It's One Big Conspiracy!
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- Опубликовано: 1 окт 2024
- The Guitar Snob Sleuths have been actively debunking my Gibson vs Fender test with solid anecdotes, random mumblings and of course, conspiracies! Get incredible Bass Tone. Flick The Switch: Element Bass. spectredigital...
About Spectre Sound Studios:
I'm Glenn Fricker, engineer here at Spectre Sound Studios. I love making records, and after doing it for sixteen years, I want to pass on what I've learned. On my channel you can find tutorials on how to record guitar, bass, real drums and vocals. There's reviews and demos of tube amps, amp sims, drums, mics, preamps, outboard gear, Electric Guitar, Bass Guitar, and plugin effects.
We've covered Moon on the Water, played Bias FX, given you the absolute best in Stupid Musician Texts, ranted & raved about bass guitar, and this channel is where The Eagle has Landed.
Everything you've wanted to learn about recording Hard Rock & Heavy Metal can be found right here on this channel!
I also respond to your comments & questions: The best make it into the SMG Viewer's Comments series of videos. Loads of fun, lots of laughs.
Thanks for checking out my channel & please subscribe!
Great vid, not sure if it's been suggested already but we've all seen the blind shootouts that adertons have done. Would be great to get Rob Chapman on the show doing some blind tests, as he does actually seem to have super human hearing!
He’s hearing the acoustic part of the guitar. Nothing superhuman about it. I’ll be impressed when he can do that with a recorded guitar.
@@SpectreSoundStudiosit’d definitely be cool to see.
Time to start a new style, heavy metal with electric guitars recorded like acoustics, no piezo, no plug, just a mic in front
@@SpectreSoundStudios I hadn't thought about that!
chapman can tell the colour of the guitar and the name of the pickup winder blindfold
With all these geniuses, I can't understand why the world has all the problems it has.
Clearly they are focused on the distinctions between tonewood and pickups, instead of working on World peace or curing cancer.
With all these geniuses, you'd think one of them would be able to produce some scientific evidence for their claims.
what was your guess in the poll?
@coldacre I didn't guess. I knew better than to do it.
@@coldacreI thought it was obvious which one the Harley Benton was. It was quieter with less treble. I couldn't tell the difference between the other three.
the snobs really want to bring the beginners down the drain at this point.
The people who don’t want to work for anything are really destroying the industry
Well yeah, they were duped into spending way too much money so why shouldn't you!!!!?!?!
As a tone snob I can tell you that I just wanna hear you make better sounds, its not about money for me, its about preserving the art of guitar playing
@@murrayguitarpickups9545I'd rather learn and play than go on and on about "tone"
There is a sifference berweena biginner engineer and a beginner songwriter
It's so funny how offended some people were 😂 love the info you're giving, FOR FREE !
@bloomtikbloom9593what’s unethical about showing people where to actually spend their money? Glen isn’t the only one who has proven that expensive amp with cheap guitar will always beat expensive guitar with cheap amp. Please, explain to me how a Gibson Les Paul is so much tonally superior to an Epiphone Les Paul? They’re the same damned guitar at the end of the day, except for the fact that the Epiphone will stay in tune better and the headstock won’t break if you breathe on it, unlike the Gibson.
Also, what’s unethical about showing that spending 300 bucks on pickups will not create a tone change as big as dropping money on speakers or moving around your mic?
Sorry you’ve been duped by marketing departments for years into believing in tone magic.
The comment at 5:30 was so funny about cheap gear! I'm pulling the trigger on a $2,800 Gibby in a few days. Lol I'm a Cork Sniffer!!
what was your guess in the poll?
I love the people saying you eqed the guitars to sound the same because that implies you can make a 300$ guitar sound like a 3000$ one
lol got'em. There's just no way around it.
You can also make different argument towards guitar snobs who use EQ in their recordings. "You use EQ? Why? Your $3000 guitar for sure sounds perfect and didn't need it, right? Right?😂"
You cant and ive been asked to play for Opeth
D’Oh!
Hehe just bought a whole guitar setup for less than 500 bucks. Guitar, amp, 14 mini pedals, supply, plugs and cables. Kinda curious. Haven't played for ages :)
I love that no matter how you structure a test, being as meticulous as possible, there's always a slew of people who will always move the goalposts and say "yeah, but you didn't do this, so your test is invalid!" No matter what the test, these types of people will always just say it's invalid because they don't want to listen.
Oh yeah. They’re all over this comments section, too. Always gonna get the cork sniffers who don’t wanna admit they overpaid for poor QC.
what was your guess in the poll?
It’s not moving goal posts, the guitars all had differences in tone. They did not all sound the same. Just because it’s difficult to blindly place the tone to the guitar doesn’t matter the test U.S.V.I. whether or not people can guess which is which the test is do they sound different. Yes they do.
I really can’t think of any possible way of demoing and testing equipment any better than this show is capable of doing. Great content Glen, keep going and growing.
@skratchrapturewho gets the same results..
@skratchrapture Jim Lil’s videos are good, but he’s doing an overarching test that happened to come to the same conclusions (it’s almost as if it’s repeatable…), while Glenn is going for specific tests.
I finally solved my guitar tone problems by switching to Bass.
I won a Line 6 Pod Go from Henning's channel a couple of years ago in a song writing challenge. He provided bass and drums. I used a Fender Mustang Micro (100 bucks) a Harley Benton DC-600 VI guitar (211 bucks) and my iPad mini with garage band (about 150 bucks used at the time) and was able to get a pretty decent mix for not being an engineer with any proper recording gear. Henning liked that I was using bare bones gear to get the sounds. It was not the best sounding recording, of course, but I had SO MUCH FUN and the song was really meaningful to me and I have that as well as the Pod Go to show for it. I think that we guitarists and musicians would all be a lot happier if we just stopped thinking so much about the gear and focused more on the art. I don't mean people should stop loving the gear they have or stop buying gear that they want, I just mean....I guess just leave each other alone? Like...its OKAY to love what you love or not love what you don't. Just enjoy it. Glenn is doing a good thing by showing us how to get GREAT tone without breaking the bank. That is very useful for many of us. It's not always based in hate for the bigger brands. Most of his hate comes from us....the Comments Section...getting all up in arms every time he tries to save someone some cash. Don't lose sight of the fact that he is also teaching, here. There are really valuable lessons to be learned in those comparison videos if you wish to pay attention. Much love!
For all those people who say these experiments aren't scientific. You explained in the original video the procedure you followed for gathering your sample files. That sounds like a repeatable set of experimental criteria to me.
I'm going to try this myself. I'm going to run all my humbucker'd guitars through a Boss Katana (because we all seem to own one of those these days) into my DAW using the USB audio interface. Guitars on full volume, amp settings left unchanged. Then I'm going to splice the recording together. Leave it a few weeks (so I've forgotten which order I put the guitars in) and then listen back to see if I can spot the different guitars in the one recording file. If I can't tell the difference (and I suspect this will be the case after watching your initial video). I'm going to keep the one I like playing the most and sell the rest.
I'll probably use the cash to buy more guitar related crap I don't need. Only to find out years later that it all sounds the same. Because we're guitar players and we never learn...
Been playing for 40 years. I’ve owned many different rigs along the way and I’ve been saying what Glenn says for years, but people are simply convinced they can “hear” every little difference. Whether it’s because they trust the marketing and just believe it, or can’t come to terms with how much money they’ve wasted is something we may never know.
It's part tone snobbery, part groupthink, part how dare you criticize my rig worth tens of thousands and part bragging rights of owning vintage out of production stuff.
@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623 That and post-purchase rationalization.
@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623what zero practice does to a mf
They’re hearing the “in the room” sound and assuming it translates to recorded sound.
So did all those guitar samples sound the same to you? Because I could clearly hear differences in them. While I couldn’t be sure of which was which (except the HB because it sounded shit) I heard differences. If you heard them all the same then I’m not sure what to say.
In a real world situation there would be more frequency response in the mic captures using multiple mics at various locations and polarities which would show the differences to even a greater extent.
Whether or not someone could match tone to guitar really doesn’t matter in terms of the test, because the test showed that there are differences.
Glenn, I genuinely hope you read this as I’ve taken your experience and experiments into consideration in changing my mind on the common misconceptions that guitarist have said for fucking years now. I don’t know why so many guitarist and musicians dig their heels in the mud so much on these tone topics other than to sound like musician snobs. But please remember this quote by Bill Murray( I think) “It's hard to win an argument with a smart person. It's damn near impossible to win an argument with a stupid person.”
"Never argue with a fool. People watching won't know which is which"
When the Tonex Capture came out I was excited to capture my different amps. I did captures of just the heads, no speaker. Imagine my surprise when they all sounded the same.
I then did captures of the head with various pedals. While the amount of gain changed, the actual tone of all the captures was the basically identical.
You can do these tests at home people!
"It's a really fantastic time to be a guitar player..." 🙏🙏🙏
Exactly what I thought again watching this!
Today you can buy awesome guitars for about 200 bucks, use some amp sims and IRs and get tones that are pretty damn close to what you're hearing on the biggest records.
20 years ago this would have cost you a fortune (plus learning things like how to mic up a cabinet just for example... 😃).
Instead of being excited about the endless amount of affordable possibilities, too many people are b*tching about questions like which of the 4696457 pickups aimed at the modern metal guitarist are the best if you wanna play [oddly specific sub-sub-genre]. 🙃
"You skewed the test results with EQ!!"
So the tone snops are admitting that there's no point in spending thousands on new tubes, pickups and tonewood, when you can just put a EQ pedal for fiddy bucks into the effects loop?
lol, talk about "it hurt itself in its confusion", lmao
So you're accepting that you're wrong and that it changes the tone?
See, this discussion is worthless and it doesn't help anyone.
If you can just EQ the guitars to sound the same, as some are saying, why does it matter that they're different to begin with? Isn't that just complaining about the point that's being made? EQ'ing a HB to sound like a Les Paul seems like a pretty neat and cost saving trick. Seems like the complaints kind of prove the point. Either naturally or through manipulation, electric guitars mostly sound the same, with very minor differences that can often be EQ'd away.
The worlds gona run out of copium if you keep doing these videos.
I've never come across a channel that actually puts out genuine and useful information on RUclips. I've learnt so much about guitar tone and how spending money doesn't get you a kickass guitar tone, keep up the great work Glen!! 🤘
I've been playing guitar for over twenty years, and started at age twelve. It only took about five years of playing a bunch of different types of guitars before I learned I can get the same sound from any them through my particular amp setup. Since then, I only chose guitars based on how they feel in my hands.
Tone deaf huh
There's no way this is true. I very rarely change my amp settings and I only ever play with distortion. The difference isn't staggering but there definitely is a noticeable difference between my ones with stock pickups over a one with an EMG81.
@revivedfears I agree passive pickups and active pickups can give you a noticeable difference, but in my experience, it was more about how my amp responded to the signal. My Boutique amp made my emgs sound digital so I went to all passive in my guitars. I have 6 guitars, only two have the same pickup configuration and the rest are very different from one another. I recorded all of them for my demo, and I couldn't hear any tonal difference. The differences I did hear was just output intensity. I ended up finishing the song with one guitar for distortion, and another one that had the best clean tone for the soft parts.
It's all just relative to the player. If you listened to my song you wouldn't even know which parts were played with different guitars. My conclusion was, for hard rock and metal, just grab a guitar that feels good to play.
16:27 Jack Pearson. Played with the Allman Brothers and is one of the greatest guitar players you may or may not have heard of. He plays Squires. And sounds amazing doing it.
Came looking for this comment; great point.
Not only does he play squiers, he plays the least expensive squiers, without modding them, iirc.
@@marinrealestatephotography And I was yesterday years old when I found out that he’s a MONSTER jazz player. Sometimes he uses a Squire telecaster for that as well.
Nothing wrong with a squier but if you’re saying it sounds like a Gibson Les Paul - prove it. Two big fallacies in these videos - “bands only do one song per set” - “Rythm guitar is the only thing that matters.”
Yeah average guitar players who play Rythm think a tele or strat sounds like a Les Paul
Three hours playing a Les Paul live verses 3 hours on a high action squier with single coils that’s a major difference - the one song band is not a reality
Seems like a stock squier has that single coil hum which i guess is a myth
My good friend's son is in a hardcore metal band and is a big big fan of your show. They dont actually make money so he and the bass player got actual WORK with a band that does weddings and local gatherings. Whata ya know, as soon as he turned down his high gain in a band situation, his lower mid level Ibanez sounded muddy and lifeless. He went against your advice and sprung for some decent Seymores. They weren't very expensive, they made a huge difference in the clarity and presence of the tone, and it still sounds great in a metal setting as well. And . . .oh yeah, he started his journey by changing his speaker. It made a big difference for sure but didn't help the old muddy sounding pickups. So far his metal recordings haven't made him any money, but the wedding band has been doing very well. Would you agree that in this situation the money spent on the pickups was well spent?
If it did the thing, it was worth it. If it didn't do the thing, it was a waste.
That "make up your minds fuckers" line made me spit my coffee out! Love ya Glen! Haha
Hey Glenn! I would like to ask a question: If you repeat the same test (les paul vs strat) but in lower tunings for example C standard, do you think that the difference in scale length between both guitars might create a bigger tonal difference? Also it would be a great idea to test Baritone vs regular scale guitar in B Standard. Keep up the good work!
Shorter scale = floppier strings
A second channel, long form experiment videos. Yeah.
Also, the Glenn Fricker Album needs to happen. I'd love to be a part of it too...
People always take your "they sound very similar" to mean exactly the same and it cracks me up. Everyone can hear there are differences, they just aren't worth worrying about. The difference one to another isn't going to make or break your tone.
Now all this guy needs to do is collab with Jim Lill, these two can alone DESTROY the current gear snob mentality in the guitarist sphere today!
Some big channel blocked me after I called out his tonewood BS and brought up both Jim and Glenn, he insulted both, left me unblocked for a day, then came back and blocked.
Is there actually any end to this uphill battle against the tonewood fanatics within most of our lifetimes?
No matter how much evidence we put out, they will be furiously determined to ignore them.
I really can't believe that you're trying to help all of us save money and going out of your way to share some of your years of experience that many people would charge for and all these people do is hate and whine at you. You can't please stupid. Thanks for trying to help us all out Glenn!
People just don't like it when you destroy their deeply held beliefs and make them look like fools for having spent thousands on the wrong thing.
@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623 A fair assessment, and very true.
@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623 Spot on!
what was your guess in the poll?@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623
There are tons of ways to save money. Good thing because it’s really hard for people to get a hundred bucks.
5:36 someone in the UK, launched a rocket with a camera attached to it. The camera went up high enough to take pictures and get the curvature of the earth. NASA went to him and wanted to know how he did it.
Just bought Element Bass. Thanks for putting it together Glenn! Hopefully I'll find sometime this weekend to test it out. I have no doubts it will sound killer!
Let us know how you like it!
Can I just say using the word tone instead of timbre makes angry guitar players that much funnier
MarcusPix is a great channel, great to see him getting a mention!
These people do know they can replicate ur tests? Then there’d be no argument…
… ooooh yeh, that’ll be why 😂
one of the few times you can be happy about being a drummer vs guitarist; tonewood is very real with drums/percussion.
It's very important on acoustic guitars as well
It's a double edged sword; this means drummers still have to pay more for better sounding materials if they want that extra edge while us guitarists can save money by using cheaper parts
I'm a guitar player, but I'm learning the drums at the moment. That's great news indeed, finally something to spend my money on. I will now get an aircraft hangar and put a bunch of different drum sets and other percussion instruments in there. Life without debt just isn't the same - you get so much more work done when your entire existence depends on that next pay check.
Can't wait to join a band as a drummer now and test out the different sounds and see what the other guys and girls think. I'm sure their minds will be blown, it will certainly not just be empty expressions and "I don't hear the difference" or "I don't care" or "can we move on?" or "you're fired!". I actually wanted to stay a bedroom drummer, but I'm sold.
But all jokes aside, drums are awesome. Why aren't you happy more often with your choice?
@@TheKlaun9 hell yeah brother keep us updated on how it goes
Actually not not so much. More about hard ware lugs and isolation. I've test CB 700 against my 5000$ GMS kit. Under mics and done right... good luck.
Can't believe the shit you have to deal with... amazing.
Thank you Glen for all your insight and balls of steel with the truth. Most of us bedroom players and home music makers use your advice to not go BROKE!!! Love from Toronto. 🤘🤘
7:59 Let’s talk about stage volume with a band. I’ve tried to hear the difference when a band switches guitars at stage volume. Still can’t do it.
Glenn, I feel your pain so much! My video “exposing” you has generated a ton of similar comments. But most of them were positive & supported you. I thought you should know 95% of them were on your side. Thanks so much for doing what you do!
Holy fuck the editing gets even better every week! Absolutely god damn hilarious, again!
@Glenn. Some people make it real hard on you to save them money. One day if you ever say FUCK IT I’m done. Then they will miss you. Great vid as always. I appreciate you.
Filosofem guitar tone is one of the worst sounds extracted from string instrument I could imagine. Yet I'll listen it any day all day instead of modern day copypasted 8-string riffs with same cloned sound. That is also why I am so grateful for modern doom/stoner scene, which is often not about genre itself, but about playing and recording raw.
Null and void. These haters are trying to sound like they know something. I call b.s. These people are so funny. Keep up the good work, Glen😅
Ps. we buy with our eyes, not our ears. Thanks for pointing 👉 that out.
This show is like a soft blanket you can wrap around you and snuggle with. Nothing more satisfying and heart warming than all those dudes losing it that conviced my 16 year old self on those old internet forums that my gear just wasn't good enough. I actually wonder how many of them ever play live, ever record themselves or even go to shows regularly. In your bedroom, you can really tell the difference between your 5k LP and your 3k Strat - they look very different indeed, have completely different output levels and one of them is heavy as f*.
I urge them to do a test: On your next gig, switch your LP for your Strat on a song that needs 100% a LP in your opinion. See how much of the audience notices that you're using the completely wrong guitar. And I'm sorry if an angry riot breaks out because because you were right all along, but I'm willing to take that bet and say nobody's gonna care.
Unless you're a world megastar, nobody knows your songs, what you're supposed to sound like and you're certainly not getting that tone you want without a team of insanely good technicians and a venue with acoustics that supports your delicate taste. It's really worth spending the extra money on an entire guitar collection for that.
If I could be bothered to upload a test to my channel I would but I kinda focus on ya know, songs? But I just played both my EMG loaded LTD and Frankentrat with Joe Bardens to test my MLC S-Zero plugin and as hard as I tried, I couldn't *not* sound like Danny Gatton through a metal amp lol. Sounded NOTHING like the EMGS...So ya, there's that.
I'm sorry, I must leave this channel. I was hopeful that it might be a refreshing alternative to infomercial "reviews", but the focus is always on negative comments, which only encourages them, and the constant angry tone is exhausting. Best wishes.
Yeah I posted a positive comment to that regard, but wish I hadn't now.
Deaf is a good thing in certain circles, perhaps not in metal. Deaf is where you are going if you play 3 stacks of Marshalls, at 11, in a small room for daze at a time. I had a guitarist who insisted on playing a full Marshall 100 Watt stack, in a small bar. Today he mostly says "HUA?"
Most guitarists need to spend more money on LESSONS rather than that $5k guitar that won't fix their technique or tone.
STOP LISTENING WITH YOUR EYES!
I hear proper use of theory/hypothesis -- I upvote the hell outta' it.
ARGH! I love it how the naysayers miss the point! They keep on griping about how you eq the hell out of the things so they don't sound that much different.
Which. Is. The fucking. Point. Because we're talking about studio engineering and recording point of view. DUH! I'm still on the fence with some things you're saying, Glenn, but damn, people keep missing the crucial point here: How to work with what you've got without paying yourself sick for a single purpose item that costs three houses and a Rolls Royce.
Fuck you, Glenn, and never stop! :) You're saving me shitton of money as it is.
EDIT: "Sent from an iPhone". OUCH!
For the past year I’ve been going direct to the PA through a Joyo American Sound and not one person has yet to ask what amps we’re playing through!
Yeah.. I wonder why.. Maybe because eno one wants to sound like that? 😅
Hey!! My Custom Shop Les Paul cost $6500!!
I still love the videos, Glenn.
I’m a collector/player. I know these expensive guitars/gear don’t make me a better player.I have the means and it’s my hobby.
BTW, F these butthurt nut jobs!
Do you think people are mistaking out put of different pick ups for tone?
I have no test to back this, but I think that a lower out put pickup give us the perception that it’s a darker tone and vice versa for higher output pick ups.
What are your thoughts?
No, a pickup can have high output and still sound dark. (for example overwound pickups)
Are you implying that most guitar players have no idea how critical gain staging is? Because I think you're on to something.
Apologies in advance for the long comment:
Anyway, I am no stranger to messing with guitar electronics. I don't think any of my guitars are unmodified, and that means I have a sizeable collection of junk parts.
When I bought my Flying V, I bought it with the specific intention of stripping it to the bare wood and modifying it. In fact, I specifically chose a Gibson because I knew the paint would be easier to strip (one of the end goals is to actually throw an Ibanez decal on the headstock so the Gibson purists can critique how a Rocket Roll sounds inferior to a Flying V). Leslie West and Geordie Walker (both RIP) are two of my guitar heroes, and I really liked the sound of my ES-125 (McCarty era, PIO caps, ultimate defense against tone snobs), so I decided to make a custom pickguard and throw a pair of cheap P90s on it (side quest: they sound more or less the same as the '60s P90s in my ES-125), then wire up a custom circuit (1 volume, 1 treble cut tone knob, 1 bass cut tone knob, push-pull on the volume to invert rhythm pickup polarity - ultimate flexibility).
This left me with a 496R and a 500T that were surplus, so I bought a cheap kit body and threw a whole bunch of discarded hardware, including the whole loaded pickguard from the Gibson, on it. First, this cheap poplar bolt-on piece of crap covered with hobby paint (a la George Harrison) sounded the exact same as the Gibson did before I yanked the electronics. Second, it just didn't sound very good. Conventional wisdom is that the ceramic magnets in these pickups are the problem. Well, since I am no stranger to repairing pickups, I have plenty of Alnico bar magnets lying around. So I threw a 2 on the 496R and a 5 on the 500T. The end result? They still sounded pretty much the same. No treble. These are high-output pickups, so I figured lowering the pickup height might bias the signal towards the treble spectrum (another piece of conventional wisdom). I dropped them as far as they'd go. No major shifts in tone, but the output level certainly was different.
This was the part where I remembered that Gibson uses 300k pots and that this tends to filter off a fair bit of treble. Oops.
Ultimately, I think that people get so caught up on magnet types and wire types and coil spacer material and whether the caps are PIO or ceramic and whether the fretboard has nibs that they forget that the average signal chain has much bigger filters in it (potentiometers, speakers) than the pickups. If people find joy in debating minutiae of materials and using certain brands, more power to them. I like Gibsons, I got a few of 'em. I don't feel the need to justify having them in terms of sonic quality. They sound like guitars. I like the way they look and I like the scale length and neck profiles. Those are valid reasons. But let's not pretend the major filtering work isn't being done elsewhere.
Looks like Glenn finally found his golden cow to milk for another year lol
I’ll talk about something else when they stop giving me such great ammunition!
the golden cow produces milk by itself without you feeding it, though.
No need to worry about the cow: Make it idiot proof (as Glenn has), and someone will invent a better idiot!
@@SpectreSoundStudios I would really like you to continue stuff about what actually matters, cab episode where amazing
OK, I know that people who are emotionally invested are not going to believe anything I say after seeing with their own eyes and hearing with their own ears what was demonstrated on that video, but hell I'm gonna share anyway: Hi, I'm a guitar player. I listen to lots of different styles, but I get nearly all of my gigs as a blues guy. The only thing of value that I own is the collection of instruments, amps, and other gear that I've collected over decades of playing. I've had a lot of folks over the years complement me on the tone I get in a live setting.
I've enjoyed this channel because I don't (or at least didn't) know a lot about recording, and because I enjoy Glenn's loud, angry, insult comedian delivery; which when you consider that most of his human interactions regarding the thing he does best are with Metal musicians and RUclips and forum commenters... that can give you a view of the human race similar to someone who works the graveyard shift at a convenience store.
Anyway, I was a bit like the first commenter, grain of salt to the test. I found what Glenn was saying about speakers being most important spot on, was convinced by the tube demo (trial and error on my own had convinced me of "it doesn't make *nearly* the difference these advertisers and so-called experts are saying about tube swapping" but seeing and hearing "no difference at all" demo'd was sobering.) And thoroughly convinced that pickups, wood, etc. make virtually no difference when recording *crushing metal guitar tones*.
But... No difference recording any sounds? It just went against everything I've experienced after decades of performing professionally. Some of the guitars I've played over the years sounded like shit, the ones I've bought and traded up to sound angelic... and definitely feel, play and (to my ears in the room) sound better. My thought has always been that I *wish* I could play a guitar out of pressboard or plastic or whatever was cheapest but that doesn't apply to the style and sound of what I do. But I saw the videos Glenn is talking about here and went "I hear the slightest difference in two of those, but I'll be damned if I could identify which guitar was which."
So... I like science. I like observation, and I like demonstrating causation and correlation; and a big point of proving a theory is replicating data as part of peer review. I picked out four dual humbucker instruments, and I deliberately started with the two that I felt were the widest gap in sound. Both were good enough to keep; but one was basically "dead" in my hands and sounded "dark and dull", and the other was my favorite semi-hollow "wouldn't you like to own one of these" main instrument. Then I set up a couple of different means of recording, with a clean sound and a slightly edge similar to what was demonstrated. This included using a Tonex direct sound with a Two Rock capture and an amp with a "FumbleMumbleBumble" tone-stack.
And I hit record and played the same licks; I did neck, middle, and bridge settings. And while I was doing it I was thinking about making my own video later with these and two other guitars. (another coveted solid body and a made in Indonesia inexpensive semi) And then I listened to the playback...
I COULD NOT TELL ANY SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MY "BEST" AND "WORST" TWO HUMBUCKER GUITARS!! In headphones, on speakers, in my car stereo.... I could hear the slightest difference, but if the tracks were randomly scrambled, I have to say in all honesty I probably wouldn't be able to get much higher success than randomly guessing... and these were tracks I RECORDED on my OWN FUCKING INSTRUMENTS!
I will still maintain (and I'm sure Glenn agrees) that some guitars play sound better in a room (when the acoustics also affect things); and I'll add that some play much better than others and some clearly give me less headaches and inspire better performances in a live setting... but straight to and from a recording setup (and I'm sure what goes straight into and comes straight out of a large P.A.)... I'm shocked at how little difference this shit makes. Still keeping my nice guitars, though.
Thanks for doing these demonstrations, dealing with RUclips commenters, taking the time to reply to those in such an entertaining manner, and generally taking a stand against cult-like thinking.
And, fuck you Glenn.
A:"Your instrument can be replaced with Plugins and we can get same results" Bass and drum players: "yeah" ----- A: "Buy this guitar instead of this one and you can save money while getting almost the same (if not the same) quality performance" Guitar players: "Nooo you don't understand wood, you are sabotaging Gibson, liiaaarrrr"
While I can understand the need for people that don't agree with Glenn's findings to lash out in some way, perhaps that could be best solved with a slight alteration in mind-set? I've been playing guitar for 34 years now, and I've come to realize for me that there's so much more to buying a guitar than just what it outputs. A guitar is a work of art to be enjoyed across many senses! How it feels to play it, how it looks in terms of it's shape and color, and of course how it sounds. I'll buy / build a guitar to satisfy all of these needs in various ways, so I personally don't care about having my choices validated externally because I am the only one I'm trying to satisfy! I know what I'm wanting out of the instrument, so I'll invest whatever I feel is worth it to get it. I'll swap pickups because I want to play with the visuals of the instrument, or how it feels to play because they emphasize/de-emphasize certain frequencies that are pleasant to me. Or I'll purchase a "cheap" guitar because I want to build it up my way with new electronics / bridge / PUs / tuners / etc.... It's not a Holy writ that others must abide by, but a personal quest for myself as to what I want to get out of the instrument. I'm happy with what I've invested into my instruments, and while videos like what Glenn produce are educational and "good to know" things about what alters the sound, it's not going to invalidate my opinions and tastes on what I like out of an instrument. Like all art, it's personal.
Keep on making the good stuff Glenn!
Glenn, let's face it, there will always be people willing to argue about how tonewood, pickups, paint finishes or tubes make HUGE changes in tone (while also calling those differences "nuances", that you can only hear without youtube compression, in isolation and over high quality speakers) and willing to pay thousands of dollars for such massive differences (or ...trying to justify the thousands of dollars they already spent). People need hobbies, let's let them have them. Those of us willing to learn new things and make a smarter use of the little money we have will always appreciate your work, doing the heavy lifting so we can make better decisions. Thanks! JP
"Guitars are generally paired with a certain amp"
Yeah....and Hendrix didn't made his name while plugging Fender guitars in Marshalls....oh wait...That's exactly what he did!
Enjoying the weeping and tooth gnashing from the cork sniffing tone guys - I see the same result on Jim Lill's videos. They don't like having proof that their handwound cloth insulated pickup in aged mahogany guitars with checked lacquer sounds the same as a $225 chinese knockoff.
Of course!
And, whilst we're on the subject, the Earth is flat, Elvis is alive, well and living in Belgium, bass players are are actually all theoretical physicists and Gibsons don't have _appalling_ tuning stability issues at all.
Ever.
Now, where did I put my tinfoil hat?....
Something I can say about Glenn is if he thinks something is bs or sucks he will call it out or not support it. For years I was a product specialist for a plugin company and worked AES and namm every year.
We sent his team a copy of our amp sim that to be honest sucks for metal and when my boss asked why he never did a video for it. We where told by a member of his team that he didn't like it. I had a little chuckle but It also made me respect the fact that he didn't back a product he didn't like.
And come on people this is a metal channel I watch this for the brutal honest rants and dope metal tones. For everything else I go to other channels.
Something worth noting: music is an art, and art is usually a very subjective thing, so by nature, there’s a door wide open for subjectivity. Certain guitars will inspire people in a certain way and a lot of people are collectors. That’s not a bad thing necessarily (I say that as someone who doesn’t like Gibson). At the same time, some common sense and reasonableness goes a long way and will save you a lot of money. Hahaha. As Glenn has poked fun at before in some of my comments, I’m an opinionated Christian, and ironically, the comments I get the most pissy responses from are ironically not religious/spiritual related discussions but far more guitar related. I’m pretty sure where you land on that first topic is far more important than your take on guitars. Hahahaha.
Anyway, what you need to tour the world now: a Line 6 HX Stomp, a Harley Benton, maybe a set up, and some well practiced hands. Now if somebody would just write some great songs with them and get creative with those tools…
Hey Glen, can you clarify what you mean when you say pickups don't make much of a difference? Is there some qualifying threshold? I adk because I have a budget gtr and the stock pups were horrible. I swapped them out for decent, but not expensive ones, and the difference was night and day. Cheers, buddy.
Ah, the classic "I'll misunderstand the question on purpose just so I justify how pissed off I am"...
Is there a difference? A slight one, yes! The point isn't that they sound 100% the same, but that they all sound good, they're all perfectly usable tones and you can't tell which is which from sound alone!
The part I dig is how many people don't discover that they have magical superhero ears (that allow them to hear things we mere plebes can't) until AFTER they've spent a crapton on gear.
...it's almost like it's proportional; they more they spend, the better they are than the rest of us.
Keep doing what you're doing, Glenn... you already know the goalposts are going to keep moving and the butthurt "agenda!" digs are going to keep coming, because that's how cognitive dissonance works.
The rest of us appreciate you and what you do.
I'm actually amazed how much anger there is over the video. I've been playing guitar since I was 14 and my main takeaway from the video was "all those guitars sounds nice, even the cheap one, cool to know".
Also most of my music listening is not done in 96khz lossless on my good headphones, it's done on cheaper headphones while at work streamed online either through deezer's flac or youtube with compression. If you need the best equipment to hear the difference then maybe that's not the difference I should be putting the most money towards.
If you want to get banned from guitar forums go there and do what Glenn does here....banned from every single one of them but never regretted seen the pathetic reactions of the cork sniffer holier than thou forumites who think that every expensive purchase somehow also elevates their status as players......needless to say iam enjoying his videos way too much..lol.
I can admit that I bought an actual Gibson Les Paul. Because I just wanted to. I still love my Epiphone and Squire Classic Vibe.
A guitar's shape/wood should only matter for their comfort and durability.
Stuff like scale length, fretboard radius, neck curvature, wether its a floyd or static, matter much more for the confort and playability of a guitar than anything else.
Everyone have their preferences, and picking the right one that feels good for YOUR hands is much more important than falling for marketing about tones and woods and wether or not the wood grain was aligned with the planetary shifts of the celestial opposition of the new aquarius age or whatever.
All the tone part can be thinkered with with a few pedals, an amp or some tone modelers which are so popular nowadays.
But I think assuming and championing brands and woods like if they make a big difference gives that Oenologist feel to some.
I think the tone snobs are forgetting something very important, speakers are supposed to be mic'd in such a way that less EQ is needed to fit in a mix. Maybe Glenn just, has experience and knows that??? And actually does so??? Idk, I'm not a professional but if some nutjob talking out of their ass was telling me how to do my job, I'd have to laugh and walk away
Also to point out....
Wasn't most of Led Zeppelins early stuff recorded with a Telecaster and everyone assumed it was a Les Paul that Jimmy Page wad famous for playing?
No one could tell the difference and no one actually cared because great music is great music.... the end!
All these comments is what COVID felt like for me as a PhD candidate working in immunology. No evidence is ever enough, and the goal post is ALWAYS on the move.
OOOOHHHHH man....being a drummer i fell for similar grifts to this pickup drama. once i saw videos of drummers that are considered at the top of the talent pile playing on a kids drumset for fun, and making it sound huge, i had a wake up call. honestly, ANY drumset can sound great with new heads and a good tune. as an argument for the higher priced guitars and other equipment: you are getting features, warranty, build quality(sometimes lol) and comfort you might not find in a cheap axe. Also, you need to be inspired to play and practice to get better, if the instrument just frustrates you and does not make you want to play it constantly, then it does not matter how much money you spent on it. Keep it up Glen.
I was sucked into tone snobbery fairly early into learning guitar. Spent too many hours pouring over posts to find the sound I wanted. Instead, I should've just played the damn instrument and learned to dial in my amp.
A lot of the experiences I've had with the tonewood and premium tube obsessed players though has boiled down to one camp. Many of the players I know that still chase these magical tone fairies in the wood and tubes are my classically trained friends. Those who learned all their understanding of instruments from a classical and jazz space. To them, the build material is the end all, be all to the sound. It became pretty clear when talking to them. "It has to be this wood, from this tree, in this valley while the moon is waning". But of course all my knowledge is invalid because I never learned to read sheet music. Doesnt stop them from paying me to string change and tune their guitars though.
Hmm, its almost as Glenn is a professional trying to spread his knowledge to those on the internet. Hes doing it for our benefit and not his. And what do we do? We bitch about it. Glenn, thanks for your spreading of knowledge, and great videos. And fuck the “keyboard Professionals”.
The guy who is like “go watch wildwood guitars” is funny, both because they don’t do comparison videos, but also when you play two of their videos back to back of guitars with same type of pickups ie hum buckers or singles, if your not watching I really don’t think you would know when the video changes.
All these idiot naysayers can't plug in two of their overpriced guitars and do the tests themselves to try to disprove you? I WONDER WHY!
everyone complaining that the cheap guitars can't sound as good and in the same breath saying you just have to adjust EQ to make them sound the same. Even if Glen did adjust the EQ we are at the same place where the pickups don't make any concernable difference. I'm just going to go ahead and take Glen's word for it.
Even if you did everything all those morons told you to do they would still find a reason to not believe it. That dude with 5-6 LesPauls… is it 5 or 6? Wtf does 5-6 mean? Either way what a waste of money. I have 1. That’s enough
As for RUclips's compression, it's only an issue on lower bit rates under 480. Listen to a song at 240, then listen to it again at 480 or 720, and the sound difference is quite noticeable.
I got two of the Gibsons correct and one of the strats. I’m an audio pro, but it might have been luck. I don’t think so though. I play heavy guitars with les pauls, teles, strats, whatever without concern for what it should be. It’s more about what inspires me for certain tunes. Good work, Glenn.
there was only one Gibson (the Les Paul) and only one Strat. the other two was a Harley Benton SG and a PRS. what was your guess in order? I'm genuinely curious
While i have my criticism of these tests, accusing Glenn of foul play testing is pretty ridiculous.
Once again I’ll say it, Glenn is not interested in saving you money he’s interested in making himself money with click bait. Denying that a musician has an audible relationship with their instrument is low imo.
Denial and Blissful Ignorance, the only things that the majority of musicians have in their personalities. I wonder if they'll still act like kids if they saw Glenn in person. I'd pay to see that happen 😆
Step 1. Buy 6 different guitars step 2. Get pissed when somebody has solid evidence proving all your guitars sound the same
The Harley Benton was easily detectable due to its B-String sounding way too loud. I commented that under your video. Are you denying that, Glenn?
The thing I don’t get about these arguments saying shit like ‘most people’s hearing isn’t good enough to discern the difference’ is that the majority of the audience will be the people who cannot discern…so they are still wasting their money on shit that doesn’t make a big difference in the end!
Glen, I would like to see the two bass programs in use. I can't buy them til I do. Thank You have a good day.
I really love your serenity hidden behind a peel of loudness. You'd be a great Buddhist teacher...
Watching these people freak out because they paid money for rigs that sound like total dogshit is hysterical to me.
Oh the 144p enjoyers are chiming in on youtube audio compression again.
I've got Mesa road king 412 loaded with Mesa MC90 (the ONLY original speaker), Jensen Jet Tornado Neo on the open back half and Warehouse Veteran 30 + ET65 on the closed back. So, I bought 3 new speakers.
ONE OF THE BEST INVESTMENT IN MY GEAR!!!
Bro just do it live and post sound samples online to download and hear without youtube compression.
so i guess some people think you'll take 3 times as long to make a video by rigging all the results? sounds exhausting
The whole "youtube compression" thing is one of the dumbest myths that i somehow see almost daily
this dudes gimmick of berating the viewer with intense screaming is the kind of sado masochism i need in my life right now
People are just hating at this point. They're not even angry because they dropped big bucks on expensive guitars. It's really the other way around, they're happy and feel better than others just because of the name on the headstock. Like Plato famously said: " Don't waste your time giving someone advice if he isn't even listening to you".
If they want to throw money into the dumpster, let them do. The ones intelligent enough to listen to you will pick up your precious advice.
1:52 this is my favorite comment ever. I bet he thinks that tump won in 2020 too.
The guitar I've been playing for 150 years (a 1985 Japanese Fender Telecaster with humbuckers) has a DiMarzio Evolution in the bridge, that I put in it in like 1995 because I wanted a higher gain pickup. I swear it's brighter than the IBZ pickups in my Ibanez parts guitar. So I finally did a shootout yesterday because I was doing a speaker swap in my amp. Sure as shit, I put a 57 in front of the amp and record it and I can barely tell the difference between those or the '90s Squier knock off Radius I have with a random used Seymour Duncan pickup installed. Even the bridge pickup on my Mexican Telecaster doesn't sound that different. Technically the noiseless pickups in it are stacked humbuckers, but they still have lower output. It's even more obvious in the frequency response graphs. You can see that the difference with the Telecaster is extra noise.
In contrast, the speakers sound quite different and again the frequency response graphs show the difference. Those new Hempbacks sound way better than the speakers that were in my beat up old Peavey Classic 50. Yesterday I learned that the 30 year old amp I bought 20 years ago had one of the original speakers swapped out for a 25W speaker from a Peavey Bravo, whatever the fuck that is. No wonder it always sounded a little weird. But still better than the piece of shit it replaced. Anyway, the amp sounds great now and I saved $1000 on the JC-120 that I didn't buy. Thanks, Glenn!
I was pretty butthurt during his older comparisons until I did my own test too. The fact that the test is repeatable and everyone seems to come to the same result would make you think tone snobs would wake up… Alas, some people just need something to believe in I guess.
People are getting far, far too comfortable with saying "nuh-uh" to things they don't like in life. It's really starting to be a massive problem.
confirmed illuminati shill, 0/10 would not watch again