This isn't true is it? I see your videos typically have around 37k-50k views, perhaps the odd one on a different topic gets more. Whereas you have well over 500k subscribers. Thus it's more true to say that most of your subscribers don't watch your videos. Go figure.
Yeah i wouldn't agree that changing pickups do nothing. I have the same guitar, but one with high output pickups and the other with lower output. There is definitely a difference. Although I do agree that there are other ways to change tone/sound.
In the context of a mix, the pickups matter very little. Without a/b testing a recorded sound, you have no way of knowing if the pickups made a difference at all in your muddy tone.
totally agree, a lot of pickups are pointless but some are absolute gold, can't generalise on this stuff unless you're all about controversy and click bait of course :) but you can't really convince a sound engineer that fixes dynamic tones with fixed frequency boosts and cuts and plug ins, no doubt in the world of post production and mixing it all sounds the same apparently i'm glad this channel is all about sarcasm and positivity or i'd have thought he was serious !
You probably installed the new ones at a different height. Although some pickups sound wildly different from each other others sound very similar. This idea about "in the mix" is just bullshit - I mean yes the music OP generally records nothing much matters or changes anything - it's just overly gained noise, but his ideas are as stupid as a guy who breeds Yorkshire terriers saying that all dogs look the same. All yorkshire terriers look similar. The music he produces all sounds the same, yes - and he's barely got enough hearing left to hear it anyway - he can't even hear himself speak without shouting.
Sometimes its the small details you want to get across. Like the way your G and B string rings out and sustains, on certain chords relative to others. When you just need THAT sound (whatever it may be) and its fundamentally not there, new pickup can absolutely get you there. Especially if youre dealing with mud, icepicks, or microphonic feedback. A shitty pick-up through a Fender Amp will sound different through a VOX, or Marshall. So will a great pick-up! I dont know why im commenting any of this. Like you, i love talking about this shit. Hope Glens doing well.
I am 100% in that boat of people who you helped with music production. I learned recording, mixing, mistakes to avoid and a lot more from this channel and I am grateful that you put the time and effort into showing newbies like me the ropes. My mixes have gone from downright shameful to show to people to something I am proud of and excited to share.
8:41 you totally helped me in my recordings, and not just Metal stuff but my ambient work too. There are so many things I’ve learned but I think they all come down to one category: simplifying. I’ve been good at that in life ever since I began having severe facial pain when I was 18, then heart failure at 26. However, the key to simplifying is knowing what matters and what doesn’t. In situations like mine, that tends to be obvious if you have a clear head. In recording, not so much. I was constantly was struck with (digital) choice paralysis and it made what was supposed to be my escape another source of frustration. However, thanks to your knowledge and experience I am now able to get the sound I want quickly and get on with the fun part, creating. So thanks Glenn. Despite the hate you get there are those of us that have been actually impacted in a positive light and in more ways than you know. Plus you always make me laugh and laughter is the…well you know. 🤘
Hi again Glenn. I just uploaded real quick pickup comparison using ML800 high gain setting with their overdrive pedal on half way. First Pickup is the Gibson Slash Burstbucker and the second is whatever pickup someone put in this Epiphone Les Paul, both in the bridge position with 500k pots. There's a big difference here, the pickup in Epiphone pickup is bright and thin and also noisy compared to the Gibson pickup. I just play the same chord, and it's just to show you that pickups make a difference. Cheers! Ignore how unprofessional the video is! haha
Just clicked. Got "This channel doesn't have any content." Please make sure we're hearing the CABINET AND SPEAKER.... not the acousitc properties of the guitar. This is a VERY common mistake made over and over and over and over and over again.
@SpectreSoundStudios Glenn it's definitely there under videos. I just had my partner check. It's an ML Sound Lab Plugin of a JCM800, yep amp and speaker. No tricks here.
Thank you for this video SO MUCH! I wrote a question on your last video like this, and seeing this video that question and more has been answered! thank you SO VERY MUCH not just for that, but for your channel!
GLENN!!!! I have been recording for over 20 years at this point, and your videos have helped me with mixing guitars all the time. I am always learning new stuff, as EVERYONE should.
Glen you and spectre academy is the reason why i know how to record and mix, i owe everything i know for recording because of SMG and i greatly appreciate this world you've let me in to. Thank you
Yeah, even on a VST, moving the virtual mic around makes a massive change in tone. Listen with your ears instead of "mojo" bullshit. Idk what's so hard to understand about this. Btw, you did help me better understand how to use drum samples (on one of your critique streams), and I have a new album coming out soon. Thanks!
Only thing here is bullshit is that people argue from their own perspective as the whole truth. Yes, pickups dont necessarily make difference in studio or live situation cause the studio gear, mixing and other stuff dictates the outcome. Yes, the pickups sound vastly different when you are playing alone home learning and rehearsing. This is why mostly guitarist's change pickups because 99% of time they hear their guitar is when they are practicing. Not in studio making albums or playing live. When I play death metal riffs at home I dont want to hear some weak ass Seymour Duncan JB sound that lacks tight low end on palm mutes. I want to hear some gnarly Black Winter, Nazgul or EMG 81 sound. No, you cant EQ pickups to sound the same with EQ pedal. I challenge everyone claiming this to make a video where you EQ Ibanez V8 pickup to sound as EMG 81 or Fluence Modern with single EQ pedal. Not going to happen.
@@raakareiska9804 So I went to your channel and watched all of your highly scientific AB pickup comparison videos and I'm convinced.. that you don't know what you're talking about. A lot of words and no sources. In fact, you challenged some invisible person to make the video you want to see instead of providing evidence of what you're blabbering about. It's the "my god can kick your god's ass" argument. And if/when Glenn does make your highly specific video, you'll claim he "didn't do it right" or "this proves nothing" when it doesn't work out in your favor. Anyways, wanna buy my custom pickups? Made from real fairy dust, only $10,000! You'll have to hear it to believe it, and no, we won't provide you ANY audio examples!
Glenn thank you for all the advice on production. You've saved me hundreds on plugins since the free ones you've highlighted like amped roots can do the job just fine and also saved me from having mixes that sound like a sad tin can with badly recorded mono guitars. Now I have solid mixes going that breathe. I literally said "CROMS BALLS!" When I heard my guitars suddenly pop out bright and clean for the first time!!
Upgrading the PU-s in my budget and first-ever guitar to SD-s was life-changing. It started to actually inspire me, no matter how bad of a player I was, and I think that is an important aspect. That said, I think what you have to ask yourself is if you need different PU-s at all. Yes, there's a difference between PU-s meant for different genres, but then you might as well keep different guitars for those. EQ-ing a Gibson 498 to sound like an SD Nazgul may take a while to figure out, and you may still lack something, because the source is lacking. EQ-ing a Seymour SH4 to sound like an SH5 is literally 5 seconds. It is more about EQ-ing the amp in the first place at that point - which you might want to do before a performance anyways. Sure, get multiple guitars for your Pink Floyd and Metallica tribute bands if you want to. Buying top-quality brand metal PU to switch your other top-quality metal PU is just an expensive way of avoiding setting up a certain amp/cab combo you are familiar with.
The whole thing about pickups is I really do get different frequency responses depending on the impedance. Doesn't matter if it's a $20 humbucker or $150 one, an 8K is darker than a 4K, a 13K is darker than an 8K, and a 26K has way too little high frequency response to be used with a standard tuned 6 string. They're hot as hell, but the reason no one uses 26+K is they sound like lukewarm ass. There's a good reason why most passive metal pickups are ~8K-11.5K. This is one of those things that's not opinion, it's electronic fact. This is also why companies and people turn to active pickups with ~8K-11K coils.
8:35 not only has your channel helped me with my recordings, but I’ve passed on your advice to other musicians and engineers. I suggested the 5 foot equilateral triangle monitor set up to someone who has been trying to mix songs for commercial applications and it made her mixes sound a lot better and a lot more accurate.
Thank you so much for the shout out! If you hosted something I would definitely want to attend. I know I could benefit a lot from a boot camp experience to improve as a musician. My new band had our 1st paid gig last night, and I always go to your channel for tips before performing.
Glad you are still uploading these funny and interesting videos, Glen. You helped me understand that good gear matters but it doesn't have to be the big money legacy brands to do the trick. Of course, I have an Epiphone Prophecy and all BOSS amp equips, which I guess is technically big name legacy brands, but it's not GIBSON + MESA and still sounds heavy AF on stage
When I bought my first guitar, a cheap-ish 250$ Ibanez, the pickups in them were not terrible, but lacked a bit of clarity. I upgraded that quitar with a pair of DiMarzio Crunch Lab(some ppl hate them, I love 'em) and it cleaned the sound, you can hear in the chords that they got cleaner and the same amp sims I used sounded way better. Last month I got a brand new Ibanez with another set of DiMarzio in it, DiMarzio Fusion Edge Humbuckers, to be precise. They have, in the same amp sims that I played for years, pretty much the same sound as the CL, with some minor differences in tone and even more clarity in the chords. We are talking about stock pickpups, DiMarzio CL6 and DiMarzio Fusion Edge. Do you notice the difference in tone? yes. Can you swear by it? No, I would not. The amp(amp sim in my case) and especially IR makes way more difference than the pickups. I think this is the entire idea behind these A/Bs. Invest as much money as u can in an instrument that holds the tuning(you don't want to submit out of tune quadruple guitar tracks to the mix engineer, because you will get a polished quad out of tune tracks), get a decent pair of headphones or monitors, to carve out a good sound in the first place, get a good amp sound and an even better cabinet sound(try combining cabinets, experiment with IRs, blending more than one or even two can do wonders), once you did all that, THEN think about the humbuckers upgrade. Just my opinion.
I have to say you’ve helped me a ton both recording and mixing. Your series on recording drums had me change my mic position on snare and toms and it was night and day. I also remixed a track after your input on the Monday Mix Review, sent it to my friend a co-writer and he was just like “yeah, that’s it. Don’t change a thing.” Thanks so much!
I did a test on a few different speakers where I had a "0" hour, 1 hour, 2 hour, 4 hour and 8 hour break in (a kick and snare loop to give big transients). There was *a* shift in how the speaker sounded, but not drastic. The 0 hour sounded more "crisp" than 8 hour, but not by much.
Just found you, Dude. You're hilarious, I love the roasting and the ranting, definitely the cussing. Thanks for keeping it real and being someone who just wants to have fun and share knowledge. I look forward to all the laughs and hanging out!
I always love watching you dude, whenever I need a laugh. You gave me one this morning, and whenever you have to deal with winie idiots, especially when they don't get sarcasm. Rock on.
You've helped my music production with your years of experience so much. From live drums, to a kick mic a foot away from the bass cab, which gave me that nasty gnarly grindy over driven bass sound I've been after for years. It's glorious. I can't thank you enough for all your priceless wisdom. Hopefully soon I'll have some completed demos n extra cash to get on the mix review.🎃🍻
A studio recording engineer I knew once said changing pickups gives you the same perceived effect as flipping the air cleaner cover on your car does. Even though it does little to nothing, as long as you perceive it does, then you can proudly justify doing it.
Happy to hear that some content on bass tone coming soon. Honestly hearing about guitar pickups is getting REALLY old. Soooo let's hear about bs with bass pickups! love to see more content on bass anyhow.
I’ve been watching for a few years and at first I thought to myself god this guy is a d-bag but, gave the channel more time to grow on me. As time went on I started learning alot from you and really enjoy the content. Now I find myself searching and waiting for your videos ! Thankyou for being amazing brother !
Hey, how about some "How To Hook Stuff Up" videos ? I've been thinking about buy a compressor but I just don't know how I'd hook it up to my interface. And would I need to set up a new routing connection with cubase ?
I've learnt so much about recording from you! The biggest thing by far was about creating space in a mix for bass by high passing guitars. In my early mixes I got a little stuck on the idea of trying to capture the sound of how guitars sounded live. Thanks to you I realised I was barking up the wrong bush. I've even started to apply the same thinking to my live sound and it has really helped with my bands on stage sound and my ability to hear my guitar better on stage. Thanks and fuck you.
mshea_audio’s comment is spot-on, i came to the same conclusion ever since you opened my eyes to the impact speakers have on tone. Eagerly awaiting your video on this!
what i learner over the years messing around with gear , guitars , pickups, pedals , mics , amps , cabs , rack equipment , building pedals myself , even making pickups myself just to try it . what really matters is , fresh strings , pickup position (neck/bridge) , gain of the amp , eq / boost infront of the amp , the clipping method (not op amp of tube or shit like that , i´m talking asymetrical , symetrical , FWrectified , rail to rail clipping , that kinda stuff ) THE TONE STACK OF THE AMP !!! , eq AFTER the preamp (in fx loop) , Speakers/cabs , mic placement , and last but not least TIGHT PLAYING !! FFS thx for doing your thing glenn !
thanks for all the production and recording tips. ive been doing it for about a month. i dont play metal but most of your stuff seems still applicable. im demoing a single and working on some backing tracks for some indie covers to live stream a set. theres a huge lack of musicians in my area so i just got all the instruments myself. i just record everything di and i use midi drums. i have everything in my livingroom/bedroom, because my place is small so this is the only space i have.
I literally saw a video in my feed of a pickup maker on RUclips responding to you about this right before I clicked on this video. Definitely making some waves Glenn, keep it up 🤘
😂😂😂 Glen's sarcastic humor is just awesome!!!!! And HE IS HELPING YOU FOR FREE with real pearls!!!! This guy has a lot of EXPERIENCE! That's something money can't buy !!!!! Consider this! You unthankful ***** of *****😂😂
I learn a ton from you! Even if it's not recording stuff (I watch a lot of videos, it's hard to track down where all of my knowledge comes from), I learn other things. I wouldn't have had the idea for a "control guitar" if it weren't for guys like you and Jim Lill putting in the work to bust the myths in music gear. And the point that I really wanted to get across with the control guitar is that if every single guitar review features the new guitar head to head with a different specific guitar, maybe people will eventually get the hint that humbuckers pretty much all sound the same, and single coils all sound pretty much the same, so they'll get in the habit of asking about the rest of the chain instead of something magical about the guitar.
Hey Glen, I sent you a mix last week and you made a comment about the snare being tuned too low. I used some pitch correction on it and it made a big difference and brought a little extra life to the mix so thanks! My old ears didn't know what I was missing.
GLEEEEENNNNNN!!!! Ok, so you me realise something I wasn't totally sure about in the past. Because to "MY EARS" my pickups sounded different in gear, and this was somewhat confirmed when jamming once and I switched guitars, one with a Fender Talon loaded with Dimazio's (Super 3 and Superdistortion) and then went to my Washburn 333 Dimebolt (stock pups), and difference was night and day... This might have been the only time I, and the other guys noticed such a difference. But I often brought up the Keith Merrow videos here and so did you, there is a very noticeable change. You mentioned you would recreate this test, but still waiting!!
I recently bought a Harley Benton guitar and immediately after trying it ordered a replacement pickup... Know why? If was fcking noisy as hell. So I replaced it with an EMG. Yes, the EMG cost almost as much as the guitar, but the noise floor was reduced dramatically. And no, it was not the issue with the grounding - I removed the bridge to check if the black paint was scratched off in the contact spot, and it was. So it was just a crappy pickup. So that is one reason to replace pickups - to get an actual playable guitar :D
Pickups make a lot more difference than just the sound. A lot of it is just the feel and response. Stay metal ray did a pretty good demonstration of this. He admitted that in a mix, the tones did sound all that different, but he still felt they responded pretty differently. I have a lot of guitars, and the response I get from my PAF style pickups is alot different than what I get on my higher output pickups. I can adjust the gain all I want on the amp, but the PAFs still have a softer attack and never get quite as tight. This can heavily affect how I play and write.
Response is one thing, but if you think your tone is gonna sound much better through a recording by dropping a bunch of money on some custom Bareknuckles or Lollars versus some production model Duncans or DiMarzios, you’re kidding yourself.
@@damienalvarez2957 never said otherwise. Though, in some cases, it does actually make a big difference. I’ve swapped pickups in some guitars and was instantly like “wow, this sounds exactly the same as the previous.” I hve a Dunable Yeti that I’ve tried several pickups in(already had all these laying around the house) and it basically sounds the same, no matter what. Whereas, I’ve had the total opposite effect, as well. I have a Les Paul that was really bright and lacking a little body/low end with the Gibson burstbuckers. Swapped it with a Duncan 59/custom hybrid and it was like a light switch flipped. Now it’s my most low end heavy guitar. Just sounds huge, aggressive, less harsh but tons of mid content and harmonics. There isn’t a one size fits all authority on pickups. Every guitar reacts differently. Also, recorded mic’d up tone vs in the room is a totally different scenario. If you are not enjoying the pickups in your guitar, you aren’t gonna be as inspired to play….just like if your guitar didn’t play well due to a bad setup.
Would be cool to see a test with breaking in the speakers, new vs "broken-in", maybe playing some stuff through a loop pedal (one that saves the recording even when powered off) so that you eliminate human error and even the strings being fresh/old. Also the loop pedal pedal will never get tired no matter how long you leave it on for!
Kohle did that. Minimal difference. He also had Jensen speaker's engineer chime in. Just play the cabinet normally for a few hours, the rest does nothing. Not worth investing extra effort beyond that.
@@jakacresnar5855 This. We see no such "break-in" tests anywhere, because they actually don't make sense - because there is not much to hear. Should not make any noticeable difference whatsoever. If it would be different, the speakers would be, uhm, kind of trashy? I expect any transducer to be as accurate as it can be from the beginning to the end of it's lifetime. Have you ever tried to "break-in" a microphone? Exactly. Nobody does this. Same reason. Do they wear off? Sure. After years, many years, in best case.
Coming from the car audio world, there definitely is a change in speaker break in vs fresh soft parts. A dats v3 can measure T/S parameters, and is pretty cheap. Usually a drop in FS and slight q changes. It does make a difference in car audio for sure, we break in speakers then pull parameters to model them in winisd, or bassbox6 because if you do it before break in, it can skew results.
I really appreciate your channel..lots of good information! I do believe, after 40 plus years of playing guitar, it's been my observation that pick ups do sound differently. I stuck a Telecaster neck pup into an EVH Wolfgang..surely not the same as a humbucker! Interesting tones for sure. Keep sharing..love the content!
The thing that I learned from you that improved my workflow, mixes, and even saved my bacon, is to ALWAYS get a D.I. of any electric guitars and basses. That way if you got a great great performance, but the tone just won't gel, you can re-amp it with the necessary tone tweaks, sorted.
I very recently got an Edwards(ESP) LP copy from a Japanese guitar shop, shipped to USA. The shipping cost was $200, and the guitar was $1000. I didn't have to pay any additional customs fees. I've heard that this is hit or miss in the USA... but this is my second guitar from overseas without any explicit customs/import fees.
Pickups are just wires wrapped around magnets - but how many winds, the gauge of wire, the alloy type of magnet, the strength of that magnet, and the winding method - there are many ways to make a pickup, and the changes affect the tone. Yes, you can mimic tonal changes with a parametric eq - but you could say the same thing about speakers.
I have just bought a Harley Benton custom DC and my band mates couldn't tell me what guitar I was playing when comparing that to a Gibson SG and an Epiphone SG with dimazio pickup in a blind test. They all pretty much sounded the same. What did make a big positive change in my guitar sound was fitting 2 WGS retro 30 and 2 vintage 30 speakers into my 4x12. I'm very happy that I listened to what Glen had to say 🤘😊
I'm a guitar player (non-professional) and a few years ago an audio technician recommended your channel - and I've watched every episode since. He was the firts person to tell some truths about recording process and why guitar players screw up a lot of the job. He was very polited, but clear: there's no way to get good results if you don't put effort in it. I have to admit: once I put my ego aside and started thinking about the recording and mixing process, my recordings got soooo much better. A good D.I. (sold an amp I wasn't using to buy a J48 and an IMP2), a well tuned guitar (every take!) with new strings, good and reliable cables, a lot of practicing before pressing the "rec" button and recording every track/line more then once (sometimes 4, with 2 different guitars). Well, it worked. Got a long way ahead, but feels like i'm on the right one. Thanks for the advice and keep up the good work! Greetings from Brazil!
You helped me make better mixes in a way. Most of what I took from you is leaving in things instead of editing everything and aligning everything to a grid. I think that really gives everyone their own sound.
You should also bring the control guitar for professional setup (maybe fret leveling) to some luthier and get some measurements for string height and neck bow. That way you can also accurately compare the setups without having to resort to "strings FEEL a bit lower here". If you have measurements, you can keep the control guitar setup exactly the same as the seasons change (because necks do move a bit). This whole idea of having a reference guitar is great!! Just you know, you need to make sure that the reference does not change across time.
Ive been mixing and making music since before I graduating high school, I've been using all of your tips and tricks except live drums (not trying to buy drum mics) but I've been making much better mixes as of late especially with the tips you have been giving in your more recent videos
@ 8:00 in, is this sarcasm too? Just busting your balls, thanks for all the effort on your channel, i don’t record metal but i still find tons of value in what you’re putting out. Much appreciated.
On the topic of things that can affect the guitar tone, I recently found out that the cable I had been using for years to connect the guitar to the gear was the cause of my muddy tone (both clean and with distortion): the low end was flat, the mids sounded "funneled", the top end was muffled and there was a clear lack of definition. The cable malfunctioned during a rehearsal, so I borrowed an unused one from the other guitar player in the band and WOW, what a huge difference: a full low end, ringing mids and a crisp top end like I've never heard before, both in the cleans and the distortions! To quote Ola: "will it chug?" Well, it didn't but now it does! At first I was very sceptical that there could be such a difference between two cables so I tried with other cables and the tonal characteristics remained unchanged. I did repair the malfunctioning cable and even made some changes to how the wires were connected, tried it again but it still gave me the old muddy tone. Throughout the years I've been changing pedals, amps, cabs and even speakers in an attempt to "cure" the problem but with little changes. The most noticeable ones were when I changed from a tube amp to an SS amp and when I swapped the G12-T 75's in my 2x12" with a set of Jensens from a BG412V 4x12" cab (thanks Glenn for "opening my eyes" to the speakers' importance). The overall sound changed but the tone didn't improve a lot. Never in my life I would've thought that a cable could cause that but it did!
I recently bought a new cheap Jackson. I played it for months at home and in the rehearsal room, in a three-piece band and even with its cheap stock pick ups it didn't sound bad. The "problem" for me reached my ears when I tried in the rehearsal room together with a second guitar, and at that moment I realized that I couldn't distinguish what I was playing even though I tried to equalize differently. By changing the pick ups I can finally hear my guitar clearly and distinctly. But before rehersing with another guitar I couldn't figure it out.
Kindly share the live mix you recorded both with the old pickups and the new pickups. I’ve never had an issue that couldn’t be solved with an eq pedal, so I would love to hear what you’re speaking of.
Pickup construction can and will determine many different characheristics in tone. Just because Glenn doesn't understand it and doesn't have a disciplined ear, does not mean that these differences do not exist.
Interesting issue! But are u saying u couldn't distinguish ur guitar from the other dude's guitar OR that u couldn't distinguish ur guitar from the overall sound? 'Cos if the former, that would suggest ur tones were too similar to each other, thus changing ur pickup u got a different enough tone to cut thru the sound better.
In the rehersal room context with two guitars i was not able to recognize the sound of my guitar, we play the exact same gear and same settings. Jackson Ceramic stock pick ups sounded muddy toghether with an old Ibanez equipped with Di Marzios. For approssimatively the same price i bought a Made in China Kramer striker, and It was perfect out of the box even in the rehersal room context. I'm sure you can probably fix every lack of cheap pick ups in a studio context when working in a full mix, but when you actually play with the full band at High volume some more issues can occur, at least in my experience.
Turned my bassist on to your show... sent him the heavy drums playlist as he is engineering our recordings... he subscribed... yes... they can learn... 😂
I had totally been that guy who was copy and pasting one track. Working on recording my first full track and mixing it. Used the 3 guitar tack method and the bass like the MOP mix and it sounds MASSIVE. So THANK YOU for helping me make better mixes and tracks. I think you’ve covered it some in a video but if you haven’t already or don’t already have a video in the pipeline can you do one on what your levels are with the bass tracks. Thanks again Glenn much love to ya and thanks for the videos helping make the work week a little nicer.
I honestly have learnt that the most important thing is being able to recognize the tone you want and knowing how to recreate it. In an amp sim world where I use a full amplitube 5 set-up with tons of amps, eq options, there are so many different ways you can tweak tone so going through the effort of changing pickups is really the least efficient way of doing that. That being said, I am working on switching some pickups in one of my guitars for some soldering practice
Just read this and couldn't agree more. I can make most guitars and amps sound the same because I have a tone in my head now. Problem is it took me a very long time to get there but it becomes your style.
LOL! That announcement was funny as shit! Sarcasm. Gotta say, that's part of the charm of your show. I love it, even if you think we bass players are... Well, you know.
I think guitarist use words like warm and colder, hot , tone , volume, gain, can all be the same thing and used interchangeably by most, like the pickup height thing it boils down to its louder the closer you get it to the strings this could be described as hotter but someone who plays clean might move the pickup lower because it “warms” the clean tone up when it’s similar to rolling the volume back because so we got all of these buzz words to describe volume in different ways. Most people playing active pickups are playing metal and the fact that the magnets being weaker so they can run the pickup right up to the strings, some people are going to love it. I can’t remember if sustain was testing in Glenn and Colins pickup video. I’ve always thought I needed a super hot bridge pickup but I always wind up setting the height quite a bit lower than recommended probably due to me leaning towards a brighter tone , I mean turning up the treble on the amp. I’ve bought Duncan’s and EMGs and yeah I thought that they sounded clearer than the stock pickups but maybe it’s because I was listening better with the new pickups installed and also more than likely a new set of strings were installed while doing the pickup swap. I would bet that most people probably test their new pickups with brand new strings too further distancing themselves from the scientific process. Glenn isn’t doing this for people who have spent hundreds or thousands on pickups and other widgets he’s doing so the people who are getting into it, can spend their money on things that will make a bigger difference. Guitarists are skeptical, insecure, superstitious and stubborn we’ve been sold amps pedals , pickups, and tone wood these are all things that are “sexy” and things other players can see and will be impressed by. No one really ever talked about speakers when I was coming up maybe cabs a little but very little was said about speakers. The thing is all the musicians who inspired us recorded in studios where “pros” had a room full of speaker cabs and I remember more than one interview with my heroes talking about how many amps and cabs they demoed before production, it’s always been in the speakers cabs and mic technique. Why is everyone so defensive about whatever snake oil they bought ? I appreciate Glenn’s reviews and opinions however I do think he’s a little hard Gibson at least there paint . They use lacquer that would be impossible to achieve the flawless finish of a poly .
Sometimes pickups do make a difference. I have an SX explore shaped guitar that sounded like a poplar branch with strings on it. I thought it was just some piece of junk. I put an emg 81 in it, it sounds like a regular guitar now. It is now one of my favorite fixed bridges.
Me too i has a poplar LTD EX50 that looked the part but sounded like a fart. Switching to EMG's was night and day i don't know if you can hear it in a recording but when i play through my amp there is no comparison.
Hey Glenn, love your content! Do you think we could get a new 500 Series video? What are the good essentials for 2023/2024 and all that for people (like me) who are considering stepping into this type of gear. Keep rocking, man!
Hi Glen, I submit that pickups more affect headroom and tone at the extremes and that speakers are basically THE factor. What about eq pedals before or in the effects loop? My experience is in the effects loop, it simulates changing the speaker. What about in the front end (preamp)? More gain perhaps pushing it or pushing those mid frequencies?
I posted about how a 10-band EQ in the effects loop drastically affects the sound hitting the speaker yesterday. For some reason, Glenn dismissed this because the "low end is too complex". However, this is not my experience at all. nor the sound engineer who suggested this to me. I also posted the differences between the pickups from my old Epiphone (I don't know what they are as they are not stock) vs my Gibson Slash model at high gain and there's clearly a big difference. He said my channel has no videos (this isn't true) everyone has been able to see it other than Glenn. I feel a bit disappointed and I did have people reply that maybe he has some kind of bias for speaker companies that we may not know about. I would never accuse him of that but for someone who is serious about tone, I cannot ignore that a good pickup at the start of the signal chain makes a huge difference. I personally don't always want to carry around an EQ pedal to knock out frequencies I don't like when playing by myself etc. Only playing live would I put an EQ pedal in the effects loop, depending on the room and the band.
Hi Glenn love you brutal honesty about all things and appreciate you sharing about being bullied awesome dude and I got a harley benton ja-20 hh active and mine arrived without any ground/earth issues and I love it please keep up the good work being honest about all music things mate greetings from Cumbria UK
When do pickups matter? Clean tone? Edge of breakup tone? I know this is a metal channel, however, some of us play multiple styles. So including information on this channel that is not specific to metal can still be valuable information for metal heads like myself. I would appreciate if Glen had discussions not specifically tied to just metal. I don't think the metal heads would lose interest in the channel, but more folks like myself could benefit further from Glen's experience which most certainly isn't restricted to metal.
There may be some differences in clean tone, but as soon as you start turning up the gain, differences start to go out the window. And like Glenn mentioned, we can control gain and EQ, so why spend so much money on pickups when we can change how they sound externally for no extra cost? I don't think about how pickups "sound" anymore, I just go for the output. I built a single pickup Fender Strat and put in a $20-30 Wilkinson humbucker. Sounds like a humbucker to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah maybe swapping from single-coil to single-coil theres a tiiiny difference but going from a SC to a Humbucker is much bigger Glenn has never mentioned this, its always REEEE DONT CHANGE YOUR PICKUPS sure dude
@@MichaelSheaAudio I have a 2005 epiphone that I swear even with high gain, I can hear a huge difference between that and a friend's 70s Gibson les paul. I can be pretty certain, most of that difference is in the pickups, not all of it, but a measurable amount. My Schecter solo II blackjack sounds way better than the epi, same amp. VHT/Freyette Pitbull 100 CLX. It isn't the most high gain amp, but in tone, it is crushing the John Petrucci Mesa JP-2C. I do not like the JP-2C at all. Need more experimentation with it, but the VHT is so easy to dial in tone.
@@hunter00143 Yes, he has. That was the point of one of his blind tests. We all knew which one was a single coil guitar and which ones were with humbuckers, but nobody could name them. They were all shit guitars, but people tought they were expensive big brand guitars. Nobody complained about the sound, but the difference between a single coil and a humbucker is something we all instinctively knew because theres a difference and Glenn agrees.
I would love to see a comparison between pickups that are highly micro-phonic compared to pickups that are not. From what I would expect, pickups that have those characteristics will behave a little more like a microphone (hence, microphone/micro-phonic). I know for the majority of the cookie cutter metal bands would never consider using micro-phonic pickups because they are technically malfunctioning but if you REALLY wanted to get a tone change in the pickups, that's where I would try it.
So, I don't play much metal, and my favorite guitars are Gretsches. I used to have a 71 Superchet, and everybody who heard that thing swore it had some of the sweetest tones ever. I and a friend of mine have both had multiple archtops along those lines since (some Gretsch some not), and tried many different Gretsch pickups, filtertrons, both potted and not, lots of variations, but never found another that sounded "as good". Its really hard to be sure, time clouds your memories, its hard to identify exactly what the characteristics of those pickups were that we were all so fond of, but we've speculated that they might've been microphonic, and picking up the resonance of the big hollow body's acoustical chamber. In that context, I would think they were an advantage.
Your videos have helped get so much better with my mixes and has taught me everything I know about recording guitars helped save me money buying pickups on my second guitar. I don't regret it on my first guitar because i mostly did it for the bad ass look. You also helped change my world on how to use compression and inspired me to go local for my hardware compressor and bought a delta mu compressor the mdc-1 built by my friend mitch at mitch davis circuits to get a unique sound. He is in Canada and has a reverb you should check it out it's amazing.
I’ve never seen a “broken in speaker tone change” test. I’ve always heard, “you’ve gotta breaker the speaker in! You’ve gotta break in your headphones!” And based on that, it seem more likely that over time you learn your speakers and headphones. Similar how you learn your mics, learn mic positioning, or learning compression. I’d love to see if video actually testing it if you have the time.
Ill have to see if I can find it, but some one did that test for IEM's and found zero change in frequency response, but did find that the recommended break in time was almost always a few days longer than the time in which you can return the product without a fault, but who knows with large speakers being made out of a bunch of different materials.
Love the one man army vibe here. I'll hang around a bit. I am following this whole debacle about pickups for a while now and it stumps me a bit that nobody actually thought about from what perspective people actually talk. To me it comes down to this: From the guitarists point of view: there is a bigger difference in tonality between types of pickups (single coil/humbucker/active/...) There is a smaller difference between subtypes (hotrail, lipstick,...) This difference becomes smaller (gernerally) when driven hard. The type of guiter build makes a bigger difference. It also affects how you play and alters the sound in that way. I mean with this that every type of guitar handles The amp alters your tone greatly when driven, and more when driven harder. The speaker cabinet with speakers alter your sound in a unique way that is not deniable in the end mix. The player itself also has more influence on the sound then a pickup for instance (that is at least my feeling) The end product is heard by your ears on a specific position The sound engineer: All of the above kind of drops off, because the sound engineer doesn't give a rat's ass about what a guitarist thinks of his tone. The engineer is given a certain sound, which is further affected by all the new elements when a guitar is recorded. Mic's used angles towards the speaker of these mic's Position to the mic to the speaker (distance in x, y and z) blends of all of the above post processing added. the end product of this sound is heard on full range speakers in a very specific and often specially designed environment. The thing is that when you start mixing the sound of a whole band, the tone of a guitar is getting less an less important when you are getting closer to the mastering phase. All the debacle about tone in the end is reduced to something that serves the band and neglects what a guitarist feels like his tone should be although the tone still influences the end mix. And that influence is mostly "flavoured" by (the amp and) the type of speaker, certainly if we talk about metal. High gain just takes away a lot of the source signal. A trained ear can hear the difference (human hearing can distinguish quite more then what you see on a graph), but the "tone" just not that important in an end mix. It has run through so many filters to serve a total sound instead of the tone of an individual (the guitarist). This said, the individual (sound) is still important in the end product. But too many guitar players are so self absorbed with their "tone" that they just can not fathom the idea of being only 1/12th to 1/64th or even 1/128th of a band's sound if you take it purely mathematical. And I say this as a guitarist. I've been there, being frustrated that my "tone" wasn't there in the studio. After a while I learned to alter my sound to serve the band instead of it all being about "my" sound. Now, I'm not a lead player, I'm a rythm guitarist (something guitarists also have trouble admitting to in gerneral) so I rather serve a band then to be in the centre of it anyway. I like my tone but I understand I'm part of something more then my "unique" being. Sound engineers have trouble with ego's in a studio as it will pull them out of their creative work constantly. It s recommended to have a healhty communication between band and engineer so that they will challenge each other to get to a high end product, but ego's from both sides might end up in a product that nobody involved might fully back up. Ego's can come from both the band and the engineer (I once put aside a sound engineer because he was neglecting his own hearing loss for instance and it helped him solve some personal issues in the end tbh, you know, cheap studios is also a thing to think about)). But I sence that band members (more specifically, lead players and singers) have the biggest ego's. And to be really honest? I think the studio you work with actually defines your sound way more then a freaking pickup. And I get it, I also used to buy the latest Seymour Duncan because it promised me to be a "screaming demon". And it was a good pickup. Just not worth the money I payed for it. But that is just me maybe. People and wanting to hear the truth isn't always a combo that works.
I’m really interested in ordering a few of those empty Harley Benton cabs, but am worried about potentially excessive import charges ordering them to Canada - anyone have any examples of duty costs ordering from Thomman into Canada?
Glen, thanks for a great channel and I love your no nonsense calling out of bullshit. I am in no way a heavy metal guy but I seriously appreciate your take on things. One observation, back in the day headphone burn in was quite a big thing. Maybe it’s not now but I am not sure why as the laws of physics ain’t changed. The idea that the sonic character changed due to increased flexibility of the speaker cone seems fair enough. As speakers are just headphones for people with big ears, maybe there’s some detective work or bullshit exploding to be done. Thanks again for a great channel.
I do use active pickups in all my guitars for playing live. For me, I hear and feel a difference when playing live but can't hear any difference when it comes to a fully recorded mix. I've used a mixture of different guitars with both active and passive pickups for recording and after all the processing, mixing and mastering no one can tell where the PRS with Seymour Duncan passives end and the ESP with active EMG's begins.
7:40 watching and hearing this. I'm from Israel, watching for many years. I felt like you might have been referring to our current war, and you've made me feel just a bit happier. Hey if not, all good, lot's happening in the world at the moment. Just to let you know your words, whatever actual subject they were aimed at, made me feel some happiness.
Hey Glenn I appreciate what you've taught me over the last 5 or so years I've been watching! Just wanted to mention my client was ecstatic after hearing your feedback on our track "Astro Babe!" That recording is a testament to cheap gear. No single piece worth more than $400 on the used market other than a akg414 I was borrowing from a friend at the time. The guitar I played was a $150 Revelle--whatever that is--going through a katana 50watt. I heavily credit your emphasis on mic placement when it comes to capturing the right tone for a recording!
Its sad how many people dont understand the pickups dont matter thing, its a recording studio based show, when mic'd up and under gain and in a mix the difference is minimal at best, and no amp ever sounds the exact same in that situation as it does in a room, hell room to room has variables. Drums are same way, the way they sound behind the kit is different in front of the kit, and again in a mix. People sure are special, and love to argue and be know it alls on the internet. Love the channel.
Is it possible to get a tutorial on the singularity bass? There’s some things I’m struggling to get out of it. Like there’s no key switch for slides, and I can’t seem to get any changes out of changing the velocity. If it was possible to get a tutorial, it would be very helpful.
Years back I made the comment on a guitar forum that pickups were just wire and magnets and you would have thought I wipped out my P P and started urinating on people. I've bought my share od Duncans and Dimarzios but at the end of the day I have become conetnt with stock and budget replacement pickups. I learned the hard way.
Honestly, would love it (when he drops the inevitable “how I achieve my bass tone” video) if it’s just a 5 second video of him holding a new pack of strings. Notes: I’m a bass player, and yes I put more time into proofreading this comment than thinking of the comment itself lol.
I’m not even a metal guy. I play punk. But I love your channel. I use reaper based solely on your recommendation. You are a valuable resource. I would also say, watch other channels too. Music is in the ear of the beholder. Glen may get you to one place you want to go in one area, some other guy might get you where you want to go in another. I can’t speak for him, but I feel like Glen would agree with this.
@SpetreSoundStudios normally a manufacturer for PRO audio speakers does a little break in before shipping it out to the world. The main thing that's going to change is the suspension will loosen up a little. This will probably result in a bit of TS parameter shift namely Fs or the free air resonance. If you have access to a tool that will let you do swept impedance measurements you can take a baseline measurement buy hanging the driver free air, then run low power 20Hz signal through it for 24 hours. Then come back and run another impedance sweep. Impedance sweeps can tell one a lot about the driver, and you can even see massive impedance shifts depending on the enclosure. You can also do swept frequency response charts on the drivers, with tools from B&K, or if the TEF is still being manufactured. Pro Audio Analyzers are neat! That said a change in the Fs of the driver isn't going to make that much difference in an enclosure unless for some reason there was a radical shift in the drivers mechanical characteristics and made it un-suitable for the cabinet you're using it in, which isn't something that typically happens.
Almost 50% of Spectre Sound viewers are NOT subsribed. I need your help to grow this channel! Please hit the Subscribe button!
If pickups dont matter, why does the YJM sound so fuckin good???
And you're pretty lucky. Most channels have a 30/70% ratio (sub/non-sub). 😉😉
This isn't true is it? I see your videos typically have around 37k-50k views, perhaps the odd one on a different topic gets more. Whereas you have well over 500k subscribers. Thus it's more true to say that most of your subscribers don't watch your videos. Go figure.
I’d believe in unicorns if Glen told me they existed with that face in the thumbnail 😳
Tay!!!!!!! Awesome seeing you here
Vampires are real, how else do you explain all the dead unicorns!
@@PooNinjawasn't that trolls?
I'm convinced you're subscribed to all the same channels as I am at this point.
@@ObviouslyNotJake I’m not sure now, but I’m still blaming vampires they know what they did!
I believe that the muddy sound was gone after I replaced the stock pickups on one of my guitars with different ones. Simple as that.
Yeah i wouldn't agree that changing pickups do nothing. I have the same guitar, but one with high output pickups and the other with lower output. There is definitely a difference. Although I do agree that there are other ways to change tone/sound.
In the context of a mix, the pickups matter very little. Without a/b testing a recorded sound, you have no way of knowing if the pickups made a difference at all in your muddy tone.
totally agree, a lot of pickups are pointless but some are absolute gold, can't generalise on this stuff unless you're all about controversy and click bait of course :)
but you can't really convince a sound engineer that fixes dynamic tones with fixed frequency boosts and cuts and plug ins, no doubt in the world of post production and mixing it all sounds the same apparently
i'm glad this channel is all about sarcasm and positivity or i'd have thought he was serious !
You probably installed the new ones at a different height. Although some pickups sound wildly different from each other others sound very similar. This idea about "in the mix" is just bullshit - I mean yes the music OP generally records nothing much matters or changes anything - it's just overly gained noise, but his ideas are as stupid as a guy who breeds Yorkshire terriers saying that all dogs look the same. All yorkshire terriers look similar. The music he produces all sounds the same, yes - and he's barely got enough hearing left to hear it anyway - he can't even hear himself speak without shouting.
Sometimes its the small details you want to get across. Like the way your G and B string rings out and sustains, on certain chords relative to others.
When you just need THAT sound (whatever it may be) and its fundamentally not there, new pickup can absolutely get you there. Especially if youre dealing with mud, icepicks, or microphonic feedback.
A shitty pick-up through a Fender Amp will sound different through a VOX, or Marshall.
So will a great pick-up!
I dont know why im commenting any of this. Like you, i love talking about this shit.
Hope Glens doing well.
Glenn: let’s be nice and positive for a change!
Glenn 5 seconds later: 😡😤🤬
I love you Glenn keep the positivity going!
I am 100% in that boat of people who you helped with music production. I learned recording, mixing, mistakes to avoid and a lot more from this channel and I am grateful that you put the time and effort into showing newbies like me the ropes. My mixes have gone from downright shameful to show to people to something I am proud of and excited to share.
8:41 you totally helped me in my recordings, and not just Metal stuff but my ambient work too. There are so many things I’ve learned but I think they all come down to one category: simplifying. I’ve been good at that in life ever since I began having severe facial pain when I was 18, then heart failure at 26. However, the key to simplifying is knowing what matters and what doesn’t. In situations like mine, that tends to be obvious if you have a clear head. In recording, not so much. I was constantly was struck with (digital) choice paralysis and it made what was supposed to be my escape another source of frustration. However, thanks to your knowledge and experience I am now able to get the sound I want quickly and get on with the fun part, creating. So thanks Glenn. Despite the hate you get there are those of us that have been actually impacted in a positive light and in more ways than you know. Plus you always make me laugh and laughter is the…well you know. 🤘
Hi again Glenn. I just uploaded real quick pickup comparison using ML800 high gain setting with their overdrive pedal on half way. First Pickup is the Gibson Slash Burstbucker and the second is whatever pickup someone put in this Epiphone Les Paul, both in the bridge position with 500k pots. There's a big difference here, the pickup in Epiphone pickup is bright and thin and also noisy compared to the Gibson pickup. I just play the same chord, and it's just to show you that pickups make a difference. Cheers!
Ignore how unprofessional the video is! haha
Just clicked. Got "This channel doesn't have any content." Please make sure we're hearing the CABINET AND SPEAKER.... not the acousitc properties of the guitar. This is a VERY common mistake made over and over and over and over and over again.
@SpectreSoundStudios Glenn it's definitely there under videos. I just had my partner check. It's an ML Sound Lab Plugin of a JCM800, yep amp and speaker. No tricks here.
the mix tips are black belt for real, this man knows what he's saying.
You not only helped me with my mixes, but you helped me increase my understanding of english vocabulary! Thank you!
Thank you for this video SO MUCH! I wrote a question on your last video like this, and seeing this video that question and more has been answered! thank you SO VERY MUCH not just for that, but for your channel!
GLENN!!!!
I have been recording for over 20 years at this point, and your videos have helped me with mixing guitars all the time. I am always learning new stuff, as EVERYONE should.
Glen you and spectre academy is the reason why i know how to record and mix, i owe everything i know for recording because of SMG and i greatly appreciate this world you've let me in to. Thank you
Yeah, even on a VST, moving the virtual mic around makes a massive change in tone. Listen with your ears instead of "mojo" bullshit. Idk what's so hard to understand about this. Btw, you did help me better understand how to use drum samples (on one of your critique streams), and I have a new album coming out soon. Thanks!
Good luck on the album!
Only thing here is bullshit is that people argue from their own perspective as the whole truth.
Yes, pickups dont necessarily make difference in studio or live situation cause the studio gear, mixing and other stuff dictates the outcome.
Yes, the pickups sound vastly different when you are playing alone home learning and rehearsing. This is why mostly guitarist's change pickups because 99% of time they hear their guitar is when they are practicing. Not in studio making albums or playing live. When I play death metal riffs at home I dont want to hear some weak ass Seymour Duncan JB sound that lacks tight low end on palm mutes. I want to hear some gnarly Black Winter, Nazgul or EMG 81 sound.
No, you cant EQ pickups to sound the same with EQ pedal. I challenge everyone claiming this to make a video where you EQ Ibanez V8 pickup to sound as EMG 81 or Fluence Modern with single EQ pedal. Not going to happen.
@@raakareiska9804 So I went to your channel and watched all of your highly scientific AB pickup comparison videos and I'm convinced.. that you don't know what you're talking about. A lot of words and no sources. In fact, you challenged some invisible person to make the video you want to see instead of providing evidence of what you're blabbering about. It's the "my god can kick your god's ass" argument. And if/when Glenn does make your highly specific video, you'll claim he "didn't do it right" or "this proves nothing" when it doesn't work out in your favor. Anyways, wanna buy my custom pickups? Made from real fairy dust, only $10,000! You'll have to hear it to believe it, and no, we won't provide you ANY audio examples!
Glenn thank you for all the advice on production. You've saved me hundreds on plugins since the free ones you've highlighted like amped roots can do the job just fine and also saved me from having mixes that sound like a sad tin can with badly recorded mono guitars. Now I have solid mixes going that breathe. I literally said "CROMS BALLS!" When I heard my guitars suddenly pop out bright and clean for the first time!!
Upgrading the PU-s in my budget and first-ever guitar to SD-s was life-changing. It started to actually inspire me, no matter how bad of a player I was, and I think that is an important aspect.
That said, I think what you have to ask yourself is if you need different PU-s at all. Yes, there's a difference between PU-s meant for different genres, but then you might as well keep different guitars for those. EQ-ing a Gibson 498 to sound like an SD Nazgul may take a while to figure out, and you may still lack something, because the source is lacking.
EQ-ing a Seymour SH4 to sound like an SH5 is literally 5 seconds. It is more about EQ-ing the amp in the first place at that point - which you might want to do before a performance anyways. Sure, get multiple guitars for your Pink Floyd and Metallica tribute bands if you want to. Buying top-quality brand metal PU to switch your other top-quality metal PU is just an expensive way of avoiding setting up a certain amp/cab combo you are familiar with.
The whole thing about pickups is I really do get different frequency responses depending on the impedance. Doesn't matter if it's a $20 humbucker or $150 one, an 8K is darker than a 4K, a 13K is darker than an 8K, and a 26K has way too little high frequency response to be used with a standard tuned 6 string. They're hot as hell, but the reason no one uses 26+K is they sound like lukewarm ass. There's a good reason why most passive metal pickups are ~8K-11.5K. This is one of those things that's not opinion, it's electronic fact. This is also why companies and people turn to active pickups with ~8K-11K coils.
8:35 not only has your channel helped me with my recordings, but I’ve passed on your advice to other musicians and engineers. I suggested the 5 foot equilateral triangle monitor set up to someone who has been trying to mix songs for commercial applications and it made her mixes sound a lot better and a lot more accurate.
I don't record anything anymore, but I love the show and usually get some pretty good laughs with some of your answers. You're the best, Glen!
Thank you so much for the shout out! If you hosted something I would definitely want to attend. I know I could benefit a lot from a boot camp experience to improve as a musician. My new band had our 1st paid gig last night, and I always go to your channel for tips before performing.
Been watching for a long time, thanks for all the amazing content over the years!
Glad you are still uploading these funny and interesting videos, Glen. You helped me understand that good gear matters but it doesn't have to be the big money legacy brands to do the trick. Of course, I have an Epiphone Prophecy and all BOSS amp equips, which I guess is technically big name legacy brands, but it's not GIBSON + MESA and still sounds heavy AF on stage
No audio for one section at about 7:50
I’ll have my editor flogged
When I bought my first guitar, a cheap-ish 250$ Ibanez, the pickups in them were not terrible, but lacked a bit of clarity. I upgraded that quitar with a pair of DiMarzio Crunch Lab(some ppl hate them, I love 'em) and it cleaned the sound, you can hear in the chords that they got cleaner and the same amp sims I used sounded way better. Last month I got a brand new Ibanez with another set of DiMarzio in it, DiMarzio Fusion Edge Humbuckers, to be precise. They have, in the same amp sims that I played for years, pretty much the same sound as the CL, with some minor differences in tone and even more clarity in the chords. We are talking about stock pickpups, DiMarzio CL6 and DiMarzio Fusion Edge. Do you notice the difference in tone? yes. Can you swear by it? No, I would not. The amp(amp sim in my case) and especially IR makes way more difference than the pickups. I think this is the entire idea behind these A/Bs. Invest as much money as u can in an instrument that holds the tuning(you don't want to submit out of tune quadruple guitar tracks to the mix engineer, because you will get a polished quad out of tune tracks), get a decent pair of headphones or monitors, to carve out a good sound in the first place, get a good amp sound and an even better cabinet sound(try combining cabinets, experiment with IRs, blending more than one or even two can do wonders), once you did all that, THEN think about the humbuckers upgrade. Just my opinion.
I have to say you’ve helped me a ton both recording and mixing. Your series on recording drums had me change my mic position on snare and toms and it was night and day. I also remixed a track after your input on the Monday Mix Review, sent it to my friend a co-writer and he was just like “yeah, that’s it. Don’t change a thing.” Thanks so much!
The disclaimer alone deserves a thumbs up.
I did a test on a few different speakers where I had a "0" hour, 1 hour, 2 hour, 4 hour and 8 hour break in (a kick and snare loop to give big transients). There was *a* shift in how the speaker sounded, but not drastic. The 0 hour sounded more "crisp" than 8 hour, but not by much.
Just found you, Dude. You're hilarious, I love the roasting and the ranting, definitely the cussing. Thanks for keeping it real and being someone who just wants to have fun and share knowledge. I look forward to all the laughs and hanging out!
I always love watching you dude, whenever I need a laugh. You gave me one this morning, and whenever you have to deal with winie idiots, especially when they don't get sarcasm. Rock on.
You've helped my music production with your years of experience so much. From live drums, to a kick mic a foot away from the bass cab, which gave me that nasty gnarly grindy over driven bass sound I've been after for years. It's glorious. I can't thank you enough for all your priceless wisdom. Hopefully soon I'll have some completed demos n extra cash to get on the mix review.🎃🍻
A studio recording engineer I knew once said changing pickups gives you the same perceived effect as flipping the air cleaner cover on your car does.
Even though it does little to nothing, as long as you perceive it does, then you can proudly justify doing it.
Happy to hear that some content on bass tone coming soon. Honestly hearing about guitar pickups is getting REALLY old. Soooo let's hear about bs with bass pickups! love to see more content on bass anyhow.
I’ve been watching for a few years and at first I thought to myself god this guy is a d-bag but, gave the channel more time to grow on me. As time went on I started learning alot from you and really enjoy the content. Now I find myself searching and waiting for your videos ! Thankyou for being amazing brother !
Hey, how about some "How To Hook Stuff Up" videos ? I've been thinking about buy a compressor but I just don't know how I'd hook it up to my interface. And would I need to set up a new routing connection with cubase ?
I've learnt so much about recording from you!
The biggest thing by far was about creating space in a mix for bass by high passing guitars. In my early mixes I got a little stuck on the idea of trying to capture the sound of how guitars sounded live. Thanks to you I realised I was barking up the wrong bush. I've even started to apply the same thinking to my live sound and it has really helped with my bands on stage sound and my ability to hear my guitar better on stage. Thanks and fuck you.
mshea_audio’s comment is spot-on, i came to the same conclusion ever since you opened my eyes to the impact speakers have on tone. Eagerly awaiting your video on this!
what i learner over the years messing around with gear , guitars , pickups, pedals , mics , amps , cabs , rack equipment , building pedals myself , even making pickups myself just to try it . what really matters is , fresh strings , pickup position (neck/bridge) , gain of the amp , eq / boost infront of the amp , the clipping method (not op amp of tube or shit like that , i´m talking asymetrical , symetrical , FWrectified , rail to rail clipping , that kinda stuff ) THE TONE STACK OF THE AMP !!! , eq AFTER the preamp (in fx loop) , Speakers/cabs , mic placement , and last but not least TIGHT PLAYING !! FFS
thx for doing your thing glenn !
thanks for all the production and recording tips. ive been doing it for about a month. i dont play metal but most of your stuff seems still applicable. im demoing a single and working on some backing tracks for some indie covers to live stream a set. theres a huge lack of musicians in my area so i just got all the instruments myself. i just record everything di and i use midi drums. i have everything in my livingroom/bedroom, because my place is small so this is the only space i have.
That was a nice touch getting Dan Worrall do the PSA in the beginning of this video!
I literally saw a video in my feed of a pickup maker on RUclips responding to you about this right before I clicked on this video. Definitely making some waves Glenn, keep it up 🤘
😂😂😂 Glen's sarcastic humor is just awesome!!!!! And HE IS HELPING YOU FOR FREE with real pearls!!!! This guy has a lot of EXPERIENCE! That's something money can't buy !!!!! Consider this! You unthankful ***** of *****😂😂
I learn a ton from you! Even if it's not recording stuff (I watch a lot of videos, it's hard to track down where all of my knowledge comes from), I learn other things. I wouldn't have had the idea for a "control guitar" if it weren't for guys like you and Jim Lill putting in the work to bust the myths in music gear. And the point that I really wanted to get across with the control guitar is that if every single guitar review features the new guitar head to head with a different specific guitar, maybe people will eventually get the hint that humbuckers pretty much all sound the same, and single coils all sound pretty much the same, so they'll get in the habit of asking about the rest of the chain instead of something magical about the guitar.
Hey Glen, I sent you a mix last week and you made a comment about the snare being tuned too low. I used some pitch correction on it and it made a big difference and brought a little extra life to the mix so thanks! My old ears didn't know what I was missing.
GLEEEEENNNNNN!!!! Ok, so you me realise something I wasn't totally sure about in the past. Because to "MY EARS" my pickups sounded different in gear, and this was somewhat confirmed when jamming once and I switched guitars, one with a Fender Talon loaded with Dimazio's (Super 3 and Superdistortion) and then went to my Washburn 333 Dimebolt (stock pups), and difference was night and day... This might have been the only time I, and the other guys noticed such a difference. But I often brought up the Keith Merrow videos here and so did you, there is a very noticeable change. You mentioned you would recreate this test, but still waiting!!
Gawd, 11:34 made me giggle a lot more than it should have at this point. Just never gets old. 😅
Yeahhhh... I mean, honestly, there's definitely A place for Gibsons, I just have no idea where.
I recently bought a Harley Benton guitar and immediately after trying it ordered a replacement pickup... Know why? If was fcking noisy as hell. So I replaced it with an EMG. Yes, the EMG cost almost as much as the guitar, but the noise floor was reduced dramatically. And no, it was not the issue with the grounding - I removed the bridge to check if the black paint was scratched off in the contact spot, and it was. So it was just a crappy pickup.
So that is one reason to replace pickups - to get an actual playable guitar :D
hey, you rule, thanks. watching old vids to support ya! NOT a chore man!
Pickups make a lot more difference than just the sound. A lot of it is just the feel and response. Stay metal ray did a pretty good demonstration of this. He admitted that in a mix, the tones did sound all that different, but he still felt they responded pretty differently. I have a lot of guitars, and the response I get from my PAF style pickups is alot different than what I get on my higher output pickups. I can adjust the gain all I want on the amp, but the PAFs still have a softer attack and never get quite as tight. This can heavily affect how I play and write.
Response is one thing, but if you think your tone is gonna sound much better through a recording by dropping a bunch of money on some custom Bareknuckles or Lollars versus some production model Duncans or DiMarzios, you’re kidding yourself.
@@damienalvarez2957 never said otherwise. Though, in some cases, it does actually make a big difference. I’ve swapped pickups in some guitars and was instantly like “wow, this sounds exactly the same as the previous.” I hve a Dunable Yeti that I’ve tried several pickups in(already had all these laying around the house) and it basically sounds the same, no matter what. Whereas, I’ve had the total opposite effect, as well. I have a Les Paul that was really bright and lacking a little body/low end with the Gibson burstbuckers. Swapped it with a Duncan 59/custom hybrid and it was like a light switch flipped. Now it’s my most low end heavy guitar. Just sounds huge, aggressive, less harsh but tons of mid content and harmonics. There isn’t a one size fits all authority on pickups. Every guitar reacts differently. Also, recorded mic’d up tone vs in the room is a totally different scenario. If you are not enjoying the pickups in your guitar, you aren’t gonna be as inspired to play….just like if your guitar didn’t play well due to a bad setup.
That intro was the most Douglas Adams thing I've ever seen... until the you motherfuckers. Then it was perfectly balanced
Would be cool to see a test with breaking in the speakers, new vs "broken-in", maybe playing some stuff through a loop pedal (one that saves the recording even when powered off) so that you eliminate human error and even the strings being fresh/old. Also the loop pedal pedal will never get tired no matter how long you leave it on for!
Kohle did that. Minimal difference. He also had Jensen speaker's engineer chime in. Just play the cabinet normally for a few hours, the rest does nothing. Not worth investing extra effort beyond that.
Glenn uses re-amping whenever he does these kinds of tests so the performances are always the same.
@@Memu_ Ohhhh, that's a much better idea haha! Thanks for letting me know!
@@jakacresnar5855 I will have to check it out, thank you!
@@jakacresnar5855 This. We see no such "break-in" tests anywhere, because they actually don't make sense - because there is not much to hear. Should not make any noticeable difference whatsoever. If it would be different, the speakers would be, uhm, kind of trashy? I expect any transducer to be as accurate as it can be from the beginning to the end of it's lifetime.
Have you ever tried to "break-in" a microphone?
Exactly. Nobody does this. Same reason.
Do they wear off? Sure. After years, many years, in best case.
Coming from the car audio world, there definitely is a change in speaker break in vs fresh soft parts. A dats v3 can measure T/S parameters, and is pretty cheap. Usually a drop in FS and slight q changes. It does make a difference in car audio for sure, we break in speakers then pull parameters to model them in winisd, or bassbox6 because if you do it before break in, it can skew results.
Wow I had to rewatch the intro, that's such a good laugh I had to do it twice. Good job!
I really appreciate your channel..lots of good information! I do believe, after 40 plus years of playing guitar, it's been my observation that pick ups do sound differently. I stuck a Telecaster neck pup into an EVH Wolfgang..surely not the same as a humbucker! Interesting tones for sure. Keep sharing..love the content!
Sure. Nobody is debating single coil vs humbucker.
The thing that I learned from you that improved my workflow, mixes, and even saved my bacon, is to ALWAYS get a D.I. of any electric guitars and basses. That way if you got a great great performance, but the tone just won't gel, you can re-amp it with the necessary tone tweaks, sorted.
Make it so, Glenn I'll buy that shirt and hat. Great positive episode, Glenn. Cheers!
If I went to a boot camp for musicians, you just KNOW I'd haul along something weird.
I very recently got an Edwards(ESP) LP copy from a Japanese guitar shop, shipped to USA. The shipping cost was $200, and the guitar was $1000. I didn't have to pay any additional customs fees. I've heard that this is hit or miss in the USA... but this is my second guitar from overseas without any explicit customs/import fees.
I belive you just technically admitted to a felony for imports. Run!
Pickups are just wires wrapped around magnets - but how many winds, the gauge of wire, the alloy type of magnet, the strength of that magnet, and the winding method - there are many ways to make a pickup, and the changes affect the tone. Yes, you can mimic tonal changes with a parametric eq - but you could say the same thing about speakers.
exactly.
I have just bought a Harley Benton custom DC and my band mates couldn't tell me what guitar I was playing when comparing that to a Gibson SG and an Epiphone SG with dimazio pickup in a blind test. They all pretty much sounded the same. What did make a big positive change in my guitar sound was fitting 2 WGS retro 30 and 2 vintage 30 speakers into my 4x12. I'm very happy that I listened to what Glen had to say 🤘😊
Ayo Glen ! if you release the bass tone video please do one on how to do it on AMP sims / inside the box, please !
I'm a guitar player (non-professional) and a few years ago an audio technician recommended your channel - and I've watched every episode since. He was the firts person to tell some truths about recording process and why guitar players screw up a lot of the job. He was very polited, but clear: there's no way to get good results if you don't put effort in it.
I have to admit: once I put my ego aside and started thinking about the recording and mixing process, my recordings got soooo much better. A good D.I. (sold an amp I wasn't using to buy a J48 and an IMP2), a well tuned guitar (every take!) with new strings, good and reliable cables, a lot of practicing before pressing the "rec" button and recording every track/line more then once (sometimes 4, with 2 different guitars). Well, it worked. Got a long way ahead, but feels like i'm on the right one.
Thanks for the advice and keep up the good work! Greetings from Brazil!
You helped me make better mixes in a way. Most of what I took from you is leaving in things instead of editing everything and aligning everything to a grid. I think that really gives everyone their own sound.
You should also bring the control guitar for professional setup (maybe fret leveling) to some luthier and get some measurements for string height and neck bow. That way you can also accurately compare the setups without having to resort to "strings FEEL a bit lower here". If you have measurements, you can keep the control guitar setup exactly the same as the seasons change (because necks do move a bit). This whole idea of having a reference guitar is great!! Just you know, you need to make sure that the reference does not change across time.
Ive been mixing and making music since before I graduating high school, I've been using all of your tips and tricks except live drums (not trying to buy drum mics) but I've been
making much better mixes as of late especially with the tips you have been giving in your more recent videos
@ 8:00 in, is this sarcasm too? Just busting your balls, thanks for all the effort on your channel, i don’t record metal but i still find tons of value in what you’re putting out. Much appreciated.
Thanks for another great video Glenn man
On the topic of things that can affect the guitar tone, I recently found out that the cable I had been using for years to connect the guitar to the gear was the cause of my muddy tone (both clean and with distortion): the low end was flat, the mids sounded "funneled", the top end was muffled and there was a clear lack of definition. The cable malfunctioned during a rehearsal, so I borrowed an unused one from the other guitar player in the band and WOW, what a huge difference: a full low end, ringing mids and a crisp top end like I've never heard before, both in the cleans and the distortions! To quote Ola: "will it chug?" Well, it didn't but now it does!
At first I was very sceptical that there could be such a difference between two cables so I tried with other cables and the tonal characteristics remained unchanged. I did repair the malfunctioning cable and even made some changes to how the wires were connected, tried it again but it still gave me the old muddy tone.
Throughout the years I've been changing pedals, amps, cabs and even speakers in an attempt to "cure" the problem but with little changes. The most noticeable ones were when I changed from a tube amp to an SS amp and when I swapped the G12-T 75's in my 2x12" with a set of Jensens from a BG412V 4x12" cab (thanks Glenn for "opening my eyes" to the speakers' importance). The overall sound changed but the tone didn't improve a lot. Never in my life I would've thought that a cable could cause that but it did!
I recently bought a new cheap Jackson. I played it for months at home and in the rehearsal room, in a three-piece band and even with its cheap stock pick ups it didn't sound bad. The "problem" for me reached my ears when I tried in the rehearsal room together with a second guitar, and at that moment I realized that I couldn't distinguish what I was playing even though I tried to equalize differently. By changing the pick ups I can finally hear my guitar clearly and distinctly. But before rehersing with another guitar I couldn't figure it out.
Kindly share the live mix you recorded both with the old pickups and the new pickups. I’ve never had an issue that couldn’t be solved with an eq pedal, so I would love to hear what you’re speaking of.
Pickup construction can and will determine many different characheristics in tone. Just because Glenn doesn't understand it and doesn't have a disciplined ear, does not mean that these differences do not exist.
Interesting issue! But are u saying u couldn't distinguish ur guitar from the other dude's guitar OR that u couldn't distinguish ur guitar from the overall sound? 'Cos if the former, that would suggest ur tones were too similar to each other, thus changing ur pickup u got a different enough tone to cut thru the sound better.
In the rehersal room context with two guitars i was not able to recognize the sound of my guitar, we play the exact same gear and same settings. Jackson Ceramic stock pick ups sounded muddy toghether with an old Ibanez equipped with Di Marzios. For approssimatively the same price i bought a Made in China Kramer striker, and It was perfect out of the box even in the rehersal room context. I'm sure you can probably fix every lack of cheap pick ups in a studio context when working in a full mix, but when you actually play with the full band at High volume some more issues can occur, at least in my experience.
Turned my bassist on to your show... sent him the heavy drums playlist as he is engineering our recordings... he subscribed... yes... they can learn... 😂
I had totally been that guy who was copy and pasting one track. Working on recording my first full track and mixing it. Used the 3 guitar tack method and the bass like the MOP mix and it sounds MASSIVE. So THANK YOU for helping me make better mixes and tracks.
I think you’ve covered it some in a video but if you haven’t already or don’t already have a video in the pipeline can you do one on what your levels are with the bass tracks.
Thanks again Glenn much love to ya and thanks for the videos helping make the work week a little nicer.
I honestly have learnt that the most important thing is being able to recognize the tone you want and knowing how to recreate it. In an amp sim world where I use a full amplitube 5 set-up with tons of amps, eq options, there are so many different ways you can tweak tone so going through the effort of changing pickups is really the least efficient way of doing that. That being said, I am working on switching some pickups in one of my guitars for some soldering practice
Just read this and couldn't agree more. I can make most guitars and amps sound the same because I have a tone in my head now. Problem is it took me a very long time to get there but it becomes your style.
LOL! That announcement was funny as shit!
Sarcasm. Gotta say, that's part of the charm of your show. I love it, even if you think we bass players are... Well, you know.
It scares me seeing how many of these people think irrationally. You're a hero
I think guitarist use words like warm and colder, hot , tone , volume, gain, can all be the same thing and used interchangeably by most, like the pickup height thing it boils down to its louder the closer you get it to the strings this could be described as hotter but someone who plays clean might move the pickup lower because it “warms” the clean tone up when it’s similar to rolling the volume back because so we got all of these buzz words to describe volume in different ways. Most people playing active pickups are playing metal and the fact that the magnets being weaker so they can run the pickup right up to the strings, some people are going to love it. I can’t remember if sustain was testing in Glenn and Colins pickup video. I’ve always thought I needed a super hot bridge pickup but I always wind up setting the height quite a bit lower than recommended probably due to me leaning towards a brighter tone , I mean turning up the treble on the amp. I’ve bought Duncan’s and EMGs and yeah I thought that they sounded clearer than the stock pickups but maybe it’s because I was listening better with the new pickups installed and also more than likely a new set of strings were installed while doing the pickup swap. I would bet that most people probably test their new pickups with brand new strings too further distancing themselves from the scientific process.
Glenn isn’t doing this for people who have spent hundreds or thousands on pickups and other widgets he’s doing so the people who are getting into it, can spend their money on things that will make a bigger difference.
Guitarists are skeptical, insecure, superstitious and stubborn we’ve been sold amps pedals , pickups, and tone wood these are all things that are “sexy” and things other players can see and will be impressed by. No one really ever talked about speakers when I was coming up maybe cabs a little but very little was said about speakers. The thing is all the musicians who inspired us recorded in studios where “pros” had a room full of speaker cabs and I remember more than one interview with my heroes talking about how many amps and cabs they demoed before production, it’s always been in the speakers cabs and mic technique. Why is everyone so defensive about whatever snake oil they bought ? I appreciate Glenn’s reviews and opinions however I do think he’s a little hard Gibson at least there paint . They use lacquer that would be impossible to achieve the flawless finish of a poly .
Hi Glenn. 62 year old progger who’s been watching since #35 and bought the #2 mug for the bass player in my wife’s band. Good work!
Sometimes pickups do make a difference. I have an SX explore shaped guitar that sounded like a poplar branch with strings on it. I thought it was just some piece of junk. I put an emg 81 in it, it sounds like a regular guitar now. It is now one of my favorite fixed bridges.
Me too i has a poplar LTD EX50 that looked the part but sounded like a fart.
Switching to EMG's was night and day i don't know if you can hear it in a recording but when i play through my amp there is no comparison.
Hey Glenn, love your content! Do you think we could get a new 500 Series video? What are the good essentials for 2023/2024 and all that for people (like me) who are considering stepping into this type of gear. Keep rocking, man!
Hi Glen, I submit that pickups more affect headroom and tone at the extremes and that speakers are basically THE factor. What about eq pedals before or in the effects loop? My experience is in the effects loop, it simulates changing the speaker. What about in the front end (preamp)? More gain perhaps pushing it or pushing those mid frequencies?
I posted about how a 10-band EQ in the effects loop drastically affects the sound hitting the speaker yesterday. For some reason, Glenn dismissed this because the "low end is too complex". However, this is not my experience at all. nor the sound engineer who suggested this to me. I also posted the differences between the pickups from my old Epiphone (I don't know what they are as they are not stock) vs my Gibson Slash model at high gain and there's clearly a big difference. He said my channel has no videos (this isn't true) everyone has been able to see it other than Glenn. I feel a bit disappointed and I did have people reply that maybe he has some kind of bias for speaker companies that we may not know about. I would never accuse him of that but for someone who is serious about tone, I cannot ignore that a good pickup at the start of the signal chain makes a huge difference. I personally don't always want to carry around an EQ pedal to knock out frequencies I don't like when playing by myself etc. Only playing live would I put an EQ pedal in the effects loop, depending on the room and the band.
Hi Glenn love you brutal honesty about all things and appreciate you sharing about being bullied awesome dude and I got a harley benton ja-20 hh active and mine arrived without any ground/earth issues and I love it please keep up the good work being honest about all music things mate greetings from Cumbria UK
EQ , Amp EQ , Pedals , all have made more of a change to my tone than any of even my " boutiquest " of pickups imo 👍
When do pickups matter? Clean tone? Edge of breakup tone? I know this is a metal channel, however, some of us play multiple styles. So including information on this channel that is not specific to metal can still be valuable information for metal heads like myself. I would appreciate if Glen had discussions not specifically tied to just metal. I don't think the metal heads would lose interest in the channel, but more folks like myself could benefit further from Glen's experience which most certainly isn't restricted to metal.
Any alnico 5 pups work, at least in my expirience. Fishmans are great as well.
There may be some differences in clean tone, but as soon as you start turning up the gain, differences start to go out the window. And like Glenn mentioned, we can control gain and EQ, so why spend so much money on pickups when we can change how they sound externally for no extra cost? I don't think about how pickups "sound" anymore, I just go for the output. I built a single pickup Fender Strat and put in a $20-30 Wilkinson humbucker. Sounds like a humbucker to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah maybe swapping from single-coil to single-coil theres a tiiiny difference but going from a SC to a Humbucker is much bigger
Glenn has never mentioned this, its always REEEE DONT CHANGE YOUR PICKUPS
sure dude
@@MichaelSheaAudio I have a 2005 epiphone that I swear even with high gain, I can hear a huge difference between that and a friend's 70s Gibson les paul. I can be pretty certain, most of that difference is in the pickups, not all of it, but a measurable amount. My Schecter solo II blackjack sounds way better than the epi, same amp. VHT/Freyette Pitbull 100 CLX. It isn't the most high gain amp, but in tone, it is crushing the John Petrucci Mesa JP-2C. I do not like the JP-2C at all. Need more experimentation with it, but the VHT is so easy to dial in tone.
@@hunter00143 Yes, he has. That was the point of one of his blind tests. We all knew which one was a single coil guitar and which ones were with humbuckers, but nobody could name them. They were all shit guitars, but people tought they were expensive big brand guitars. Nobody complained about the sound, but the difference between a single coil and a humbucker is something we all instinctively knew because theres a difference and Glenn agrees.
I would love to see a comparison between pickups that are highly micro-phonic compared to pickups that are not. From what I would expect, pickups that have those characteristics will behave a little more like a microphone (hence, microphone/micro-phonic). I know for the majority of the cookie cutter metal bands would never consider using micro-phonic pickups because they are technically malfunctioning but if you REALLY wanted to get a tone change in the pickups, that's where I would try it.
So, I don't play much metal, and my favorite guitars are Gretsches. I used to have a 71 Superchet, and everybody who heard that thing swore it had some of the sweetest tones ever. I and a friend of mine have both had multiple archtops along those lines since (some Gretsch some not), and tried many different Gretsch pickups, filtertrons, both potted and not, lots of variations, but never found another that sounded "as good". Its really hard to be sure, time clouds your memories, its hard to identify exactly what the characteristics of those pickups were that we were all so fond of, but we've speculated that they might've been microphonic, and picking up the resonance of the big hollow body's acoustical chamber. In that context, I would think they were an advantage.
Your videos have helped get so much better with my mixes and has taught me everything I know about recording guitars helped save me money buying pickups on my second guitar. I don't regret it on my first guitar because i mostly did it for the bad ass look. You also helped change my world on how to use compression and inspired me to go local for my hardware compressor and bought a delta mu compressor the mdc-1 built by my friend mitch at mitch davis circuits to get a unique sound. He is in Canada and has a reverb you should check it out it's amazing.
I wonder if the fender 70s wide range are the same as other humbuckers or not? Just to stir the pot a little more.
Another great episode Glen! I love your videos.
I’ve never seen a “broken in speaker tone change” test. I’ve always heard, “you’ve gotta breaker the speaker in! You’ve gotta break in your headphones!” And based on that, it seem more likely that over time you learn your speakers and headphones. Similar how you learn your mics, learn mic positioning, or learning compression. I’d love to see if video actually testing it if you have the time.
Ill have to see if I can find it, but some one did that test for IEM's and found zero change in frequency response, but did find that the recommended break in time was almost always a few days longer than the time in which you can return the product without a fault, but who knows with large speakers being made out of a bunch of different materials.
@@EpIcHoBoGuY ya, I’m pretty confident that speaker break in is a myth. Whether it’s a marketing myth or industry myth, I don’t know.
Love the one man army vibe here. I'll hang around a bit.
I am following this whole debacle about pickups for a while now and it stumps me a bit that nobody actually thought about from what perspective people actually talk. To me it comes down to this:
From the guitarists point of view:
there is a bigger difference in tonality between types of pickups (single coil/humbucker/active/...)
There is a smaller difference between subtypes (hotrail, lipstick,...)
This difference becomes smaller (gernerally) when driven hard.
The type of guiter build makes a bigger difference. It also affects how you play and alters the sound in that way. I mean with this that every type of guitar handles
The amp alters your tone greatly when driven, and more when driven harder.
The speaker cabinet with speakers alter your sound in a unique way that is not deniable in the end mix.
The player itself also has more influence on the sound then a pickup for instance (that is at least my feeling)
The end product is heard by your ears on a specific position
The sound engineer:
All of the above kind of drops off, because the sound engineer doesn't give a rat's ass about what a guitarist thinks of his tone. The engineer is given a certain sound, which is further affected by all the new elements when a guitar is recorded.
Mic's used
angles towards the speaker of these mic's
Position to the mic to the speaker (distance in x, y and z)
blends of all of the above
post processing added.
the end product of this sound is heard on full range speakers in a very specific and often specially designed environment.
The thing is that when you start mixing the sound of a whole band, the tone of a guitar is getting less an less important when you are getting closer to the mastering phase. All the debacle about tone in the end is reduced to something that serves the band and neglects what a guitarist feels like his tone should be although the tone still influences the end mix. And that influence is mostly "flavoured" by (the amp and) the type of speaker, certainly if we talk about metal. High gain just takes away a lot of the source signal.
A trained ear can hear the difference (human hearing can distinguish quite more then what you see on a graph), but the "tone" just not that important in an end mix. It has run through so many filters to serve a total sound instead of the tone of an individual (the guitarist). This said, the individual (sound) is still important in the end product. But too many guitar players are so self absorbed with their "tone" that they just can not fathom the idea of being only 1/12th to 1/64th or even 1/128th of a band's sound if you take it purely mathematical.
And I say this as a guitarist. I've been there, being frustrated that my "tone" wasn't there in the studio. After a while I learned to alter my sound to serve the band instead of it all being about "my" sound. Now, I'm not a lead player, I'm a rythm guitarist (something guitarists also have trouble admitting to in gerneral) so I rather serve a band then to be in the centre of it anyway. I like my tone but I understand I'm part of something more then my "unique" being.
Sound engineers have trouble with ego's in a studio as it will pull them out of their creative work constantly. It s recommended to have a healhty communication between band and engineer so that they will challenge each other to get to a high end product, but ego's from both sides might end up in a product that nobody involved might fully back up. Ego's can come from both the band and the engineer (I once put aside a sound engineer because he was neglecting his own hearing loss for instance and it helped him solve some personal issues in the end tbh, you know, cheap studios is also a thing to think about)). But I sence that band members (more specifically, lead players and singers) have the biggest ego's.
And to be really honest? I think the studio you work with actually defines your sound way more then a freaking pickup. And I get it, I also used to buy the latest Seymour Duncan because it promised me to be a "screaming demon". And it was a good pickup. Just not worth the money I payed for it. But that is just me maybe.
People and wanting to hear the truth isn't always a combo that works.
I’m really interested in ordering a few of those empty Harley Benton cabs, but am worried about potentially excessive import charges ordering them to Canada - anyone have any examples of duty costs ordering from Thomman into Canada?
Glen, thanks for a great channel and I love your no nonsense calling out of bullshit.
I am in no way a heavy metal guy but I seriously appreciate your take on things.
One observation, back in the day headphone burn in was quite a big thing. Maybe it’s not now but I am not sure why as the laws of physics ain’t changed. The idea that the sonic character changed due to increased flexibility of the speaker cone seems fair enough.
As speakers are just headphones for people with big ears, maybe there’s some detective work or bullshit exploding to be done.
Thanks again for a great channel.
I do use active pickups in all my guitars for playing live. For me, I hear and feel a difference when playing live but can't hear any difference when it comes to a fully recorded mix.
I've used a mixture of different guitars with both active and passive pickups for recording and after all the processing, mixing and mastering no one can tell where the PRS with Seymour Duncan passives end and the ESP with active EMG's begins.
7:40 watching and hearing this.
I'm from Israel, watching for many years.
I felt like you might have been referring to our current war, and you've made me feel just a bit happier.
Hey if not, all good, lot's happening in the world at the moment.
Just to let you know your words, whatever actual subject they were aimed at, made me feel some happiness.
Hey Glenn I appreciate what you've taught me over the last 5 or so years I've been watching! Just wanted to mention my client was ecstatic after hearing your feedback on our track "Astro Babe!" That recording is a testament to cheap gear. No single piece worth more than $400 on the used market other than a akg414 I was borrowing from a friend at the time. The guitar I played was a $150 Revelle--whatever that is--going through a katana 50watt. I heavily credit your emphasis on mic placement when it comes to capturing the right tone for a recording!
I am waiting for Glenn to have a collaboration with Dylan (Talks Tone).
Its sad how many people dont understand the pickups dont matter thing, its a recording studio based show, when mic'd up and under gain and in a mix the difference is minimal at best, and no amp ever sounds the exact same in that situation as it does in a room, hell room to room has variables. Drums are same way, the way they sound behind the kit is different in front of the kit, and again in a mix. People sure are special, and love to argue and be know it alls on the internet. Love the channel.
Is it possible to get a tutorial on the singularity bass? There’s some things I’m struggling to get out of it. Like there’s no key switch for slides, and I can’t seem to get any changes out of changing the velocity. If it was possible to get a tutorial, it would be very helpful.
Years back I made the comment on a guitar forum that pickups were just wire and magnets and you would have thought I wipped out my P P and started urinating on people. I've bought my share od Duncans and Dimarzios but at the end of the day I have become conetnt with stock and budget replacement pickups. I learned the hard way.
Honestly, would love it (when he drops the inevitable “how I achieve my bass tone” video) if it’s just a 5 second video of him holding a new pack of strings.
Notes: I’m a bass player, and yes I put more time into proofreading this comment than thinking of the comment itself lol.
Anyone else notice from 8:00 to 8:10 the audio is completely removed?
I’m not even a metal guy. I play punk. But I love your channel. I use reaper based solely on your recommendation. You are a valuable resource.
I would also say, watch other channels too. Music is in the ear of the beholder. Glen may get you to one place you want to go in one area, some other guy might get you where you want to go in another. I can’t speak for him, but I feel like Glen would agree with this.
"...Unfortunately, they're just wires around magnets." Quote of the day😂😂
So are microphones. Verifiable quality differences and tone difference.
@SpetreSoundStudios normally a manufacturer for PRO audio speakers does a little break in before shipping it out to the world.
The main thing that's going to change is the suspension will loosen up a little. This will probably result in a bit of TS parameter shift namely Fs or the free air resonance. If you have access to a tool that will let you do swept impedance measurements you can take a baseline measurement buy hanging the driver free air, then run low power 20Hz signal through it for 24 hours. Then come back and run another impedance sweep. Impedance sweeps can tell one a lot about the driver, and you can even see massive impedance shifts depending on the enclosure.
You can also do swept frequency response charts on the drivers, with tools from B&K, or if the TEF is still being manufactured. Pro Audio Analyzers are neat!
That said a change in the Fs of the driver isn't going to make that much difference in an enclosure unless for some reason there was a radical shift in the drivers mechanical characteristics and made it un-suitable for the cabinet you're using it in, which isn't something that typically happens.