven this to a few friends and they've sent back 200-300 dollar pickups. Don't waste your money on expensive pickups they are cheap to manufacture.
Man I really enjoyed that Fender sound (coming from a metal guy). My 2 cents on this, pickup's matter, but not as much as the companies want you to believe.
While I understood his point about Speakers, Cabinets, and Mic placement, I didn't appreciate the way he went about it. I was legitimately expecting to listen to the differences in the pickups, and he pulled some shenanigans on us with the mics and cabinets. As a guitarist (and not a studio engineer) I like hearing the differences in pickups, even at high gain. Now, in the context of a mix, it probably doesn't matter that much, which I believe is Glenn's point, but to the player it does matter at least somewhat. Hopefully though, by the time you get to the studio to record that metal album, you've got that situation sorted and it's the least of your problems.
So, what k resistance and what output is best together before it starts to compress
I'd like to see you put these pickups through a spectrum analyzer so we could see all the peaks and valleys for ourselves.
here is the one on my wish list. I would happy to do that if I had one ... www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/39B2MG409ISF1?ref_=wl_share
@@DylanTalksTone c'mon dude, you can get a software version for $30. But even a free one ought to be able to show some differences.
For what purpose …. So you can see what you can’t hear?
@@DylanTalksTone So you can take a snapshot, look at them and compare. You can't hear them all at the same time but you can look at a graphic representation of them all at once and see the differences. Let's bust the myths and get to the science of it.
If you have to work that hard to tell the difference between two things… how much is there really ? And why not let those two things exist to be different
Pick up’s definitely make a difference
Great breakdown and explanation. Interesting that the hottest was the quietest. The old school reason for wanting hotter pickups is they hit the front end of the amp harder. More distortion and sustain.
Agrred, I put a Seymour Duncan Invader in the Bridge of Gibson sg , I think that the Invader is a misunderstood pickup I really drives the front end of a tube amp but when you back the volume down it cleans up nicer than people think.
@@rickycompton2610 I have an invader. I actually like it. I currently don't have it on any of my guitars but have in the past and liked it. . another great option is to have a series parallel switch. Parallel cleans it up for when brighter cleaner sounds are wanted.
He's right and confirmed what I already have been hearing. P90s and jbs sound way bigger than Emgs through my 6505
To me when glen says all pickups sound the same, but dude using a heap of gain because he likes high gain is like going to a taste test. Dumping salt on all the food because you like salt. Than say all the food taste the same. If you really wanted to test, if pick ups make a difference, why would you use overdrive/distortion/ high gain. To me that is just disguising the data until they both sound the same
Thank you. This is educating people about pickups. I actually referenced your videos when talking to people on Glenn’s comments. What is interesting is guys with the best high gain tones actually know this stuff.
Thank you.
Also....say what you want, but most guys I know or listen to with good high gain tones....they play one of the following: SD/Dimarzio/Fishman/EMG to name a few.
So if you got the money, I always say, go for the name brand pickup. Unless your stock pickups are Kiesel Lithiums or sth 😅
Man, like you said totally different argument. You can hear subtle changes with softer music. Smash it with distortion and blast beats, and realistically it's not that obvious. I don't think he said there is no difference it's just that difference is imperceivable (99%) of the time in the mix. When you're playing, different story everyone has their preference and helps you play how you like to get the performance but in a mix... ? can you really tell? Maybe you can, but I'll guarantee you that most people won't know or hear anything.
I always preferred lower gain pickups because you can always layer more gain on top. Dylan, are you familiar with Evans noiseless pickups? Jeff Healey and SRV used them. They are my favorite noiseless pickups for Strats but hey are no longer in production. :-(
I think one of his conclusions was it was more worth getting a ParaEq pedal to tweak your sound as needed rather than buying pickups.
I watch Glen, but I play jazz…..with a metal-ish gain structure, …by backing off, playing really light, neck PU, which mellows the amp distortion. But doom or the metal Glenn produces in his studio, is a way narlier tone , his playing is also that way, at those levels PU differences becomes really negligible, except singlecoil vs
humbucker. Play cleaner? the differences become more apparent, like the difference between coils in series, or coils in parallel, which is not talked about much, I find it to be far more useful than split coil, and have several guitars set up that way.
Talk about that sometime, could you? 🙂
I like super hot pickups, to drive the front of the amp,, not to be louder. Amp is a MB mark 5/25 I use Amp distortion and mucho compression as well. brings Smooth legato and hammer ons, long sustain, think Santana, because I mostly downpick (not that Carlos does) I’ll never be fast with my right hand, so my thing is sustain, bends trills hammer and pull, only in recent years did I begin to back and forth pick, and I don’t run scales, so progress is slow, on the other hand because I downpick octave and third double stops come pretty easy, down is the way….
Bridge? Mostly SD JB’s it gets trickier, to pick a PU for a guitar with a neck PU, bridge at 14-17 Ohms, (I rock out too!) much lower for a neck PU, 8ohms is super hot in that position, it’s too easy to end up with a muddy sound there, power can equal darkness of tone…..
This is the kind of information that makes better consumers out of us all. Thanks!