Why Guitar World Magazine is full of SH*T!!
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- Опубліковано 29 бер 2024
- Two days ago, Guitar World dropped what has to be the most B.S. ridden pickup review of all time. How does anyone take this crap seriously?
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About Spectre Sound Studios:
I'm Glenn Fricker, engineer here at Spectre Sound Studios. I love making records, and after doing it for sixteen years, I want to pass on what I've learned. On my channel you can find tutorials on how to record guitar, bass, real drums and vocals. There's reviews and demos of tube amps, amp sims, drums, mics, preamps, outboard gear, Electric Guitar, Bass Guitar, and plugin effects.
We've covered Moon on the Water, played Bias FX, given you the absolute best in Stupid Musician Texts, ranted & raved about bass guitar, and this channel is where The Eagle has Landed.
Everything you've wanted to learn about recording Hard Rock & Heavy Metal can be found right here on this channel!
I also respond to your comments & questions: The best make it into the SMG Viewer's Comments series of videos. Loads of fun, lots of laughs.
Thanks for checking out my channel & please subscribe!
The last 3 words in the video say it all :)
Exactly!😂
I waited and enjoyed, thanks.
Worth it
I'm not sure if Glenn censored me. But people don't need new speakers or mics. I mean hit records have been recorded with the Roland mini cube... I'm sure he also knows this.
@@BillyTheKidsGhost
I'm also sure he's trying
to say don't waste your money upgrading the most insignificant thing when other things that have more impact potentially can be dealt with .. people have a tendency to listen with their hearts rather than their ears, which makes it appear that they don't have any brains in their heads..sad truth.
This is the guitar version of "punchy, yet warm" description that every set of drums gets.
Priceless, ha ha. 🤣
Agreed. Lol!
At least with drums you can set them up next to one another for true testing. And expensive doesn't mean better, the Ludwig Acrolite has consistently been picked for a go to recording snare and it was released as a student drum. Sorry, even though drummers get the , duh drummer shite, at least we don't buy magic sound makers for our instruments. (Well, most of is, I'm sure there are some morons out there somewhere.)
Or flavours of wine
at least drums actually sound different lol
Next time I'm going to the book store, I'm moving all guitar gear magazines to the Fiction section.
For the garbage tabs, too.
😂🍻
Both the magnets and pole pieces have been forged from Los Alamos bog iron, tempered in unicorn blood, at midnight under full moon! It must be magical!
That's nice, but it doesn't matter if it wasn't done on the vernal or autumnal equinox. Those are the only days that unicorn blood stays homogenized.
@@teemusid From what I understand Shed will not give away that information under any circumstances, nor when and where the unicorn was caught and ritually slaughtered. Nor with which utensils the blood was extracted..
@@blokkadeleider PETA would protest Shed to hell and back
@@impossivel2006 And they should! 🤣
I heard they used mythril and titanite stones too.
Reminds me of how the magazines and fans worshipped Jimmy Page’s iconic Les Paul and Paf pickups when in the studio he used a Supro amp and a telecaster to cut through the mix 😂
You tell that to Gibson fans and they have a literal stroke. It’s hilarious
Depends on the album I think. I know Zeppelin I was Telecaster. Maybe II. And the Stairway solo. Not sure about the rest of it.
@@natrixxvision6997 given Jimmy’s skill at arranging and layering sounds, it’s probably 6 of one and a half dozen of the other
@@tombstoneharrystudios584 I know he had a Danelectro guitar that he really liked too.
Too true, when I started listening to led Zeppelin in 1988 I had only seen VHS videos of him with a Les Paul and the double neck in the song remains the same which shows how you ears and brain convince you of what you think you are hearing as it was many years later I heard about the telecaster, oh the joys of pre internet. ( And now it's fifty grand for a signature model, for that money Jimmy Page can serenade me with it)
"Do you plan out your **** week with fortune cookies and crystals?" Best thing I've heard all day
😂
I do, but that's beside the point. 🙃
Ate some handmade Chili yesterday and boy did that blossom into that magical overtones fart sounds on the toilet today!
Also the smell was beautifully reminding me of an old dead rat that died in '59!
You got frequency response graphs to show us?
How many Scovilles bro?
@@jimmyrussells Something around 7.9k
@@patrickwilliams3108 it was all low-end rumble...lol
Murphy Age that and you can charge $2k more!
Was watching a review from Guitar World from 6 years ago on UA-cam and Paul mentioned how the warmness of the Mahogany played well with the brightness in the pickups. I guffawed.
He has drank up every cup of Kool Aid that has ever been offered to guitar players the world over. That guy is a JOKE.
And we all know that it's the colour that matters.,😁
I was thinking back to some interviews I read with Angus and Malcolm Young and I remember them stressing that 25w Celestion Greenbacks were vital for their sound. The only time I heard anything about Angus' pickups, it was his guitar tech that said it had to be a specific output. I'm guessing that is so it can drive the amp in a reliable and predictable way.
I trust Angus to know his rig inside and out considering his rig has remained almost the exact same for the last 45 years. The pickups would need to be a certain output to match the Schaffer wireless boost.
It's ages ago that I last opened a guitar magazine, and suddenly I remember why !
Besides, there's not much magazine for the money, as about 40% of the pages are ads
The other 60% are also ads, just less obvious.
All pickups require pickup fluid. Pour the pickup fluid directly into the reservoir until full. Next, replace the guitar speaker fluid inside the speaker magnet. Repeat these steps after every 200 hours of use and your equipment will last for months.
You forgot to mention to replace the chromoly speaker bearings every 500 cycles to keep the speaker moving smoothly
Make sure it’s demineralised fluid or else you’ll get a build up of corrosion in your tone and lose that “organic warmth and clarity”
Vintage 30s have a fill window. Greenbacks have a dip stick.
Instructions unclear, headstock caught in toaster
Don't forget to flip over your strings between takes so they're not "as stale"... it works, trust me, I heard it from a touring guy...
Back in the 80's, I went to a clinic, and Grover Jackson was speaking about pickup manufacturers not listing actual specs for their various pickups. He found it aggravating that only DC resistance was listed. He wanted the DC res data, along with the millivolt output, peak resonant frequency, AND a frequency spectrum graph. That way, the customer could have SOMETHING besides marketing verbiage to describe what each model delivered. It never happened...
That is because bullshit is all they have
There's a very simple explanation why guitar players like the new pickups more. One very likely situation is that you have old strings when you replace the pickups and put new strings after that, guess what, strings matter more than pickups. A new pickup with new strings will sound better than the old one with dead strings lol. Second, expectation bias, there's no AB comparison if you test your new pickups 1 day later, our hearing memory just doesn't work that way.
Agreed. I have read dozens of posts/comments over the decades where people say they are ordering guitar or bass along with replacement pickups even though they haven't gotten it yet.
If I remember correctly, you did a Guitar String comparison some time back.
I'd swear, that we had more tonal differences between strings than between pickups!
GLEN!!
Greeting from Victoria, B.C. I'm 38 and only started playing guitar 2 years ago for my mental health (better late than never) and am still shooting down the guitar rabbit hole. For a beginner guitarist at my age, I can't tell you how happy I was to discover your channel about a year ago. I've been in the Navy for 10 years now (that's right Canada, you have a f**king Navy lol) and you very much remind me of our engineers on ship. Very quickly in our careers, the junior ranks learn to basically take whatever the command team (officers) tells us in regards to the functionality of our ships with a BIG grain of salt, then we usually ask the engineers what's ACTUALLY going on with the ship (involves them laughing while they shake their heads). Military equipment and guitar world have one thing in common: politics/business vs. reality. I'm a Radar Operator and in your short video on the trick to make your sound "better"...*you just turned up the gain* I LOL'd pretty hard. It's the same with Radar; wanna see more on your screen than your Radar's showing...we turn the gain up. Glen, for those of us who can look beyond our own pride and want the best bang for our buck, the advice you provide is priceless.
So...thank you for YOUR service! If you're ever visiting Victoria, I'd love to have a beer with you.
LISTEN TO THE ENGINEERS, FOLKS!
-Danny
I replaced the humbucker in my Harley Benton dobro with a P90 because I though the P90 would give me more high and, and it did. But there was no magic, no "Clarity and warmth shining down from heaven through my magic pickups" I wanted a small change and I got it.
I have a LP with Entwistle pickups and a Wilkat with p90's and a Walmart special with who knows what humbucker pickup and they all sound the same through my Fender Champion 30 amp, or my DAW. Now, the Washburn Lyon with single coils does have a higher frequency response when on the bridge pickup. Put the switch between the bridge and middle and it's a bridge humbucker. Same sound.
I really appreciate the information you have given regarding the bogus claims of these manufacturers.
I have just finished recording/mixing a deathgrind track with the guitars tracked with a jazzmaster lol
Can confirm- ABSOLUTELY ZERO difference tonally between it and ANY other guitar- including humbuckers or active EMG's in the context of anything high gain and metallic.
Also, your information has helped me focus a lot more on the things that actually make a difference in my guitar tone (the bass guitar for most of the "heaviness" and the impulse response for the actual tone)
You fucking rule, Glenn!!!
To be fair though, I bought some pickups and they did indeed offer some truly magical tones. I was surprised as hell, and I don't think it had anything to do with the LSD I also bought at the same time.
Yeah, it's common knowledge amongst knowledgeable guitar players that a Limited Slip Differential is the way to go to get that truly magical tone. 😁
I put 3 two-barrel Holley carbs on my Strat. Now I can play ‘Pipeline’ in 11.7 seconds!
@@module79l28 Yup, and I installed nitrous to help me through some of the more difficult runs. Works well, but the frets do get a bit warm.
This is where kids like me got our ideas back in the day. We had one small music store that sold all fender gear so us metal heads had to either get lucky and get to the city and visit a big music store or read these magazines. Now, I look for guitars that have a stable neck and stay in tune first.
Im with you man. Ive been playing for 50 years and in all that time I've found 2 guitars that can reliably stay in tune , niether are any legacy brand... unless you count Ibanez as a legacy brand. One is an Ibanez RG770, love that guitar, Bought it brand new in 1991-92...cant remember the exact year, and the other is practically brand new... a Schecter Silver Mountain Blood Moon seven string , My absolute favorite guitar EVER. It doesnt have a floating bridge like the Ibanez, so no trem tricks, or problems setting it up when changing strings, and it has twin carbon fiber rods in the neck so temp/humidity doesnt affect it much. I highly recomend Schecter and Ibanez as go to brands to select from. Keep Rockin everyone.
Right? Hence why I pay a hell of a lot more attention to PRS.
GLEEEEEEEN!!!!
In my room with my amp and 212 I can definitely tell the difference between my EMG 81/85, EMG Jim Roots, and Seymour Duncan Distortions. I decided to do a test on my pickups by recording them all and throwing them in the mix. You can’t tell them apart (high gain metal). It’s odd as they are easily distinguishable in the open air but in the mix they all sounded the same. As Kyle Bull says, “cleans are for weak people”, but I do plan on seeing if there is a difference in the mix with them. My test with high gain have been done on the Victory Kraken, Mesa Nomad 100, and some sims from Neural (Mesa 2C and Gojira X). Amps and speakers made a significant difference. Pickups not so much. The only one that I’ve seen have slightly more clarity in a mix were Fishman Moderns but in the room they sounded weak and wimpy IMO.
I’m of the opinion that a recorded tone and a live tone (being the same settings) sound different. In a band setting (live)these things seem to make a more significant difference (not huge) than recorded and I don’t exactly know why that is. Can you perhaps explain why this is?
If you're close micing when recording, then you're not hearing what you hear live, when you listen to the whole sound from a distance in whatever space you are.
That is some top-tier, overwrought, cork sniffing bull shit. It's like a Harlequin novel about pick ups.
We need more of this magical, slightly warm, yet clear and defined supervised reading. Well done.
I have a B.C rich warlock. It had a lot of noise through my 6505+ combo at high gain. I got the cheap emg pick ups when I had extra cash laying around and all it did was clean up the noise. The tone never changed at all. And then I got a divinity dv-77 speaker after seeing your videos and it made a load of difference. thank you for the excellent info!
Lol always entertaining! You are correct about most things but I and at least one buddy of mine definitely have removed pickups and speakers for that matter even if we had recently bought them when they sounded like shit. Let me be clear... we changed pickups, speakers, cabs, mixed and matched things. It was not un-common for us to have a guitar or two laying around going hey what if I took that out of this and then put it in that. We ALWAYS were changing shit around. Preamps into Marshalls were THE BEST SOUND of course 4x12 cabs with Celestion speakers were the go to after some trials and that is what we ALWAYS came back to. Greenbacks are great but lots of $$ so we would get the 35watt or 30watt which was almost the same thing just not as much money. Basically you want some low watt Celestions in the top with some higher watt RMS in the bottom of the cab. You want the bigger magnet Celestions as well. If they are heavy as shit you likely have big magnets. I can honestly say that pickups do make a difference and sometimes it is just enough sometimes it is night and day. What a person needs to do is know their gear by working on it and using it for several years. We sacrificed a lot of time on earth making our rigs and blew a small fortune or two on speakers and pickups etc but they all make differences (by the way we played distorted A LOT LIKE EVERY SONG!) By far I would agree speakers and box they are in will make the most change in ones tone but so do the type of tubes, transformers, wires etc. all of it counts! When you find the basic thing that works for you I.E. my case was a Marshall 100watt head, a Celestion loaded 4x12 then built on it. We always had Strats or LPs or Kramer etc and would upgrade pickups if needed. We knew if the pickups needed upgraded by listing to our other stuff which did not change and served as our benchmark. If we had a great sound, switched to our new/different guitar and something was not heavy enough then pickup was a great starting point to change things especially if it was accompanied by noise or sounded dull no matter what. If the pickup did not do it we would look further into things but usually that was enough. Keep in mind we had our bench mark tone and system the ONLY thing in question was the new or different guitar. Once you get a rig that you consider the best tone possible, then you can play it as a benchmark for other tones from other equipment. Pickups do make a large difference in tone. My wife loves my new LP pickups with the Greenie replica from SD in the top and some un-waxed Street pickup in the bridge from Stew Mac as opposed to my Deluxe (which I like better) with mini humbucker in the top and a replacement mini in the bottom. I like the fuzzier tone but she likes the clearness of the newer pickups. I like them both but favor the old ones. My point is they are different sounds and I change NOTHING in my rig going from one to the other. I have 7 LP types right now I play and all of them I had set up with different pickups because I want them to sound differently and though they all sound great... they are without a doubt VASTLY different tones. You cannot say it is the speaker, the amp or anything else because NOTHING ELSE CHANGES! The 5 I bought within the same 24 months and the other 2 I have had for decades but all sound different. I know what I am getting from each one so when I need that tool I grab it. Some I tune low some I tune open depending on how I set them up to perform. Each one though I began at putting in my hardware first and getting the neck dialed in so they played correctly and held a tuning. Then I listened for what I thought I could build on the guitars existing qualities when choosing pickups. Descriptions are jacked I agree! What can you do to explain a tone? They dream up a bunch of crap to sell and likely it works. With some pickups I just know the tone qualities already because I have played with them for years. I would go online and listen with headphones to samples of people playing the actual pickup with a similar guitar to mine before trying something I was not sure about. SD pickups are always good. Anyone spending $300 or more dollars a piece is out of their pickup mind! But what do I know, by a winder some magnets and do a few yourself. Then you can tell me how they do not make a significant difference. I bet you would not say this though because your opinion would change.
You’ll notice that when a review or person talks about how great a pickup swap was. They always talk about how great the tone and sustain change was. You know…the thing tonewood alone was supposed to control.
Always love your content. And glad that you have softened your words just a *tiny* bit in saying (truthfully) that all humbuckers sound "similar". Nearly all are indistinguishable - especially in high gain settings. But there are a couple of popular pickups that are outliers. There are 2 times I've bought pickups and ended up putting the originals back in: DiMarzio Super DIstortions - I coveted these because of how many 80s players used them. They were so fizzy in high gain amps I couldn't deal. The other was the Tone Zone. So dark you can't get a pinch harmonic to sound. Seriously, you hear the harmonic coming from the guitar acoustically but through the amp, nada.
I actually bought a pair of Bareknuckels Warpigs that I thought would sound amazing but I was disappointed. a lot of lows compared to any other pickups I have. I have no clue if it was the pickups , pots or whatever else it could be. I am willing to send them to you for a test, since they have been sitting in a box for the last 10 years. I tried a few months ago to put them in a guitar but I have the same issue. I use an eq pedal so I have to cut everything below 200 hz to make them sound normal even on high gain. I have never seen something like this on any other pickup. On their website it says they have a lot of lows and they do, based on what I notice. Thanks for the guitar recording video you made some years ago. It changed my life.
im no pro but i do know they recommend 550k pots instead of the 500k that comes with most humbuckers. Not sure if that does anything though
Without going into too many technical details that can't be covered in a comment, you could try them first with a 1 MΩ volume pot: this will load them more, and make the bass tighter.
Try increasing the tone pot value as well, in the modern wiring it goes in parallel with the volume pot (so you're actually halving the load on the pickup, 500 KΩ on both pots becomes something like 250 KΩ).
Try disconnecting the tone pot. You'll sort of double the load on the pickup.
Try connecting the tone pot with the "Gibson '50s" wiring, which involves just moving the cable (pre-volume in moder wiring) to the center lug of the volume pot (output, post-volume. This will load the pickup more, like the 1 MΩ volume pot. It can become a bit shrill with high gain, though.
If anything fails, try integrating a bass cut circuit (pot + cap in parallel, like the G&L S-500 or Reverend Guitars do) connected in series with with pickup out before it reaches the volume pot and tune it to taste; this can't fail at removing bass. It can go inside the guitar, you tune it once, and you forget.
Glenn is disregarding the electronics in all these videos: pickups aren't a 1-band filter when they're part of a LCR circuit, and their resonance is heavily affected by the rest of the circuit, no pickup can be considered separately from the circuit where it's connected. These electronics are cheap (don't pay for fancy stuff), and tuning any circuit can be so much fun (it's always a learning process).
That being said, I don't care about any pickup costing more than 20 € 😁, although it's true that construction on expensive pickups typically is better regarding microphonics.
@@jvboy401 It increases the load on the pickup, so the bottom end becomes tighter.
These days we can just order 5 or 10 decently-build, but cheap pots (not the branded ones 😆), and it's very likely to find one around 550 kΩ, because their tolerance is more over the place than people think.
You can also wire a resistor in series between the pickup lead and the volume pot, I've seen this done to the humbucker in H-S-S guitars when using 250 kΩ pots, with a standard resistor close to 250 kΩ you get close to the 500 kΩ the humbucker is typically wired to (and I would go higher in value, because this is combined in parallel with the tone pot).
@@riangarianga thanks a lot for taking the time to write this. I will try what you mentioned and see what works best and if any version manages to make them sound right. A bit disappointing that much cheaper pickups sounded normal. Who knows, maybe it's a problem with me. :)
A 2002 Les Paul could not possibly have been his stage guitar for "well over" two decades. It's barely two decades old.
Hey glen I need help what would you recommend I'm currently using a blackstar ht club 40 and it has stock celestion 70/80 and tbh it ain't that bad I tune low as I only really play 7 and 8 string would a dv-77 drastically improve my tone? Thanks glen I've learned more valuable things about what actually effects guitar tone I used to be one to belive pickups and amps make the ridiculous difference
I am completely flabbergasted!!! If thats a word!!! I've played guitar for most of my life and have spoken to some magnificent guitarist and read thousands of these articles. I'm just a campfire guitarist at best so Talking and reading to/all these experts made me just think their jargon just wasnt understood by such a novice as myself.
I've gotten into numerous arguements over differences of sound that everyone but me can hear!!! You my friend have given me hope that my ears and brains arent all that bad... on guitar stuff at least. I love these videos because you use a scientific approach.
You visually show through graphs the differences, one of my pet peeves when comparing guitars is that people will change the sample riff... you need to keep it consistant! I'm so glad I found you!!! Keep crushing it!!!!!!
I saw the headline, and as soon as I read abstract words like "blossom" and "magical" applied to guitar, I knew I didn't need to read the article. But I did think of SMG the moment I saw it! Glad I wasn't the only one.
I recently Purchased new Irongear Pickups for me LP custom, and i only did that as the ones that it had were microphponic. The Irongear Set of humbuckers cost £74 total. Do they make a lot of difference in tone? Not really, however they have stopped the feedback i was getting.
Only time I ever noticed a change in a pickup was when I put a little ‘59 in my Mexican tele bridge position. But that was single to a bucker, so there’s that.
Do you have a video about sound differences between mics used to mic cabinets? I have green backs and we tried 3 mics with different results. What do you think is the best mic to mic green backs?
It’s not that pickups don’t matter, it’s that they don’t matter as much as an article like this makes it seem. There are plenty of pickup shootouts on UA-cam where you can hear a noticeable difference, even within the same brand. It’s just that they don’t matter *_as much_* as amp, cab, or speakers.
The graph at 4:13 or thereabouts shows why I didn’t hear much difference between the half-dozen or so PAF-y sets from three different brands (Gibson, Seymour Duncan, Dimarzio) that I tried when replacing an unusably-microphonic squealy set of stock ‘buckers in an old import thinline. I did hear some differences but not to the extent of “oh yeah this is waaaay better” or anything-and heck, it might’ve just been that I put new strings on each time. I was a fair bit more gullible for “next best thing!” gear ads and “true vintage tone!” marketing at the time.
Some sets do seem to split better than others for single-coil-ish sounds, which I think would probably be a function of output level for the split coil since the difference I experienced was between “sounds weak and has volume balance issues” versus “sounds normal” rather than any significant *frequency* difference.
Of course, anecdotes aren’t data and I don’t have recordings, graphs, nor even that guitar and those pickup sets anymore (they got sold off quite some time ago) so this isn’t really good supporting evidence of Glenn’s position on the similarities between humbuckers even though my experience trying different sets does seem to line up in general with his point.
"Never heard anybody say 'Gee, I really miss my old pickups." I said this. I build my own custom guitars and decided to put a Seymour Duncan JB in the bridge position since I really liked it when I'd had it in another guitar. The JB is notorious for having a big boost in the upper mids that give it clarity and a great lead sound (of course that's anecdotal, I don't have any frequency response graphs to back this up and have no idea how to go about acquiring such data). After a while I felt like a change, so I did a magnet swap in the JB, and it made the thing thicker and "hairier", for lack of a better term. That really became my sound, a Duncan JB with the Alnico 5 magnet swapped out for an Alnico 8.
After some more years, I again felt like trying something new, so I started swapping some different bridge pickups to see if I might find one I liked more, or if they all kind of sounded the same, or if most of them sounded like crap to me because I, like most guitar players, am very picky about my sound. I tried a Duncan Custom something, (Custom Custom, Custom 5?), one of those. Took my time, put it through its paces. Sounded weak and kind of muffled, which may not be failings, it's a medium output pickup after all. Tried a Duncan Distortion, which is very similar to a JB. Thick sounding but fizzy on top and lacking the cutting lead sound of the JB. Then I tried a Bareknuckle something...Nailbomb? Aftermath? This is years ago, mind you. Sounded super tight and even, very precise, but it just left me cold for some reason. Maybe I'm not a good enough player to use Bareknuckles to their full potential.
Went back to the mag swapped JB and yep, there it is, that's my sound. Hot cutting leads and warm, chunky palm muting. The difference is clear as day. Nothing else in my whole setup changed during this time of experimentation, just the pickups. I also use Elixir strings, which tend to sound very consistent over their very long lifetime. Heck, a lot of the time I didn't even take the strings off to install whatever new pickup I was installing; I'd just slack them and pull them open to either side. So the new pickup was using the same strings as the old pickup.
Now, just to be clear:
I have nothing but respect for you Glenn, and for what you do on the channel.
I think there are a ton of humbucker pickups out there that will sound the same once gain is applied.
I have no doubt there are probably quite a few pickups out there that can pull off a decent JB kind of sound, and that some of them will cost less doing it.
I totally agree that the hype, unsupported by data, around pickups is a decades long disgrace.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that the speaker is the most important component to your tone.
I just don't quite agree that changing humbucking pickups around is a total waste of time or money. Cheaper and cheaper guitars are coming with better stock pickups all the time but, your tests notwithstanding, there are still hundreds of thousands or more guitars out there that were made before this little guitar renaissance we're currently enjoying that have total shit pickups that are not going to compare to a Gibson Les Paul or a PRS McCarty in a double blind. I have a Harley Benton HSS strat with a bridge pickup so mushy that it sounds like it has a permanent fuzz pedal on it.
I think we're coming at things from very different perspectives. I'm coming at it from the perspective of fixing up Squiers and Agiles into hod rodded beaters, and from building my own custom guitars that need some kind of pickups to go in them; no option to stick with the stock pickups in a from scratch custom build lol!
Anyway, I've more than said my piece. I don't know if this qualifies me for being made fun of on your channel, but that's not why I posted it. I just thought your perspective was maybe just a touch too black and white. No offense intended.
I’ve done many pickup changes in the past years and there’s definitely a difference. Mostly in how they cut through the mix without extra effort. I also have around 25 guitars and changing from one to another always requires a change in amp settings because of their different tonal characteristics. For example my HB fusion sounds very muddy and needs lot of work on mixing while the Gibson Les Paul or SG cut through like a knife and have far better articulation. I’ve embraced both types of tones for their uniqueness but the difference is very obvious. And this difference is more marked when you play the guitar more dynamically rather than without any dynamics like in most of Glenn’s tests.
Fantastic video, Glenn. I hope you do more of these.
I just looked up Tom Pettys Free Falling on Ultimate Guitar and it says to Capo 8th fret !!!!! Do they supply helium for the vocal 🤔???
I don’t know I once installed a Dimarzio X2N pickup in an NJ Mockingbird and stupid young me thought “high output must mean I’ll sound super heavy” and honestly it was just fuzzy at the end of the day.
I once "upgraded" some Harley Benton humbuckers to pickups that came from a high end Jackson Rhoads. The next day, I switched them back. The Jacksons were noisy, and to get them balanced in volume in the middle position, the bridge pickup had to be sunk into the body. Yay for cheap HB PAF-style.
Because they were Jackson pickups!
I own a very inexpensive Jackson guitar 2019, and the pick ups are awesome. Could be the amp, but it's just an inexpensive crate. So weird how these little differences are easily heard by most, and not at all by others. Recording direct sounds as good as miked. Tone is as tone does
@@ericcurry-pitcher5493 I got a jackson Kelly and the pickups are good but not great...they still got that dudness to them.
I've had 3 Jacksons, two Chinese (JS11 and JS32 Kelly) and a a Japanese RR3. The Chinese ones sounded very much the same, while RR3 is a bit different. It has a Duncan Detonator and some kind of humbucker that the previous owner "upgraded" the guitar with. Difference very much goes away once I move knobs on my dirt pedal a bit.
Hi Glenn - a few hours ago I was enjoying some breakfast at one of the local diners and I stumbled across this very same article! While reading it, when I came across the glorious description of the pickups I wasn't paying attention and not very casually dropped my fork on the floor. My waitress saw what happened and asked if I was OK, LOL she said it looked like I was flipping off the fork yet I was thinking the same thing in my mind -- what a bunch of BS for the money! Guitar World should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for even allowing this article to have been published! Sheeeeesh!
Ive learned a few things from gw. "Always take a shit b4 going on stage" -dimebag "if the guitars are out of tune, you must sing out of tune" -gene simmons and also how to stop radio disney from blaring out a guitar rig. Plug in threw a piece of tin foil.🍻
Guitar magazines didn't usually get paid for their reviews, but, and that's a huge BUT, they also get paid a shit load of money for the ads for those companies. So technically there's no unsponsored reviews anywhere in print
Yep. If they panned a product, that shoots them in the foot for potential ad revenue.
Same is true for UA-cam reviewers
Yep, it's across the board. Pretty much any magazine or social media that advertises will promote the companies that pay the most to advertise. They're technically not paid promotions, but they are certainly heavily biased so they don't bite the hand that feeds.
@@onlyguitar6521 Amen! Like that guy constantly promoting Gibson stuff and going overboard to justify their pricing.
@@brianhansen-hj3mlyes. It also works the other way around. UA-camrs that despise Gibson and others might be doing it so they attract interest and money from budget brands to promote their products.
GLEEEEEEN! Ive been thinking about replacing my bone-stock pickups in my Jackson V inhopes of getting better sustain. Do active pickups increase sustain, or is it something else in the signal chain (or the way I'm playing)?
@@markolivares6943 Bud, I'm shit broke, and can't afford to just keep swapping pickups until i find something I like. All I want to do is increase sustain, and I don't even know if that's a pickup thing. Watch his fucking videos for evidence about everything else you said
@@Rattlehead-gy9ct active pickups are night and day from passive. I prefer the sound of passive mostly. Look at an active pickup as a bit of a boost to your signal. You will at least boost what sustain you do have with actives but maybe start with strings ? Get you some decent slinky’s that will hold a little longer before going still. That make sense? The more I think about it make sure your action isn’t so low as well. I’d look at maybe a little higher action and strings before pickups. Low action can cause a lot of buzz and quicken the deadening of the strings.
@josephpark18254 makes sense. I don't want to mess with my action too much, as I'm using a floyd rose and I hate messing with them. I also find that a reasonably low (higher than my first guitar, but not super high) action is easier for me to play faster on. I'm currently running Ernie Ball 9-42 paradigm strings. Light gauges work best for me, and the extra durability is helpful for the lack of finances I have (I buy less strings). Thank you for the advice, I'll see what I can do!
@@Rattlehead-gy9ct the other half of your action can be in your truss rod adjustment. Not everything comes perfectly set up. Things settle over time. Check everything with a ruler. Watch videos for sure. I think I’ve made more mistakes than I’ve fixed. If it’s your only guitar right now be methodical about everything you check or touch. Good luck
3:07 It happens. I´m one of those. I tried to upgrade my Squier Tele with original Fender AlNiCo pickups and switched back to the ceramic ones. I wasn´t unhappy with the Squier pickups before buying the expensive ones, back then I just believed the expensive ones would be somehow better and they weren´t.
Final message, clear as day. Thank you for going through this Glenn 🤘🤘
Maybe if they are talking on a low to mid gain amp, maybe? Vintage PAFs are bright, kinda like a tele. Lower output than most modern humbuckers. But, as you've demonstrated, nothing affects tone more than speakers. I suppose what they are trying to say is that these sound more like single coils, because the goal was to have a nice clean sound with no hum as compared to Fenders single coil offering that was subject to 60 cycle hum... Especially from neon beer signs near the little stage at the drinking establishment you might be playing at. Though, those were noisy enough that at some point in your signal chain, they were going to express their buzz regardless. I feel like it's important to consider where a filter appears in a chain. Speakers are the last stage prior to micing, so they are going to be the last word of filtration in that signal before a mic sends it on to whatever the console has to say about things, and whatever other effects are introduced there... And, as you point out, the filtration that is performed by the pickup is a fixed filter. So, if you have a pickup that gives a bump in 4k or whatever, that is going to be clipped by any sort of saturation after their contribution.
Speaking as a guitar player, guitar players are the worst when it comes to pixie dust and gear mythology.
"Since 1980..." says it all. This publication came of age before UA-cam and links to A/B files. They could get away with bullshit. Glad you posted this.
A guy screaming into a mic. It takes me back to the glorious days of yesteryear.
You new here?
Morton Downey Jr. comes to mind!
He always smoked, and he died from lung cancer, just like my parents.
Well Glenn, I’m the guitarist you’ve been looking for. I had a guitar that I once put a SD Invader in many moons ago. Of course at first I loved it, cause why not? I just spent all that money. But overtime I realized it was just too hot. And I regretted it. And I’d rather control that hotness with an OD pedal. I did take the magnets out of it and put it into a JB which was pure fun. And I’ve never liked Actives personally but I did install Fishman Fluence on one of my guitars and while yes I can probably get the same sound by messing with an eq, OD pedal, and Amp settings. Having the multi voices and 6db drop switch right on the guitar is unique. Bottom line you’re right. Haven’t found a humbucker that I couldnt make aggressive by fine tuning stuff further down the chain.
I got a guitar with a broken neck for 10 dollars at a flea market. It is called a series 10. I bought a use Kramer neck that had beem molested for sure and bolted it on. It has 3 stock single coils and a 5 way selecter switch. I have high end guitars but I absolutely love this guitar because of how it plays and how good the action and intonation is. I can make it sound like any of mi Ibanez or schecter guitars with a slight adjustment of the EQ. Glen has an excellent point when it come to pups.
My last upgraded pickup was a set of tv johns and the guitar came alone but the real magic happened when I put a set of cream backs in my twin reverb! Holly crap !
GLEN !! You're wrong, one of my friends did a pickup swap on one of his guitar a couple years ago in the search for the holy tone ! He said afterward :" I miss my old pickups, these ones don't sound as I were told" ! 😅 Anyway, as you said, without any A/B recording, there is nothing to learn on this article ! Keep up the good work !
Yes, l have seen/heard a few people say this over the years.
You are totally correct about the speaker affecting tone. However how gently or hot a pickup hits the preamp stage of the amp WILL affect how the amp compresses the signal which will effect how much gain is required to achieve a particular level of satuation and inturn effect how the amp responds to the players touch. Also because vintage type pickups don't compress the front end as much, they tend to sound alittle more articulate even at high gain levels.
The things that matter most to me is 60 Cycle Hum cancelling, Noiseless, Balance across the strings and the ability to adjust the individual Pole Pieces up and down.
Hey , i know it s not your "area" but i have no way to test this right now , i wanted to get some noiseless single coils to replace the noisy ones , will that make a difference in a mix?What do you think?Is it worth it?
Depends. If the song has quiet parts, then the noise could be noticable. A noisy take is restorable, but it can be a chore. Optimal is to avoid the chore by eliminating the noise at the source with noiseless singles.
I prefer singles, and always install noiseless ones. Wilde Bill Lawrence is my brand preference for high quality with reasonable prices.
Hey, Glen. I actually did once replace the pickups on a guitar only to discover the old ones were "better." Went from stock Duncan Designed passive humbuckers to EMG 91/85 in a BC Rich Exclusive. All I had wanted was a little more output and maybe a little more clarity. But the EMGS made it sound pretty sterile to me so I went back.
Hey Glen love the show. I know this is a topic that can go either way but I've only ever used the factory pick ups. My question to you is is it worth my time and money to try out active pickups to get the old school cannibal corpse sounds and with a speaker change as well or say fuck it and run what I have and try to dial it in? I'm just lost I have a (sorry to the tube snobs) marshall mg100hdfx solid state head on 2 matching mg cabs and I personally like them. Anyways thanks for your input keep up the great work
I remember being a super confused 17 yr old reading an article on properly setting up a floyd rose style bridge it went on and on how grunge was the new "in style thing" with lower heavy down tuning (that guitar virtuoso in nirvana surely must use a floating bridge like Eddie or Vai right lol)
It then suggested for best tone use new strings at each gig.....but later said it may take awhile for the new strings to strech and for a floyd equiped guitar with new strings it may take some time to break them in and get everything adjusted properly......I guess they figure most touring guitarists buy pre streched broken in new strings and have the guitar set up a few days before the gig which should have fresh strings on it installed that day......time travel must have been involved I guess....🤔
Well the DiMarzio set I put in my Harley Benton Fusion2 sounded a bit different but I can't say it was an obvious improvement over the stock Roswells.
GLENNNNNN!!!!!! I'm upgrading my 2005 Squier Affinity Tele with some $10-20 pickups off of AliExpress. I'm truly curious how the tone will change and will absolutely make some before and after recordings. It should be a fun project.
you should do a video like the one testing different types off pickups but with bass pickups. p-types, j-types, soapbar types, humbucker types, active vs passive and so on, that would be very interesting
I recommend watching some Gabriel Moreira pickup shootouts, where all of them sound exactly the same yet people are commenting how giant differences they can hear xD absolutely hilarious to read :p
Hello Glenn. Could it be a good idea to test the audio difference between active and passive pickups? It will be interesting to see how the change of gain affects the tone nerds. I had experienced in the past gain differences even among passive humbuckers, that translated to a weaker signal. One guitar needed an overdrive up front to sound simirarly decent. Maybe was my ears listening with my eyes but it would be interesting to test!
Cheers from Greece.
Glenn. Thank you so much for your content. Honest, factual and not worried about anyone’s feelings. By far my favorite music related channel on UA-cam. 2nd only to MAYBE Rick Beato. Very excited to take the journey with you to the next 500,000 subs on your way to a MILLION! ❤️
There are only so much that goes into making all passive pickups they are pretty much all the same no matter who makes them. I used to wind my own for a short time and realized it would be less trouble buying them on line. I also learned that a lot of lower cost pickups were just as good or better than the high priced ones. One of my fav pickups were the Rockfield brand, now defunct. They were reasonable and were just as good as any high end boutique. There were a few Chinese pick ups I gave a shot at because several UA-cam guitarists gave them good reviews and for the price i gave them a shot and surprisingly they were great. Your never going to convince people that a high price is no guarantee that the product is better. If you market a product give free stuff to well known musicians and get them to give a good review people are going to buy it. Look at the Fender SRV $15,000.00 copies they sold. I tried a few and they were no better than the low end MIA Strats.
That pickup review reminds me of Robin Williams making fun of professional wine tasters: _"Absurd, yet flaccid!"_
You and the Neurotic Guitarist both kickstart my chuckles in the morning! Much appreciated!
Also to note, I have installed new pickups into a guitar and thought the old ones sounded better, hence I swapped them back. :)
I put some new dirt into my garden to replace the old dirt from '59 and now the tomatoes grow huge with sweet overtones from heaven itself....oh, and a 75 Creamback replaced the stock 70/80 in my DSL40C and that made a huge difference as well...
Yep - read that article and my right hand started magically making a rhythmic, linear, back-and-forth movement in the air as I read it.
While I’m not on the same “pickups don’t matter” crusade as you, I do agree that these Gibson pickups are quite silly. I very much agree that pickups make little to know difference in a recorded mix, but they certainly make a difference in the room and the overall feel. I’ve done the test many times and yeah…recorded I don’t get a huge variance. In the room tho, I’m hearing some pretty strong differences. I play loud, so I’m not really hearing the acoustic sound of the guitar at this point. While this may not matter to a listener, I still think certain pickups will lead to a more inspiring instrument, and that is worth it for me, as a player. I got plenty of money so I couldn’t care less that I spent a couple hundred on pickups. I’ve actually bought pickups and was disappointed and went right back to stock, several times. It’s just the fun of experimenting. But yeah, if you’re broke, stick with what you got.
I swapped pickups years ago on my main guitar because I wanted to coil split and update all the electronics to more stout components, it was a fairly cheap student aimed model that just always felt perfect in my hands, so I wanted to keep it and nurture it, as it were. I thought I noticed it being less kinda "floppy" and attributed it to better quality control all around, but yeah, it was probably just having better rated electronics all around, especially the tone pots. It's amazing what you think you can hear.
I replaced the bridge pickup in my 73 SG Special with a Seymour Duncan in 93 or so. I didn't notice a difference. Back in those days I used way too much gain, so I wouldn't have known any better.so
In 03, I was playing with less gain and decided to sell the pickups that came with the guitar as well as the Seymour Duncan and installed a single P90 in the bridge position. It was a cheap in-game item and it felt like a new guitar afterwards!
It still felt like the guitar had no sustain, but I recorded the SG and my Gordon Smith (with full-size humbuckers) and the SG actually sustained longer!! I thought it lacked sustain by virtue of the fact the body was so much thinner!
You do a great job I subscribe to your site and really appreciate your honest opinions and that are backed up by FACTS and real data!! I have a Warwick Thumb 5 string from 2002 and I exchanged the stock MEC pickups for EMGX pickups because when I listened to other players with the same basses/pickups, I thought the ones with EMG sounded better. At least I went by my old ears and not magical upper overtones🤣🤣🤣
Pickup EQ curve affects the character of the distortion, but... One PAF-style pickup against another PAF-style pickup will be indistinguishable. Something more drastic, like, say a Duncan Invader (it's pretty much all low end, a very dark pickup) against a Lawrence L500XL (LOTS of treble, a very bright pickup) will make a difference. Will it affect the final signal EQ much? No, not really, that's where the speakers and the amp's tonestack are the key variables. Will it, however, affect the transients and the relative saturation of different frequency bands? Yes. Very much yes. That's the reason you put an overdrive like Tube Screamer in front of the amp - it boosts mids (thus increasing the compression and saturation of the midrange frequencies, where the pick attack is most pronounced) and cuts the lows (making them less saturated and compressed, thus shortening the transients, aka making the sound "tighter", cause as we know the lower the frequency, the higher is the signal's wavelength). The pickup is no different from an EQ pedal in front of an amp in this regard. Moving one slider by 1dB will be hardly noticeable, but cranking it by 12dB will change the tone completely.
All the time that guy spent writing and editing this review when he could have just said "It sounds like a humbucker, with low-mid output". I've just this morning had my own experience with this whole pickup fallacy. A student of mine asked if I could take a look at an issue with his guitar (thought it was a dodgy volume pot, turns out it's his amp!) and he left me with his Peavey Raptor for a week. Dunno what the pickups are (they're definitely stock) and I don't really care. Playing it through my Blackstar St James, that I swapped the speakers out for Greenbacks, and this guitar sounds awesome. He picked it up second hand for £65 (including the amp) and I'm having a blast playing it!
Indeed... Marketing, Marketing, Marketing.... what kind of Alnico do the Sheds have.... what gauge wire was used to wrap the pup... nickel covers?... I have a Fender Blacktop Strat with Fender Blacktop Humbuckers... they sound awesome... I'll never replace them because they sound like PAF's... because they basically are PAF's... only they were made in 2014 by Fender with Fender spacing... To each his own... Thanks for posting real info and going in depth about the things that really matter ☕🎸
Here's the thing - I'm one of those who changed the pickups on my guitar and now sometimes miss the old ones.
But to be honest - I didn’t buy them, but wound them myself (on the "magic" alnico).
Did you compare magic alnico sound to non-magic ceramic? :)
@@mayak_85
Yep. Neo also (supermagic). 😉
@@iridios6127 Aaaaand? How big difference is in %? :)
@@mayak_85
IDK bout %. Stronger magnet = bigger output, that it.
I saw this article and immediately said out loud "Bulllllshit" People at the grocery store were confused
I actually have upgraded pickups in one of my guitars and put the cheap original one's back in. The original ones were not potted correctly, were micro-phonic, and had feedback. The upgraded pickups just sounded like the rest of my guitars. So I put the cheap ones back in. And have a guitar that sounds different.
In my first guitar (some cheap black lp style dings from orange they sold in a combo with a small amp, it actually holds up really well still, so much for cheap!) I felt the humbuckers were dull and nasal - so I swapped out the bridge for what my favorite guitarist uses, a Seymour Duncan. So, random humbucker swapped with whatever SD was available locally, an SH5, which is said to be very bright, aaaaaaaand pretty much the same thing. Did not worry about pickups anymore after that. Found out I just like singlecoil sounds more. An actual difference.
"So I woke up this morning, aaaannd...." grabbed myself a beer? 🤔😁
Love these videos. Would be great to hear your thoughts on Duncan Designed pickups?
Try them out yourself. This dude acts like he knows everything about tone. Don’t go based on reviews. This dude really says there is not difference in pickups but that shit ain’t true.
@@markolivares6943Evidence talks and bullshit walks. Bring out your frequency response charts. 🍿
@@UTubeHandlesSuck Haven't we been told by a certain someone to judge using our ears and not our eyes? But now it's "hey, look what the frequency response chart is showing us".
@@markolivares6943 he's not saying there's no difference. He's not saying that at all
I had a JB in my guitar, then I upgraded to the bareknuckle rebel yell and I swear to you it sounds exactly the same 👍
Hey Glenn, Do you have an opinion about if acoustic guitar wood sounds warmer after it has aged or been exposed to vibration? I heard so from a famous guitar tech friend, so I always put my new acoustics in front of a subwoofer and play music (sub only) into them for days/weeks. But I can't pretend I've heard a difference. There are a few products that do similar. Someone would need to be pretty committed to test acoustic frequency response scientifically before and after vibration and or aging, and since many guitars of the same year/model sound drastically different, it seems useless to compare a modern guitar with an older similar model.
Given the impedance readings on those pickups, the factory pickups in my 2008 Epiphone Les Paul Standard are about the same, if not mildly hotter. But I recently upgraded those factory pickups with a Gibson 498T/490r combination, and talk about resurrection. I'd place the sound of my Epiphone on level with a Gibson LP Studio, at the very least, now that it has the same pickups installed.
Plus, the 498T/490r combo cost me around $260, considerably less than the Shed pickups.
In my opinion, just get the USA-made Gibson pickups I mention above, and avoid the VAT you'll have to pay for the over-priced British pickups.
So I've been a Laney guy for... 10+ years now. My first amp was aaa... I can't remember the model anymore, but it was this reasonably priced tube fusion head. Never liked the sound because of my speaker. Obviously I was too dumb to realize it then and unhappily went on with said speaker for years. I would later buy a VH100R because it was my dream amp, and assumed that the sound would improve dramatically.
I mean yeah, a tube is always a tube and the sound was better, but the dark tone remained unchanged. It's embarrassing how long it took me to realize that it was the speaker, not the amp that I had an issue with.
Ironically, I've come to appreciate the cab's unique sound since then, but I typically split the sound between my Laney half stack and then this Wallace at my usual studio that goes to a Suhr cab. I can't say for sure, but I suspect it's running Vintage 30's because it's got that nasally tone that I love. Anyway, those two together bring up a pretty gnarly sound.
This reminds me of how much better tones I got on my Sterling 7 putting on a Crunch Lab mic from Di marcio It was a different guitar . Okay I have to admit i changed the strings to . Still using it to day ven after buying an Petrucci 7 original This sounds amazing
Pretty sure they'll sound totally different through my Squier strat and FAME Tube 5, which is an epic little combo amp(80 euros 10 years ago bought on the net without ever testing yet probably the best sounding piece of kit I have). Especially for clean tones it sounds super warm which is most of what I care about in sound but then I wouldn't call myself a metalhead, I just ALSO like metal. The Squier I am less happy about so I ended up painting it and messing about with it in other ways. Maybe some 400 dollar humbuckers will fix it. EDIT I'm a musician but not really a guitarist, I just bought it to learn and record a few simple chords and single note stuff so I don't ever have to work with ''guitarists''. If I ever bought a new Eguitar It's probably gonna be a Yamaha Pacifica, A guitarist in a band I once played in had a Pacifica as his main guitar and that was a grand worth of guitar for 250.
I can confidently and definitively debunk one of the claims Glenn makes in this video:
Years ago, I had a guitar with this annoying 'twang' quality to its sound. I'd purchased it for live/studio use, but the odd twang prevented it from matching the rest of the pack as closely as I'd hoped. In an attempt to get rid of (or just reduce) the disparity, I swapped out the bridge pickup for the same model I had in my other guitars.
The pickup swap made the guitar sound... slightly different.. but definitely NOT "better". It also did nothing to mitigate the stupid twang.
Having already ruled out strings as the issue, I opted to swap the original pickup back in and just return the guitar.
Not sure if the annoying thing was caused by the bridge type or some quirk of the circuitry or what. Not worth the wasted time to pinpoint.
Ended up tracking down an identical used guitar to one I already had (which makes consistency during live use pretty straight-forward). Problem solved.
But anyway.. yeah. I did switch a pickup and not think it was an improvement. Illusive and anecdotal, but it can apparently happen.
I was at work today and read the very same article on my break. I had a bit of a chortle.
Come one, Glen, don't hold back! Tell us how you really feel!
:)
I been playing rock guitar since 1968 through Marshall's and fenders .you make many great points that are valid. Back in the beginning. Zeppelin Hendrix abd The Who were condidered heavy tones..You can here the diffrence with a 100 watt Marshal Stack cranked. However. Whan it comes to your generations
Metal tones..The amp definitely covers up the differences in pick up. If you are a loud player who used clean to mild breakup tones. Those Sligh differences can be heard. HIGH GAIn modern metal tones can wipe out the personality of a guitar unique voice. And speaker ir work best to Chang the tone. Zi don't play metal. Hard rock at best. So for me picjups make a difference. But it a matter if taste. I ENJOY YOUR CHANNEL VERY ENTERTAING
The only time I hear any change or improvement, is generally stock pickups to something else. My stock schecter pickups just didn’t “feel” good to play. I installed fishman fluence pickups and I’m happier. It was a genuinely noticeable difference. I think the schecter pickups had an aggressive top end roll off.
Many years ago I had a Gibson SG baritone and swapped the stock pickups with Bareknuckle Impulses. The difference was totally negligible and I was super disappointed. Looked cooler so I just took my disappointment and moved on. Sold the old pickups and sounded basically the same.
I think there is sort of a minimum quality that once you reach it, the end result won’t change much at all. The schecter pickups to fishman was absolutely noticeable in a real way. The Gibson to Bareknuckle was not. Bare knuckles were more expensive too.
I think output and output curve yield different “feel” results and change your gain structure, but tone? Eh. Not really.
The fishman are cool for all the options though, cause I can flip a switch, push/pull a couple pots and change the sound super quick while changing a speaker is a whole thing. :-p
Definitely agree with the premise of this video though. There is no magic in pickups. Just ease of use and slightly different curves.
Pickups in the room which is how i play mostly, definitely sound different. I did test this keeping everything the same. However recorded they sounded the same. Ive gone through many aftermarket pickups as well and there are some ive hated. Including recently the sd nazgul. I’ve also been buying speakers for over 10 years and they do make the biggest difference. I prefer a v30/manowar myself.
Yes, basically with distortion and in the mix I could use my Squier Affinity 200$ Tele with ceramic single coils just as well as my 2500$ Gibson Goldtop with JB+57 Alnico humbuckers ... the Squier will be more noisy though
Pete Thorn does a deep dive into the EVH sound. And he goes into a ton of different pickups. He AB's all of them. Man there is a difference.... In saturation. That's all I could tell. Which is the difference in ohm resistance. The "tone" was the same.
Now... Saying that, there was a couple that sounded like the tone pot was turned down halfway. So that's all the difference I heard.
Love what you do man! Thanks🍻
The thing about "sponsored" ads is what ruined the automotive media here in Australia. We had a handful of enthusiast magazines that served the automotive enthusiast market, including one which managed to carve out quite a reputation and a formidable amount of prestige for itself (Wheels Magazine).
Problem was, we don;t have any kind of legislation requiring publications to disclose if they are receiving funding indirectly from a company in relation to articles they publish. *DIRECTLY*, yes. Indirectly, no.
So, Wheels could publish an article comparing the best mid-size premium sedans on the market and come to the conclusion that the BMW 5 series was a better car than the Mercedes E-class or the Audi A6, but if Mercedes cracked the shits over that result they'd pull all their advertising out of the magazine for the next year and cost Wheels hundreds of thousands of dollars...
So whilst they didn't directly pay Wheels to skew the results of the article, they HEAVILY influenced it anyway.