As a pickup designer and builder I agree with alot of this. Clean tones will definitely be discernable. The only time a pickup will effect a high gain amp would be its response to pick attack. Due to the winding, wire gauge, and magnet type/size, some pickups are better for high gain chugs while others are better chords. Certain pickups help tighten up bass response also. The pickup is the beginning of your signal and is shaped from there.
A pickup being at the start of a signal path means very little and doesn’t add any validation to the argument. Pickups are the pyramidion or capstone of an inverted signal pyramid.
@bloomtikbloom9593 certain pickups have some special frequencies that others don’t?!? Lol that’s rubbish unless it’s total cheap 40 dollar Chinese BS. Do famous singers say they can hit them higher notes better depending on the microphone? Lol. Ask Whitney Houston (rip) what mic she preferred she would of ran from you. Bottom line, guitar is a mid range instrument and when guys say “oh these master exploder 5000s are for drop tune stuff and these bare numb chucks are for leads or the AzzDi Soul Fires 9100s are for classic/cleans …how about u give me all that in 1 pickup - that’s a good pickup then and haven’t had much trouble actually doing that myself so my point stands on its own
@bloomtikbloom9593 well, I mean, I have multiple harley bentons and noise isn't really a problem, with guitars starting from 150 € all the way to 550 €
I can't help but wonder how many people watch Glenn's videos and go buy a Squire Bullet series then believe that it's just as good of a guitar as a Pro II...
@@AmericanNationalist852 There's obviously going to be quality issues, I'd rather get me a top of the line Squier or Harley Benton then the lowest cheapest range. Spending a little money more means better quality control, components and set ups. Which is exactly what Glenn says in his videos. But if you set it up right you can make the Bullet work.
@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623 you will not play the same on something you just "make work" vs something that "just works". Glenn is a sound guy who can play a few basic high gain riffs, and his opinion is coming from that of a sound guy who can play a few basic high gain riffs. Anyone who's beyond an intermediate level of skill on their instrument (regardless of if they play "professionally", whatever that really means) can have their playing affected profoundly by the nuances of cheap vs quality gear. Whether it's sustain/attack of a pickup (ceramic pickups in a bullet vs varied alnico in the Pro II) or the nut width (39mm on Bullet vs 42mm on Pro II), or neck shape and fret dressing. Glenn factors in NONE of this when he tells people just just buy the cheap shit and get "good speakers". The dude desperately wants to be the next Jim Lill. That's all it is.
As a guy who plays funky, jazz influenced pop, I have to say I love this YT channel. Glenn’s irreverence for all the BS is refreshing. I use a Twin Reverb tone most of the time and occasionally turn on an overdrive pedal (Zendrive). That being said, there is definitely a difference in each guitar of the shootout but not so much that a little knob twiddling wouldn’t close the gaps. Glenn, once again you’ve pulled back the curtain. Great job!
Overall, this channel has really helped me to get over years worth of guitar hang-ups (shapes, features, tone woods, pickups, etc) and just go with whatever is either more comfortable to play and/or whatever inspires me to play more.
While he has many great points and I often agree ge always looks at it through the lens of his sound, DT-1/MT-2 type ultra gain, death metal kind of sound. With that sound everything really is the same. Pickups definetly sound substantially different with an overdrive tone, or bluesy type sound, edge of breakup etc... You can argue body shape doesn't matter, type of wood doesn't matter (but I think they do, just not like premiun guitar builders say, just density differences that sorta stuff, lighter guitars seem to be more resonant and brighter). And you can say nuts and bridges don't matter, but it's an electric guitar. Besides the amp the nr.1 thing that will actually change tone are the pickups, unless you play speed metal with two MT-2 in series cranked on top of a heavily distorted amp then okay... it probably doesn't matter enough to be worth doing anything about it, when you can just use an EQ after the fact to tweak it a little. I have two nearly identical guitars, Gibson Flying V and an Epiphone Flying V. Both gorgeously built but the Epi has early 2000s cheapo Epi PAF style and the Gibson has super hot ceramic 500T/496R or something like that, Dimarzio super distortion type pickups, about as heavy output as EMGs. They couldn't sound less alike. And my Les Paul clone has Seymour Duncan PAF style pickups and it sounds closer to the Epiphone but still way different. I often show that to people who ask why I have so many guitars and I play them each one and most can get the basic stuff, the Epi is quite dark, the Gibson sounds like 80s metal and the Les Paul sounds like classic rock. And that is with reducing gain on higher output pickups. I wouldn't be surprised if the woods make relatively little difference, unplugged they do, the Flying Vs (one mahogany one Korina) sound utterly different. Plugged in I don't think it matters a huge deal, as long as it's some decent wood and not plywood or cardboard. If anything the vibrations do transfer and it can influence how the strings behave, indirectly affecting tone, a greater mass dampening more, maybe the higher frequencies a bit more. Lighter guitars do seem brighter. But most of that will be relatively insignificant compared to the pickups and anything that directly affects the strings (playing style) maybe if the bridge is really cheap and shitty it might rattle or absorb vibrations vs a solid metal one that is firmly mounted. The strings definetly matter. Just take a guitar with old strings that are all corroded and compare it to one with new strings. So I disagree with the attitude that none of that matters but I also disagree with the guitar snobs who think it has to be mahogany it can't a wood that has similar density, and the nut must be bone it can't be a synthetic one with identical density etc... paintjob blablabla. Both sides are kinda wrong on this unless you run a fully cranked MT2. Then yes a Strat = Ibanez RG. Not fully but nearly indistinguishable. But amp on edge of breakup + tubescreamer? My guitars sound different enough to be a nuisance, I have to turn the brightness knob on the screamer up or down to get the tone I want. I'm getting a PAF Les Paul in the mail this week, I'll compare it to the other one with Seymour PAFs, very curious. Different brands but same factory, similar wood and construction, similar finish (why would you not have a LP with flame top?). But the new one has EMG Fat 55s. Should be about the same output. I'd be surprised if they sound exactly alike but also if they are substantially different. I actually hope the same because one was a grand thw other 350 bucks so I wouldn't mind the cheaper one sounding exactly alike. And if it does I'll get more of them. Because I have a sickness in my mind.
This absolutely has an effect on my mentality towards pickups. Coincidentally, I was in the process of giving a friend of mine advice on upgrading his pickups a few weeks back. I’ve since messaged him and told him I was full of shit and that we should be looking at his speakers and amp/effects settings. I think downing a slice of FREE humble pie is far better than watching a friend’s face drop after realizing I convinced him to waste money on something that made zero difference to his sound/tone. If no one else has told you this today, let me be the first: thank you, Glen. You rule 🤘👑
Awesome! I am recording an album with my start pack Epiphone Les Paul Special II with stock pickups. Not getting any worse results with the Epiphone than any of my other guitars. And yes, I do have several fancier guitars wth Evertune, stainless frets, roasted necks, brand pickups, all that shit. Great guitars. But so is my Epiphone Les Paul Special II.
Make sure you tell your buddy this only applies to maximum distortion and literally NOTHING else. Most people play other genres, too....not death metal 24/7. Pickups DO matter. A lot.
I just made this quick demo, the differences are more obvious when you play clean....ish ruclips.net/video/MwYZi3jrVC0/видео.html these two pickups are designed to sound similar anyway so don't expect massive tone shifts.
@@RandysRides Oh man, I didn’t think I’d come across one of the butt-hurt pickup guys in the wild! So what do you do; plug your guitar straight into the amp with no effects or EQ on the speakers? What style uses a 100% virgin guitar signal? Sounds boring as hell
And yet there isn't the slightest doubt that I'd grown tired of the honky midrange pushed sound of the Seymour Duncan JB I had in the bridge of one of my favorite guitars. I replaced it with an SD '59 I had lying around and yes, it's much more to my tastes as they are now. The midrange hump is way down now. I can tell the difference even in very high gain settings with my Mesa Mark IV.
I don’t play metal, I play classic rock with plenty of clean riffs. So the pickups for me make more of a difference. Still, the speaker is way more important. I’ve learned so much from this show. Keep up the great work, Glenn!
I'm the same type of player. I've found I can tell the difference between major pickup styles such as a hot humbucker vs a PAF but telling the difference between various manufacturer's hot humbuckers or different PAF models is next to impossible.
@@GreenCanoebif mfgs made identical wind alnico IIs vs Vs etc, I doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference. I think it all comes down to potted vs not, winds/heat amount, not so much the magnet type like mfgs want us to believe.
THANK YOU for including DI sounds in this experiment! The more data that's collected and shared, the more helpful the findings become. Even as somebody who mostly plays clean, I agree it's really just about having appropriate pickups for your application/genres that aren't microphonic or too noisy. That's it. We don't have time to obsess over little details at the expense of losing the big picture.
I think the importance of pickups is mainly a legacy thing. With modern amps it doesn't matter much, but back when you were using everything possible to push the amp, getting the highest output pickups might have helped you get there.
That’s a really good point actually cause it did matter back in the day. Glen always specifies it hardly matters with modern high gain and back then high gain like didn’t exist
@@poolpartyjacob exactly, like put this 10 guitars through a plexi with a tubescreamer and you are going to hear more difference. with the amount of gain he uses im sure i can plug my ass into a hig gain amp and it wouldn´t be very different than the guitars haha
There's a great video by Pete Thorne involving a couple dozen pickups in a shootout using an identical signal chain. You can hear the clear difference between most of the pickups, while some are practically clones. The point Thorne demonstrated is that if you have only one amp, one cab, and one guitar, you can get tone and texture results so far apart that you could credibly cross over into different genres just by changing pickups.
I used to gut guitars and swap pickups all the time. Figured out years ago that it wasn't really worth the time or the expense. Another thing that might've changed the tone slightly on the guitar shoot out was the build of the guitar; meaning that it might shift your picking hand forward towards the neck or back slightly towards the bridge. That would make it even more difficult to tell the difference between the pickups. Nice job Glenn. And thank you for helping us not waste our money :)
Really good point, in the DI examples there was a clear difference between the HB Failure and the Schecter V, with the HB having more bass. Looking at the video, the HB bridge pickup does seem to be further along the string i.e. away from the bridge than the Schecter, which is what you'd expect given the difference in sound. So yeah, the pickup itself may well not account for that difference. Jim Lill's excellent videos seem to back this up.
I’m curious about lead tones. This was great showing rhythm tones, but I wonder it it effects lead tones since chords have more overtones than a single note. I agree with this video 100% and you’ve actually saved me some work because I was going to swap out the pickups I had in one guitar to another and it won’t matter for what I use them for. But I would love to see a similar test with a solo to see if there is any difference.
Pickups might be more or less muddy depending on their quality and output... but EQ can compensate for that if you know how to dial it in. The amp and speakers will make the biggest difference.
@@dundun8640I live in Vermont… We do have some interesting government problems, but we do get to also grow weed! Long-term I’ve spent much more money on weed then gear. That said, I’ve spent a lot of money on gear!
@@Vermonster23 I live in a country that has a 0-tolerance for weed. But i have spent more money on gear than on weed (Gibson SG got me acting unwise), but if you got good gear a little bit of weed from time to time makes the gear sound better imho
Thanks for including DI’s glenn! :D I still believe different types of pickups can be be used in a specific situations if you know what you’re looking for (single coil, humbucker), but you’re totally right that you don’t have to spend a ton of money; because most listeners don’t give a damn. Can’t wait to see what you have brewing up next
I build custom guitars, and do luthier work, and if I'm not told a specific pickup to use, I use the pickups from GuitarFetish, every time. They sound great, just as good as a "good" pickup, while being 1/4 of the price, and the build quality is fantastic!
I think different pickups are mainly a response / character thing, and not so much of a tone thing. When I play a guitar with seymours it seems tighter and more smooth than with EMG's for instance. I think you can compare it a bit to making minor adjustments with an EQ infront of the amplifier, it doesn't change the tone that much, the amplifier just responds in a different way. Atleast that's my view on this topic and i'm not a studio owner, so take it with a grain of salt ;)
The "feel" is a huge part of it, the way the magnet powers the current effects how quick it responds to your pick attack. When the gain is high you need your pickup to have loads of attack so that it has clarity but if you set your gain lower or even clean you need to reduce how quickly the pickup responds to suit your level of gain. If you use a high output ceramic magnet pickup for blues or jazz it will sound harsh and "ice pick-ey" likewise a low output jazz pickup will sound muddy at hi gain.
@@CassiniProjekt thats because they have a preamp to boost the output rather than just overwinding the coils which pushes the mids. So, they are a nice sounding low output pickup with a fairly flat EQ which is boosted, preserving the high end clarity
@@murrayguitarpickups9545 High output ceramics does not mean tons of high frequency if the poles and windings compensate for it. For a very tight rythm sound for metal I find that utilizing multiple gain stages makes it respond tighter than switching pickups, but I guess going insane gain on one pedal and adding a fast gate with something like the Cock Blocker does the same thing, only issue gating that fast is when playing leads, hence why I prefer close to no gating and a few gain stages instead, like 2 gain pedals with very little amount of gain before the amps gain, it’s more a matter of shaping what the final gain and frequencies sound like and how it responds to techniques. My main issue atm. is to keep thecstring ringing when fretting at the highest/last fret, but that is most probably me missing out on some technique.
This comment right here ! It's the response and character, not so much of tone. You can't tell me that a pair of EMG 60s is similar to a pair of fishmens and blackouts. They all respond far different from my experience
As someone who used to repair wind instruments, it was mind blowing how many items are just placebos that make absolutely no actual impact on tone themselves, but the mentality they provide helps the player. Hell, I've done a number of free "tune ups" where I just brought a perfectly working horn into the back for a bit, maybe hit a hammer against a can or something a couple times, and brought the instrument back out in exactly the same condition claiming I'd "made adjustments" to hear then happily say that it now played much better.
@bassyey until metal players start putting small strips of aluminum tape on random parts of their guitars, gluing literal rocks to "nodal points", using high mass screws, buying "cryogenically treated" parts, or arguing that unlaquered guitars play "fuller"; they have nothing on the band/orchestra side.
I've found out that, as long as the gear isn't crap (and you're not playing hardcore on a nylon string guitar) you should be able to get a pretty solid tone. Also, a nice thing to do, at least for me who's used to old, dusty guitars, is to replace the potentiometers if they're ancient relics. Sometimes that alone will save you from changing pickups ('specially if you tweak the values, like "muddy ? => bigger ohm" "harsh ? => lower ohm" ) The only reason i see today to do so is so you want to personalize your guitar, for instance from high-output ceramic to lower-output PAF-on-steroids style (or the opposite) if you're really about subtle nuances in tone. But that's about it, really. I would rather buy books than more expensive pickups these days.
Point taken! I have a Schecter with “Duncan designed” humbuckers that sounds *very* different than my Les Paul with 57 Classic Plus humbuckers at relatively low gain, but with high gain the difference is extremely negligible, especially in a mix.
I think pickups are more of a “feel” thing than actual tone. I tend to gravitate toward emg’s for their tightness and pick attack. I can definitely feel a difference between them and most passives, regardless of how much gain, or boost you throw at them.
I came here after thinking about this a lot. Certain pickups will make me wanna play different because of how they feel. Some call for super tight chuggin some for loosey goosey fat open string riffs.
They definitely effect tone differently but it's only really discernable if the signal is fairly clean. A PAF and an Invader through a 5150 will sound similar
@@voodoocustompickups2547 I think that point is well proven. This test however, is under high gain. One point I rarely see is pickup placement. Guitar manufacturers sometimes have wildly different placements, and that can considerably change the character of a pickup.
@Metalsthelaw Absolutely. A pickup is just an inductor so where it is and how close to the strings it is makes a huge difference. The closer it is and closer to the magnetic field the stronger the signal will be
I will also say that for guys who rely on pedals for their dirt, you still need the right amp for the sound you're after. I spent a few years trying to get a vintage vox style amp to sound like a high gain monster. I got high gain tones, but there was always something lacking. I even tried different cabs and speakers. It helped; but ultimately the best thing for the sound I was after (70's and 80's Marshall) was to get a Marshall or something based on that. I find myself now using the amp's OD and boosting with pedals and I'm much happier. I have other amps geared toward a more Fender style sound that I use sometimes too and the high gain pedals do alright with that, but I usually find the Marshall style amps form the foundation of my sound and I put the other amps on tracks that just fill out the sound. You don't really notice them until they are muted.
I did a blind test on my channel with a Seymour Duncan vs a twenty dollar pup from Aliexpress. Half of the people guessed wrong, and out of the other half a lot weren't even sure. Some were shocked when they found out they were wrong. So yeah, you are 100% correct. No need to spend a ton of money on pickups.
So cool you included the raw tracks this time. Really puts it in perspective to hear the differences from guitar to guitar, and then hear them completely vanish under all the gain. I use more cleaner tones, or "edge of breakup" as they say, but also have way too many fuzz pedals haha. Knowing how much "tone" is lost even with moderate amounts of gain tells me that if I want to vary the tone for a lead or overdub part rather than grab a different guitar instead focus more on the stuff like amp/cab, mics and mic position, etc. ...and how DARE you save me time in the studio, Glenn, you ass...if my tracks don't take days to finish then the bassist won't be rushed and will try to *gulp* write basslines hahaha Keep the uncomfortable truth science experiments coming, I'm laughing and learning at the same time
One thing I would add - active pickups such as EMG or Fishman (or any of the other active pickup brands) they tend to be quieter than some passive pickups (but not all of them) so to my ears are better for recording high gain sounds. Some passive pickups (and especially single coils) tend to be noisier so there can be a problem in recording high gain type sounds. Very interesting video - some of the changes were so miniscule! It was even more revealing to just listen to the audio of this video in headphones while not looking at the screen!
This series gets better and better because of your continued honesty and refining of your thesis to being specifically about high gain tone. That only puts more weight on the question of how much of a difference there really is on clean tone too! (There is but let’s be critical instead of susceptible to marketing). It’s hard to purchase and figure these out for yourself so tests like this help us avoid the mistakes and time taken to get them and put all that back in music. Much appreciated 🤘🏼🤘🏼 hope you try a filtertron soon, would love to see you do a pup video on magnets as that seems to be the sauce to me. Some good ones already out there but never enough! Also I’m sure it’s dumb but I did hear slight more sustain in the Nazgûl’s notes and I thought the same same thing as the commenter you highlighted, is it because I wanted to?? If you’re going high gain hope this saves you money and gets you to where you’re going, thank you Glenn!!
I love the fact that he doesn't shill for guitar companies like so many of these other guys do , they are bitches to whatever company sends them a guitar to review even if the guitar sucks!
The pickup comparison was great and i would say a real eye opener. I know Glenn is just doing this for the sake of high gain distortion but I would love to see this same test applied to a variety of effects. That would be amazing to see.
I thought the same thing, so I made a video using Glenn's DI signals into different profiles/models in ToneX (like a kemper). ruclips.net/video/e9ilpw-lJj0/видео.html Spoiler in case you don't want to watch, The general rule he spelled out applies pretty well that adding more and more gain tends to make the differences smaller. The other obvious thing when doing this to me was those active harley benton pickups are LOUD compared to everything else...and the "tone is in the fingers" also applies--as this riff sounds better and better with high gain (as that is obviously what he played it for). It doesn't shine clean, or even sound too good with moderate vintage fender overdrive.
Okay, I really need to hear this test: Glenn, if you could, I'd love to see a shootout between the "big four" pickups in the bridge position of a guitar - a p90, a filtertron, a passive humbucker, and a fender-style-single coil, all setup for high gain (and cleans if you want). I've done some blind tests and I'm fairly confident that even with super high gain, I can tell the 4 apart pretty reliably, but I still think it would be cool.
I hate to be mr. well actually, but a lot of these pickups are built to be very similar in result- super over compressed active pickup stuff. I appreciated seeing the Nazgûl in there because it definitely has quite the unique tone to it in comparison. I'd love to see some Bareknuckles in here or even some lace death buckers or something similar. this feels very much like a "why does my 9mm Glock make the same size holes as someone else's 9mm 1911?"
Recently I started taking speakers so much more seriously than the after thought that they used to be. I've also dropped thousands on guitar pickups over the years and I'm finally happy to be leaving that rabbit hole. So yeah, you've helped a lot. A big thanks for pointing me in the right direction to help level up my recordings.
This is the best shootout video regarding high gain settings with different guitars and pickups! Thanks for that, Glenn! Yes, clean sounds is where we can hear the differences. So, I would agree that this would be something to consider only if the clean sound is really important, because again, if you use lots of effects and an EQ (like on a Helix system) you can definitely "change" your tone as much as you want. I'll love to see the same test with different strings, though. I feel there's a more noticeable change in sound when I change strings compared to changing the pickups!
I don't know you guys but even if I don't play clean that much, the moment the cleans need to sound, they need to sound glorious so I can't go cheap. My best guitar has some Alnico 2 in the neck and a Full Shred in the bridge. Alnico 2 is weak but delivers some amazing cleans while my full shred reacts good enough with high gain
@@ClaimedEagle yeah, a low output alnico on the neck does sound great. But what mean is that I use 3 completely different guitars, each one with different pickups (one is the ESP design pickups from the H200 model) and, other than different tunings, no one can tell if one sounds better from one to the other as we play only metalcore, high gain at all times hehehe .
"Did you learn anything from this shootout"?? Hell yes!! I use Neural DSP plugins with 2 guitars w/ Humbuckers- Plus an acoustic with clean tones, plus the same acoustic guitar with a Neural DSP "crunch tone"-End result is a layering or thickening effect (for me anyways). Fully understand how Amp/Mic placement affects Tone, but kind of stuck with using Plugins for now. And..Revelation-changing the Mic placement and/or Mics themselves within the Plugin also gives you a Tonal difference. As long as you are happy with your recording workflow, and you are getting the "Tone" you want for a given arrangement-you are good! Your videos enable us/show us simple Rock/Metal players to work smarter!! (And save a few bucks) Again-another great video! Thank You Sir!!
I definitely think that if you have an amp and a set of pickups that blend really well together to create the harmonic character that you're after, then that's all that really matters. With that being said, i feel as if the most important part about picking out new guitar pickups is finding a set that you feel best captures the way you pick, and has enough output to where it can be pushed into high gain.
Does the amount of a pickups output push newer ultra high gain amps into more gain? Old amps sure, but I doubt that it has much affect on newer ones set to crazy amounts of clipping.
Out of the dozens of guitars I’ve owned over 25 years, I’ve only upgraded pickups once. The tonal changes were noticeable, but certainly more so with cleans. As soon as I add high gain, the nuances are minimized. My old Schecter with Duncan Designed pickups still sounds killer through a decent setup of amp and it’s settings, cab, and speakers. 🤘
I think aftermarket pickups make the most sense if you’re building a guitar or if there’s something actually wrong with the old pickups. Beyond that it’s just 15% better at best.
Or if you have a lot of money. This channel is great for encouraging those to allocate limited resources more effectively. I'd swap out my pickups only if I was wealthy. There's much more important shit to buy. I might get back into playing guitar and I've been wondering what a good cost effective rig would be. For example right now, I'd like a decent 100 watt solid state head like the new katana pro for headroom and maybe a 20 watt tube head. Not sure if tubes are really needed anymore. Maybe I just want to own one because I never had one. A good serviceable tube amp is expensive even at 20 watts. Add a few cabinets. Maybe a few of the higher end import guitars. Perhaps a chain of eight or so pedals and maybe a separate multi effects unit direct to PA. When I add up the costs even this rig ooks to cost about 10 grand in total if you add everything I think I may possibly want to it.
@@EvilTB You know, there are cabinets that operate only as a power section, designed to be used with all these new IR pedals, like the Helix and stuff. So as a suggestion, use your guitar, use your pedals, buy the Sonicake IR pedal and one of these cabinets. and you'll have tons of valve amps to try
It pleases my heart and my wallet knowing that spending 17 dollars on a GFS pickup will get me 85% of the way to the sound of a 70 usd Fender/DiMarzio/Seymour
Glenn is low key the Dave Ramsey of the RUclips guitar community. It would be impossible to accurately assess, but I am curious to know the total amount of money Glenn has saved viewers from buying new, unnecessary gear. Thanks for doing the experimenting so we didn’t have to, my man!
I gotta say, your videos have inspired me to go and buy a cheaper guitar and run it through the same paces I do my more expensive ones. Not that I’m disillusioned about why I paid more money on some than others (mostly aesthetics). My curiosity is getting the best of me and who knows, maybe I find an inexpensive hidden gem that ends up in regular rotation.
I've bought guitars from the $200 range all the way up to the $1000 range. The best guitars I bought were usually the ones in the $300 range, just from personal experience.
LOVE IT!!!! you opened my eyes where I was MARKETING blind (Pickups, wood, fingers, all the stoopid blah, blah, blah) and you supported that little "wisdom" I already had for 20 years: put the EQ behind the PREAMP and be a MASTER
Glenn, because you've put so much great info into showing us how pickups react to high gain, I really want to hear your thoughts on what happens that 2% of the time you do work on clean tones. Do you ever run into having a really great high-gain tone only to find that the clean tone on the same guitar sucks? And if this happens, do the pickups even come into question? (I'd imagine the answer would still be to check the amps other equipment before blaming the guitar.)
Some pickups like EMGs or Lace Sensors are supposed to be quieter and pick up less noise and hum on stage. Did you notice any of those noise differences in your test, and is it an important factor for recording metal? Btw, David Gilmour famously switched to EMG pickups in his strat for noise reasons and sounded amazing, which would tend to support your conclusions regarding pickup tone.
Active pickups are not the be all end all. I can use some pretty high output pups in front of my tone bender, as soon as I use active pickups it completely craps out. Some things also sound better with lower output, like that I personally prefer Yngwie’s lead tone pre Seymour Duncan.
@@CyberChrist He played quite a few songs on a Gibson LP, so yes. The EMG’s he uses are medium output coupled to a fully fledged active EQ, so it’s a bit more than just pickups and volume/tone control. Not sure if he still uses some of the old stomp boxes, if so pickups and the whole circuit have a lot to say, since even a modern muff pi triangle fuzz reacts different to what different pickups feed into it. Besides that he is known for blending the neck with the bridge pickup.
3:43 to 4:28 Bro Glenn, there is ABSOLUTELY a huge difference in dynamics(how the pickup responds to your playing) here and you have made the proof. Cheers! :3
I love these videos. I've learned a ton from them. I've played a bunch of different guitars, pickups etc over the years. I'm an EMG guy and I'm not ashamed! 🤘🤘😄😄😄 I use them because they're consistent. I know what I'm getting with each purchase. Keep the great content coming Glen!!!
Have to say this channel has been great at dispelling lots of myths that i assumed were true over 20 years of guitar playing, and it's helped me realize what's important in tone and guitar sound..
Watch your videos "absolutely" change my way to shopping..Glenn, I'm 63 and always searching for tone I don't worry about my vacuum tubes anymore. And now I don't have to worry about pickups. Thanks Glenn
I can’t wait to see you explore the EQ and speaker topic. It’s so fascinating to see what types of effects and differences the speaker would have vs a standard EQ curve
The Fishman Fluence pickups sounded totally different coming through my 5.1 Surround setup. They had more depth and clarity. Overall though, you’re absolutely right that pickups aren’t that important particularly for chugging and rhythm. There’s definitely an argument to be made for specialist pickups for cleans and leads.
RUclips only outputs in stereo. Meaning on your 5.1 Surround setup, you would only be either getting 2 speakers working, or the same stereo signal coming out duplicated from both the front and back pair, depending on how your system is routed. Meaning, it doesn't matter, and, at best it would have just sounded louder. Have a marvelous day.
@@dmanandcmac I have them in one of my guitars and I hate them. My only guess on the original video was that guitar 8 had Fishmans, and I was right because they actually make a difference.
@@dmanandcmac I play acoustic folk music. I’m listening to the video on a home theater system which has a different audio fidelity from your computer monitors, TV speakers, soundbar or headphones. I noticed they sounded different. Am I here sucking Fishman’s dick? No. I fucking hate their acoustic magnetic pickups… they sound like shit, but I could absolutely hear a difference in them through my specific audio playback setup.
@@vladv5126 ok? If the only thing that changes is the pickups, and I hear a difference in some of them, that just means I can hear a difference. Clearly something makes them sound differently when the pickups are the only variable. Did I claim I thought it sounded better? No. I only stated that they sounded different through my audio setup. Your mileage may vary.
I recorded a riff with with two different guitars (yahama pacifica 612 and prs SE tremonti signature) both with bridge humbucker (yamaha has some seymour duncan pickup and tremonti has the signature humbucker pickup in the bridge position). At the time of recording i thought "well the yamaha has more mids " and tremonti has scooped mids. The amp, mic position and all the gain settings were same. After A/B testing, i can assure i could not hear .00001 % difference. I followed your advice glenn and got a new speaker (vintage 30) for my Laney lv200 amp, it sucked before (was going to sell it to save up for a "better" amp) , it sucks less and the tone is quite usefull now, Thanks a lot glenn keep up the great work.
I have tried a lot of pickups and can say that even under high gain they do make quite a difference. Not so much in the shape of the tone (although there is still a difference) but more in the attack and way it sustains and breaks up. Pickups have resonant frequencies which cause a boost at certain frequencies and those boosted frequencies will break up first much in the same way a boost such as a tube screamer works. Also most modern metal tones could sound way better and less similar if you dial the gain back a little so the distortion isn't compressed to the point that you lose all the pick attack and feel of the playing.
If you dial back the gain you lose the cool tone you get from the compression, the uniformity in the pick attack when doing the melo death riffing. Different strokes for different folks, but nothing beats a guitar with EMGs (high output and compressed) into a 5150 with gain on 6-7 being boosted by an overdrive pedal.
@@serdiezv I agree for the most part. You can get the best of both worlds if you set your gain just right so that it compresses more when you hit the strings hard but has less compression when you don't. Add a little pick control and you will get good uniformity in the attack. I prefer less compression and more dynamics in picking. I also agree for active EMG is the way to go. I really like the new EMG-X. I tried the Fishman fluence moderns and found them to be lifeless and dull.
To me I mainly just notice the output level so I get to the edge breakup at different points, but yeah humbucker vs single coil is what I can hear a significant tone difference on.
The pickups are tool that guitarist use how he likes the guitar response his playing. Same way as drummers choose their cymbals, pedals, drumheads or sticks. Average listener can't hear difference from them recorded but yet drummers prefer one over another. The thing with different pickups is also that you would not dial them all in same way while recording cause some of them are heavy in treble, some in middle and some in low end. This "debunking" just slaps them all in same setup and dialed sound and the conclusion is that there is no diffrence cause they are all played thru same dialed tone. Didn't convince me
@@raakareiska9804 But... if all other variables are controlled and the same... he is kind of proving that it doesn't matter for high gain. Certainly no where near as much as an acoustic instrument like a cymbal.
@@joshshultz1250 I guarantee if there would be extreme metal cymbal demo where every setup would be reviewed by blast beats and heavy hitting the difference in outcome would be like in these pickups.
I will offer a counterpoint. I had a pre-2012 Epiphone Les Paul Classic with the intentionally muddy pickups and equally unimpressive pots and caps. I took it into the music store for a shootout with an AIO Wolf LP copy equipped with the IYV brand Destiny wound pickups. The Epiphone sounded like it was played through a wet blanket. I sold the Epi and bought the Wolf because it was easier and cheaper than swapping pickups. If you buy used, with the amount of options you have these days, it's easier to sell the bad pickups and buy better ones with the guitar attached.
I've always thought that pickups don't matter that much with high gain as long as they're not cheap microphonic pickups but it's really cool to have it confirmed. Thanks Glenn and keep up the search for the truth. 👍
Great video, Glenn! As I get older I more and more realize, that most gear (except speakers, mics etc) doesn't make that much of a difference once you are in a band/live situation or a full mix. Keep up the good work!
One of the reasons my Band switched to using HX Stomps live :D To me the benefits of digital amps exceed analog ones by far - less to carry around, in ear always sounds the same, the rig is midi controllable (there are amps that can do that to, but not to the degree digital amps are capable of doing) and in general, there are far less problems which can occur live (Think of a cable breaking on your pedalboard or something like that). Oh, and every sound engineer will be thankful, that they have one microphone less to watch over. In the Studio it's an other ballgame of course - Mic placement and trying out different mic combinations are just far too awesome and probably will never be replaced by digital amps. So yeah, I completely agree.
The thing is that a lot of us just play in our bedrooms and the you can tell the difference in that context. Once it's recorded or playing live you can't really tell. but that is Like 1% of my playing. The rest of the time I'm in my bedroom and I can certainly hear the subtle differences in each of my guitars. I like all the gear, but if my guitar isn't putting out what I want it to, I'll swap pickups and that's solve the problem. Sure speakers are more important, but the pickups do play a part in the guitar's tone. Subtle as it is.
Yeah, but you'll lose some edge and wind up sounding like an mp3. It'll sound good, but not as good as tubes. The trade off is probably worth it, but nothing beats a tube amp. @@JohnDoe9764
Dude, you have to try Heavy core strings then!! Either the Dunlop, DR ddt or Ernie ball ( the Hetfield signature )! They’re so freaking tight even though they feel tiny! I do agree with the pickup marketing, though there are clear tone differences between pickup magnets, the other variation is the windings ( to make it a low or high output). That’s it, each “era” of tone was determined by the pickup style (P90, humbucker or single coil), number of windings and magnet used at the time. DiMarzio also experimented with diff metal for the pole pieces and a hybrid magnet (ceramic and alnico), though IMO the difference in tone wasn’t really remarkable. For example, older P90s have that twangy full spectrum response (a lot of that tone is because single coils and P90s don’t cancel noise, unlike humbuckers) and mix that with your magnet material selection and you get the pickup tone mixing the pickup type and magnet material. Now this sounds needs to go into the distortion and then it will get the eq cut and focused in the mixing stage and this is were the tone starts getting lost literally “in the mix”. This is where you start contemplating if it’s worth it, for a tiny difference. Now, we do need to recognize there’s a problem with brands and their “metal” guitars that typically come with overwound windings with a ceramic pickup that makes it really muddy. Alnico 8 magnets can help but it’s a matter of taste, some like the mud so go figure lmao
Learned something new today. Please, Glenn, Don't ever ever stop making videos such as this. This made me appreciate the pickups that I have on my guitar even more. Keep rockin 🤘. Greetings from Philippines 🇵🇭.
The results definitely affected my thoughts on my next purchase. I'm looking at getting a multiscale, specifically for down tuning and metal (what a surprise!) so this helped a bunch to cut out one factor from the comparisons. I've already got clean tones I like on another guitar, so the only pickup related question I'll have left is whether to go active vs. passive.
When starting the journey with my own studio, I bought an orange amp for that “British” tone and an EVH 5150 for a more metal tone and recordings. Thought about switching from the factory humbuckers to something like the Juggernauts for my guitars to sound more massive tone wise. Boy, was I wrong about the whole thing. Thank you Glenn for the great videos about tone, comparison of different speakers, and showing us what difference they make. Greetings from Moldova! 🤘🤘🤘
I've listened to this with my eyes closed, and while I agree that as long as the pup is good quality you can very similar tones from different specs, I also immediately recognized the active ones as my least favorites, so that's a nice confirm
Just a rando here, but I have to say thank you for these kinds of videos. I've been watching for quite awhile and well I trust you. You're clearly an authority on metal tone in my opinion and yes this will affect what I buy in the future now that I know it doesn't matter. Thanks Glenn!
For rhythm I agree, but leads also are more affected by the pickup as well as overall feel of the neck and frets. Some pickups just do not sing when holding single notes. Active pickups seem to be the best for me but I've also liked the Nazgul and Black Winters for leads. Probably not sonically noticeable but I can feel the difference pretty substantially.
I switched from Active to Passive pickups. What you are describing could simply be the active pickups having more gain. You could possibly achieve a similar result with passive pickups, by turning up the amp gain (or drive pedal, if using one)
I appreciate the experiment and the insight. Since most of these guitars were already aimed at the metal crowd, I'd be curious to see how a low output PAF style pickup would compare to a Fluence or Nazgul at high gain (impedance, resonant frequency, harmonics, attack, etc...). I'd also like to hear more about how the tone is shaped by the amp, any external overdrives, and then the speaker. Anyway, good stuff and keep up the great work!
You might want to check out jim lill's youtube channel. He tested out in what way strings, amps, speakers etc. effect your guitar tone. Really interesting.
My first foray into swapping pickups, listening to differences etc was when I borrowed a Jem and compared it to my RG 750 Ibanez - basically the same guitar but I preferred the old Ibanez F2 to the Dimarzios. I could get my sweet rg750 in the zone easier, it reacted to the music better - in the bridge. I then started looking for improvement and ended up replacing the neck with a '59 and the bridge with a duncan distortion (the bridge was a ceramic Dimarzio designed F2). Later the mid was swapped for a Texas special. Sweet guitar. Zero bad pickup positions. This was amp specific and absolutely sang with 80's Marshalls - not so much with other amps. Was it worth it? absolutely because in those days, you went into your 2210 without many effects, without using a boost pedal and it rocked straight off the bat. Now you could throw a lot of extra gain, eq and processing at the same setup and make the Jem sound the same - but the pickup swap is more efficient at the end of the day. Interesting fact - The Jem owner wanted to sell and was taken aback when I didn't even want to swap.
Honestly, a set of new strings makes more difference to guitar tone than changing pickups! I recently brought my first guitar from back in the 90s out of storage, a Yamaha Pacifica 112M. I decided to have a play with it through my VST amps and it sounded horrible. Swapped out to some brand new strings that weren't over a decade old and wow, what would you know, it sounded great!
Gretsch guitars are an underrated gem. You might have to put a booster in the chain to hit them amp hard enough for metal as their pick up output is closer to a hot single coil. But for classic hard rock if you roll off the tone and crank the amp they sound amazing. All of their solid body guitars are chambered so it doesn't matter which one you grab.
Agreed. I got G5260 baritone and its really something else comparing to any other baritone I ever tried but also their normal guitars are awesome. Bigsby is garbage but hard tail version I would buy every single one.
Absolutely love this series of debunking, genuinely surprised how little difference there really is. I do wonder if some of these variations come from things like the height of the pickups and differing caps and tolerances on the tone circuit (if there is one). Would genuinely be curious if all high gain pedals also end up sounding the same, especially if you match the EQ on them. Looking forward to seeing what the next thing to be disproven will be....
FWIW, tone caps only matter once you start rolling off the tone knob, at 10 a straight piece of wire will sound the same as any cap. Pot values have a much bigger effect for everything on 10.
He should use better sound for demo. I would never use that much of low end in guitar recording. It's overwhelming. This is why I also hate Dimarzio Tone Zone cause you always drop that bass down
From my experience and some videos i've seen, I think its about the same as this here. I don't remember who but one popular guitar RUclipsr said active pickups are simply easier to get a better tone since you often have a 2-3 band eq on the guitar.
Passives sound different,in different wood bodies. Like a mahogany body compared to Ash. Actives have preamps to basically clone the manufacturer's designed for sound
There's really big differences between actives and passives and a lot of it is feel and dynamics, and how they affect you when you play. You can especially hear and feel the difference in Tom Anderson passive pickups vs more traditional humbuckers and when compared to actives it's like a whole other world. You really just have to listen to samples of a bunch and then compare the ones you liked the most in person and if you're really paying attention, you will notice each one hits differently and inspires a different path or approach to your playing based on the sonic textures you're hearing.
I'm not sure if this was mentioned early on in the video but with high gain, I totally agree with you! With lower gain settings, I really hear differences in pickup changes though. Great video and keep it up!
Pickups absolutely make a difference. The question is, what should you change first? The biggest change you could make first would be amp, and then I'd say speaker and/or pickup. I've tried a lot of pickups out, and the biggest difference IMO is clarity and output. Yes, you can EQ a lot of things, but some pickups just have more clarity/note and chord definition under gain than others. I compared the Suhr Aldrich, Duncan JB, and BKP Holy Diver all to each other, and the Holy Diver has the best clarity under gain. They're all good pickups, but playing a chord with a JB isn't like playing a chord with a Holy Diver, no matter how much you EQ. I actually did a comparison vid of the two on my channel. I've noticed that when you upload a lot of stuff to RUclips, it compresses the sound, so any differences you're hearing in person are negated and sound more subtle. But in person, you can hear and "feel" the difference. You also have to consider how many guitars you have and what you're using them for. If you're only doing high gain but have a guitar with a low output Gibson PAF and another guitar with a JB, you're going to have to EQ, mess with gain, maybe use a boost pedal, and do a lot of stuff every time you switch guitars. That's ok for at home or recording, but not great in a live sense if you switch between multiple guitars for tunings, tremolos, etc.
And that's it, as soon as you mix everything and upload it to a streaming platform all the subtle differences vanishes. If changes get lost after doing everything then they're not that important, what do you think about it?
@@kainagami that's why I also added nuances to what I said. Playing live or with other people, pickups make a difference due to clarity and output. If you can't hear the notes you're playing clearly, then you're guessing. Granted, when I did my own comparison I was just recording direct with a multi-effects unit. I've noticed that multi-effects units like FM9 or Helix have their own compression and make differences between pickups a little harder to tell. But the differences are bigger when you're using a real amp.
It would be cool to see at what point do the guitars still sound significantly different as you're adding gain. Now that you are busting elctric guitar myths, it would be great to see these experiments on a bass guitar as well.
I like this idea, does crunch gain sound different across all those pickups or is it close to no differences as in the heavy gain demo we just watched?
There's a RUclips channel called Mike Stamper Official where you can listen to a ton of videos that do just that. My Evo just went microphonic on me, and I decided to get something with more output because I'm kind of tired of having to adjust my volume on stage when switching guitars, and even my wife noticed that once you get into high gain, there really isn't a noticeable difference. I use cleans in about 6 of our songs, so clean is important to me, as well as output. It's difficult to compare output from a recording, but I ultimately went with a Super Distortion because of how it sounds with cleans, and the output should be more in line with my stock Ibanez V8 in my other 2 guitars.
Bass is mostly played clean, even in metal, so I guess there is a more significant difference between different bass pickups, and especially with shitloads of different pickup designs compared to guitar, different style single coils and humbuckers with variable placement. My fav bass sound ever is with two P style pickups, and, for some reason, that setup is very rare.
This vid basically brings out that the difference in pickups is output and how they compress the pick attack. To me the best sounding were the EMG and the Duncan Nazgul, and they were almost the same sound wise. That headless Harley Benton did sound super cool too.
if you're able, i think it'd be a good idea to show us some frequency response graphs from these guitars so we can all visualize exactly how similar they are, and point out whatever differences are there, however minor they seem to be
A pickup with higher resistance will filter off more of the higher frequency and can really change how the GBE strings sound. Glen is right though with gain the differences are very small however when you have a pickup with very high resistance it can be noticeable with gain there is a pickup that is over 50kohms to put that in perspective most pickups are wound at 8kohms and i think humbuckers are at 6kohms don't quote me on that though. So with that spicy 50+kohms, a lot of the highs are cut out even with gain making for some pretty cool-sounding solos. It also adds a lot of distortion even in clean channels. Here is an example of a 54kohm humbucker really spicy and I believe he is playing it through a clean channel ruclips.net/video/UfLU486vHzQ/видео.html
That's the real proof in the pudding and I think you guys will be surprised just how different they actually are from each other. Not to mention how different they affect the vibration of the strings due to their magnetic properties.
Not having done a real test myself apart from fiddling around on my guitar a bit at times, but I think he'd need to exactly match the distance between strings and pickup for each guitar. This is not a guitar channel, other people have done those tests though. It's a test for your ears and the listener won't care about graphs
Imagine this, The year is 2050, all instruments have become midi controllers hooked to sample library’s… and Glenn is still having to SHOW the guitar snobs that infinitesimal details like what kind of solder was used bares no relevance to the tone! It’s like a never ending game of chess against a pigeon. Excellent work as always dude!
Personal experience: I had a PRS SE Custom 22 made in 2008 with cheap SE humbuckers. They sounded good for rock and playing power chords, however, if you wanted to play something more complex like a minor chord or some six-string sus7sus11blahblah chord, it sounded super muddy, clarity was close to none. Then I got PRS SE Mark Holcomb instead of this guitar. It has Seymour Duncan Alpha and Omega pickups, and clarity is their main feature. When playing said six-string chords, I can hear every note in them. Also, these pickups have a very unique sounding coil-split - it instantly gives that "djent" sound. The same was with my PRS SE SVN 7-string guitar. I tune it to Drop F#, and stock 85/15 "S" pickups sounded good for single note riffs but lacked clarity in very low chords like F#5 power chord. I replaced them with BKP Ragnaroks and that fixed clarity problems. I don't know if that's about a magnet type, or the way pickups are EQ-ed, but that worked for me. However, I have other guitars, and I wouldn't say which is which in a blind test. JB, Super Distortion, and EMG81 sound very similar on high gain. Minor differences are there when you're hearing just the guitar but in the context of a full mix, you'd never tell which pickup was used.
Thanks for ripping apart all those guitar myths for us. I put my guitars through a similar test. The only difference for me was play, feel and response but not the recorded signal. But then…I only know that I know nothing! Can’t wait for the EQ/DIST deep-dive. You’re my favourite guitar scientist :)
Most of us here have already seen the Jim Lill video on amplifiers, but the EQ vs gain / clipping stages thing is explored and put into practice in it, I can only recommend it.
The more times I listened the more differences I heard. The Solar FF #3 was my fav in the first video-and it still is here. Reminds me of my fav metalcore records. Pickups may only be 10% of the sound but that 10% matters to me. When you study recording you realize your final sound is the sum of hundreds of small changes. A 3 dB dip at 400hz seems incredibly small until you make that same move on 13 tracks. Pickups might be a small part of the total but the more parts you get right the better your final output is. I think the outrage is better spent on guitar makers rather than just pickups. There may be a few hundred dollars difference in pickups, but there are thousands of dollars difference in guitars and God knows tone wood is worst myth of them all.
When I bought my first guitar after my starter, I tried the PRS SE Custom 24 and the SE Mark Tremonti. I eventually went for the Mark Tremonti over the Custom 24 because of how the pickups FELT like in my hands I'm talking about dynamics and output High output means it hits the amp harder and hitting the amp harder means more saturation More saturation means higher perceived loudness Higher perceived loudness means "better" tone right? The other thing was that the neck pickup in the Tremonti guitar was pretty low output while the bridge pickup has much higher output allowing me to go from clean to a distorted tone simply by switching pickups. This technically also worked for high gain amps but I'd have to roll back on the volume a ton and play really softly
The SD JB is the most recorded pickup in history. I've thought how my buddy's hand-wound Loller clone sounded quite similar, and the same with the DiMarzio Tone Zone. But I haven't felt that way about just any and all. It's the musician's tendency to hear these differences when ALONE in the room with a rig. I mean, in my own home, over my amp and pedals and cab, I don't have to listen for the difference, I already know which guitars have my favorite sounds. I feel like a lot of what "we" are getting that you don't has to do with response. Like, when I play over the EMG 81, I can't palm mute the same way, or it gets to "chinky" and metallic instead of tight. The Bare Knuckles give me a muddy "bark" in the lows at times. My "hands" don't think these differences are as subtle, as it drives me nuts and keeps me from liking the guitar as much as others in my small collection. I can't seem to "connect" with EMG actives for example. Where I agree with your principles is that a listening audience just can't care about any of this. They just want to sing along.
This is so true. We don't buy gear for the audience (they're drunk anyway), we buy it for ourselves. The feel of the guitar and how it interacts with the amp is so important, and you're the only person who will ever notice.
I can hear a fairly obvious difference in the low end response and attack on several. As a metal player, those are the first two things I listen and 'feel' for. When you start in on leads, the differences become way more pronounced, particularly in that irritating mid range of about 1.5- 3khz. May not sound like much but that's an entire octave where it can be smooth or pierce your ears in certain note ranges. I've swapped pups in one guitar over half a dozen times over the years and I have to revamp my amp tone/gain/eq to accommodate each and every time. Passive and active. Pups make a huge difference... but you're definitely not going to notice as much by playing a simple, generic, hi-gain crunch riff in one limited area of the instrument.
There are so many variations of tone you can get with different pickups but once you get to a certain point with gain it starts to not matter as much but it still does matter. Really depends if you want tone or white noise, best sounds are always perfectly tuned without causing too much stress to the song. Perfect example is to listen to Enter Sandman the guitar has barely any gain at, all perfectly tuned for the song
I love how you're working to myth bust so much industry bullshit Glenn Keep up the great work, yours is definitely the go to channel for music production querys.
I have watched this video a few times. Mainly cause it really proves the point of the guitar pick snake oil theory. So i put 11 of my guitars to the test. They are load with Fishmans, seymour duncan(passive and active), MOJO tone , emg , Roswell, HBZ, tesla (stock loaded Harley benton) stock loaded ibanez pick ups and also Rockfeild. So I recorded everything direct wrote down with channel was what guitar waited a about 3 days and listened back to each track dirty and clean... and oit of the 11 I got 3 right.. the hbz and the 2 that have fishmans.. the only reason I could pick those 3 out from all the others was due to volume. The tone difference was to small to really pick out. I really hope others try this test out for yourself im sure results may vary but it was fun. Great video Glenn looking forward to the next test !!
The first paragraph of the comment at 10:55 nails it. When one has so much clipping and other types of distortion, the nuances of the pickups, guitars or even amps get lost. Definitely EQ changes (speakers, eq shaping circuitry, microphone placement, etc.) will have the most impact on the sound.
I just ordered a custom loaded pick guard from Planet Tone. Switching my Strat from SSS to HSS. With everything that I’m getting, included being modded, I’m getting at a 1/3 of the cost if I would’ve found one comparable from a major manufacture. I can’t wait to get it!!! It will be my first HSS. I’ve always had single coils Strats with the exception of a few hot rails I had installed years ago on a couple of guitars in the bridge position.
I don’t play high gain, though sometimes i do record artists playing that style, but this has been really ear opening! I’ve just recently bought a Harley Benton JA baritone (once I got over my snobby pride 😂) and I’ve been thinking I’m gonna swap the pickups for something ”better”…. This and a number of other of your other blind test videos are now making me rethink what to spend my precious shekels on. You’re doing the Lords work!
Hey Glenn, thanks for this video!! Tried it out myself (and filmed and posted it) and, whoah, mus agree!!! In terms of high gain, the differences ARE rather subtle.
Some years ago a guy told me to adjust the pole pieces of my humbuckers, it never occurred to me that the pole peces could be adjusted to increase out and to adjust them to fit the radius of your strings. The difference was night and day! My tip is that pick material (black ice 1mm picks for me) gives the best output for a metal tone, pick attack and pickup adjustmenr.
I think tone-wise, there’s very small differences if any at all. But feel-wise, I think there’s a noticeable difference? I tested my EMG-armed Jackson against my stock Gibson LP Studio and I did notice some differences in the feel when chugging it out. It felt like the chugs were easier to obtain with EMGs compared to the stock passives that came with my LP. If I was performing live and doing some thrash stuff, this would probably matter, but in a recording setup, I can probably get the LP to that level tone-wise and not spend that extra for an EMG upgrade, but I just have to work harder on my picking hand or add some EQ to help me lift that thunderous bass when chugging - and only if I really wanted to! Because I do like the LP feel too, even in metal, it’s got that 24” scale guitar “bark” when chugging that reminds me of the old times when metal was young 😊
Awesome Test, awesome video! I own a 1985 Washburn HM-5V with the blood splatter finnish and the (home made, I think) washburn pickups are still doin' a great job sawing peoples limbs of when this little beast is played on a brutal amp. \m/
Glad you added the caveat (big word for bass players I know) about how it doesn't really matter for high gain stuff. Was at an amp show a while back and a booth had a high gain setup and guys were trying all these different guitars, and guess what... all the guitars sounded exactly the same. Lower gain and clean is where guitars and pickups matter.
It's funny, the discussion question at the end there really got me thinking. I run a one man boutique custom guitar shop and wind my own pickups for my builds. I wondered how much of the tone difference is like a psychoacoustic thing. From all my testing with winding pickups (spectrum analysis and everything) i settled on three different pickup designs to offer customers for high gain tones. I was, and still am, convinced that there is a really big difference in tone of these pickups but going over it again in the studio comparing plugins, reamping to outboard gear etc i have to admit that for all the work i put into researching, testing and winding pickups for high gain tones the actual difference in terms of shaping the sound is negligible compared to everything before or after the guitar in the signal chain. Now this isn't particularly surprising at all but i was very eye opening. Reestablishing the fact that the player is ultimately the most important piece of equipment in the chain by debunking your own psychoacoustic biases and professional opinions puts everything i do on a daily basis back in the proper perspective. If it sounds good it is good, ain't nothing more to it ;D
As a pickup designer and builder I agree with alot of this. Clean tones will definitely be discernable. The only time a pickup will effect a high gain amp would be its response to pick attack. Due to the winding, wire gauge, and magnet type/size, some pickups are better for high gain chugs while others are better chords. Certain pickups help tighten up bass response also. The pickup is the beginning of your signal and is shaped from there.
A pickup being at the start of a signal path means very little and doesn’t add any validation to the argument. Pickups are the pyramidion or capstone of an inverted signal pyramid.
in regards to not nearly as high gain (ACDC, Lynard Skynard, Chuck Berry) in your expertise would you say pickups are or are not very important
@bloomtikbloom9593 certain pickups have some special frequencies that others don’t?!? Lol that’s rubbish unless it’s total cheap 40 dollar Chinese BS. Do famous singers say they can hit them higher notes better depending on the microphone? Lol. Ask Whitney Houston (rip) what mic she preferred she would of ran from you. Bottom line, guitar is a mid range instrument and when guys say “oh these master exploder 5000s are for drop tune stuff and these bare numb chucks are for leads or the AzzDi Soul Fires 9100s are for classic/cleans …how about u give me all that in 1 pickup - that’s a good pickup then and haven’t had much trouble actually doing that myself so my point stands on its own
@bloomtikbloom9593yeah but as stated in the video that all goes to shit once you add gain, compression, etc
@bloomtikbloom9593 well, I mean, I have multiple harley bentons and noise isn't really a problem, with guitars starting from 150 € all the way to 550 €
Damn Glenn's literally crusading against the whole guitar community, and I love it lol
I can't help but wonder how many people watch Glenn's videos and go buy a Squire Bullet series then believe that it's just as good of a guitar as a Pro II...
@@AmericanNationalist852 There's obviously going to be quality issues, I'd rather get me a top of the line Squier or Harley Benton then the lowest cheapest range. Spending a little money more means better quality control, components and set ups. Which is exactly what Glenn says in his videos. But if you set it up right you can make the Bullet work.
@Gabo xd that's just not true. That's a cope for people who can't afford better gear.
@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623 you will not play the same on something you just "make work" vs something that "just works".
Glenn is a sound guy who can play a few basic high gain riffs, and his opinion is coming from that of a sound guy who can play a few basic high gain riffs. Anyone who's beyond an intermediate level of skill on their instrument (regardless of if they play "professionally", whatever that really means) can have their playing affected profoundly by the nuances of cheap vs quality gear. Whether it's sustain/attack of a pickup (ceramic pickups in a bullet vs varied alnico in the Pro II) or the nut width (39mm on Bullet vs 42mm on Pro II), or neck shape and fret dressing. Glenn factors in NONE of this when he tells people just just buy the cheap shit and get "good speakers".
The dude desperately wants to be the next Jim Lill. That's all it is.
@@AmericanNationalist852 more ike you're coping because you've wasted money on an exspensive guitar.
As a guy who plays funky, jazz influenced pop, I have to say I love this YT channel. Glenn’s irreverence for all the BS is refreshing. I use a Twin Reverb tone most of the time and occasionally turn on an overdrive pedal (Zendrive). That being said, there is definitely a difference in each guitar of the shootout but not so much that a little knob twiddling wouldn’t close the gaps.
Glenn, once again you’ve pulled back the curtain. Great job!
Overall, this channel has really helped me to get over years worth of guitar hang-ups (shapes, features, tone woods, pickups, etc) and just go with whatever is either more comfortable to play and/or whatever inspires me to play more.
While he has many great points and I often agree ge always looks at it through the lens of his sound, DT-1/MT-2 type ultra gain, death metal kind of sound. With that sound everything really is the same. Pickups definetly sound substantially different with an overdrive tone, or bluesy type sound, edge of breakup etc... You can argue body shape doesn't matter, type of wood doesn't matter (but I think they do, just not like premiun guitar builders say, just density differences that sorta stuff, lighter guitars seem to be more resonant and brighter). And you can say nuts and bridges don't matter, but it's an electric guitar. Besides the amp the nr.1 thing that will actually change tone are the pickups, unless you play speed metal with two MT-2 in series cranked on top of a heavily distorted amp then okay... it probably doesn't matter enough to be worth doing anything about it, when you can just use an EQ after the fact to tweak it a little. I have two nearly identical guitars, Gibson Flying V and an Epiphone Flying V. Both gorgeously built but the Epi has early 2000s cheapo Epi PAF style and the Gibson has super hot ceramic 500T/496R or something like that, Dimarzio super distortion type pickups, about as heavy output as EMGs.
They couldn't sound less alike. And my Les Paul clone has Seymour Duncan PAF style pickups and it sounds closer to the Epiphone but still way different. I often show that to people who ask why I have so many guitars and I play them each one and most can get the basic stuff, the Epi is quite dark, the Gibson sounds like 80s metal and the Les Paul sounds like classic rock. And that is with reducing gain on higher output pickups. I wouldn't be surprised if the woods make relatively little difference, unplugged they do, the Flying Vs (one mahogany one Korina) sound utterly different. Plugged in I don't think it matters a huge deal, as long as it's some decent wood and not plywood or cardboard. If anything the vibrations do transfer and it can influence how the strings behave, indirectly affecting tone, a greater mass dampening more, maybe the higher frequencies a bit more. Lighter guitars do seem brighter. But most of that will be relatively insignificant compared to the pickups and anything that directly affects the strings (playing style) maybe if the bridge is really cheap and shitty it might rattle or absorb vibrations vs a solid metal one that is firmly mounted. The strings definetly matter. Just take a guitar with old strings that are all corroded and compare it to one with new strings. So I disagree with the attitude that none of that matters but I also disagree with the guitar snobs who think it has to be mahogany it can't a wood that has similar density, and the nut must be bone it can't be a synthetic one with identical density etc... paintjob blablabla. Both sides are kinda wrong on this unless you run a fully cranked MT2. Then yes a Strat = Ibanez RG. Not fully but nearly indistinguishable.
But amp on edge of breakup + tubescreamer? My guitars sound different enough to be a nuisance, I have to turn the brightness knob on the screamer up or down to get the tone I want. I'm getting a PAF Les Paul in the mail this week, I'll compare it to the other one with Seymour PAFs, very curious. Different brands but same factory, similar wood and construction, similar finish (why would you not have a LP with flame top?). But the new one has EMG Fat 55s. Should be about the same output. I'd be surprised if they sound exactly alike but also if they are substantially different. I actually hope the same because one was a grand thw other 350 bucks so I wouldn't mind the cheaper one sounding exactly alike. And if it does I'll get more of them. Because I have a sickness in my mind.
This absolutely has an effect on my mentality towards pickups. Coincidentally, I was in the process of giving a friend of mine advice on upgrading his pickups a few weeks back. I’ve since messaged him and told him I was full of shit and that we should be looking at his speakers and amp/effects settings. I think downing a slice of FREE humble pie is far better than watching a friend’s face drop after realizing I convinced him to waste money on something that made zero difference to his sound/tone. If no one else has told you this today, let me be the first: thank you, Glen. You rule 🤘👑
Awesome!
I am recording an album with my start pack Epiphone Les Paul Special II with stock pickups.
Not getting any worse results with the Epiphone than any of my other guitars.
And yes, I do have several fancier guitars wth Evertune, stainless frets, roasted necks, brand pickups, all that shit. Great guitars. But so is my Epiphone Les Paul Special II.
Make sure you tell your buddy this only applies to maximum distortion and literally NOTHING else. Most people play other genres, too....not death metal 24/7. Pickups DO matter. A lot.
I just made this quick demo, the differences are more obvious when you play clean....ish ruclips.net/video/MwYZi3jrVC0/видео.html these two pickups are designed to sound similar anyway so don't expect massive tone shifts.
@@RandysRides Oh man, I didn’t think I’d come across one of the butt-hurt pickup guys in the wild! So what do you do; plug your guitar straight into the amp with no effects or EQ on the speakers? What style uses a 100% virgin guitar signal? Sounds boring as hell
And yet there isn't the slightest doubt that I'd grown tired of the honky midrange pushed sound of the Seymour Duncan JB I had in the bridge of one of my favorite guitars. I replaced it with an SD '59 I had lying around and yes, it's much more to my tastes as they are now. The midrange hump is way down now. I can tell the difference even in very high gain settings with my Mesa Mark IV.
I don’t play metal, I play classic rock with plenty of clean riffs. So the pickups for me make more of a difference. Still, the speaker is way more important. I’ve learned so much from this show. Keep up the great work, Glenn!
I'm the same type of player. I've found I can tell the difference between major pickup styles such as a hot humbucker vs a PAF but telling the difference between various manufacturer's hot humbuckers or different PAF models is next to impossible.
@@GreenCanoebif mfgs made identical wind alnico IIs vs Vs etc, I doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference. I think it all comes down to potted vs not, winds/heat amount, not so much the magnet type like mfgs want us to believe.
THANK YOU for including DI sounds in this experiment! The more data that's collected and shared, the more helpful the findings become. Even as somebody who mostly plays clean, I agree it's really just about having appropriate pickups for your application/genres that aren't microphonic or too noisy. That's it. We don't have time to obsess over little details at the expense of losing the big picture.
I think the importance of pickups is mainly a legacy thing. With modern amps it doesn't matter much, but back when you were using everything possible to push the amp, getting the highest output pickups might have helped you get there.
i think it might be the case, i can sense a notable difference with my rocktron piranha, but i don´t know with a modern amp, i don´t own one
That’s a really good point actually cause it did matter back in the day. Glen always specifies it hardly matters with modern high gain and back then high gain like didn’t exist
Medium/low output pickups into a high gain amp with a boost sound the same to me as high output pickups with no boost
@@poolpartyjacob exactly, like put this 10 guitars through a plexi with a tubescreamer and you are going to hear more difference. with the amount of gain he uses im sure i can plug my ass into a hig gain amp and it wouldn´t be very different than the guitars haha
There where fewer boost device and speaker options too.
ONE MAN SINGLE HANDEDLY DISASSEMBLES ENTIRE PICKUP MANUFACTURING COMMUNITY
There's a great video by Pete Thorne involving a couple dozen pickups in a shootout using an identical signal chain. You can hear the clear difference between most of the pickups, while some are practically clones. The point Thorne demonstrated is that if you have only one amp, one cab, and one guitar, you can get tone and texture results so far apart that you could credibly cross over into different genres just by changing pickups.
buy 3 $20 chinese pickups and return the ones that aren't wax potted. Roll the dice.
@@asnark7115 Do you have a link? Thanks. 😊
I used to gut guitars and swap pickups all the time. Figured out years ago that it wasn't really worth the time or the expense. Another thing that might've changed the tone slightly on the guitar shoot out was the build of the guitar; meaning that it might shift your picking hand forward towards the neck or back slightly towards the bridge. That would make it even more difficult to tell the difference between the pickups. Nice job Glenn. And thank you for helping us not waste our money :)
Really good point, in the DI examples there was a clear difference between the HB Failure and the Schecter V, with the HB having more bass. Looking at the video, the HB bridge pickup does seem to be further along the string i.e. away from the bridge than the Schecter, which is what you'd expect given the difference in sound. So yeah, the pickup itself may well not account for that difference. Jim Lill's excellent videos seem to back this up.
I’m curious about lead tones. This was great showing rhythm tones, but I wonder it it effects lead tones since chords have more overtones than a single note. I agree with this video 100% and you’ve actually saved me some work because I was going to swap out the pickups I had in one guitar to another and it won’t matter for what I use them for. But I would love to see a similar test with a solo to see if there is any difference.
Does not make a difference. There’s videos already covering it.
Pickups might be more or less muddy depending on their quality and output... but EQ can compensate for that if you know how to dial it in.
The amp and speakers will make the biggest difference.
Buy strings and weed.Don't compromise.
*insert I'm doing my part meme here*
Dude just grow ur own, trust me its worth it (except if you get caught)
@@dundun8640I live in Vermont… We do have some interesting government problems, but we do get to also grow weed! Long-term I’ve spent much more money on weed then gear. That said, I’ve spent a lot of money on gear!
@@Vermonster23 I live in a country that has a 0-tolerance for weed. But i have spent more money on gear than on weed (Gibson SG got me acting unwise), but if you got good gear a little bit of weed from time to time makes the gear sound better imho
I agree. Weed is as necessary as strings for guitar players. 😂
Thanks for including DI’s glenn! :D I still believe different types of pickups can be be used in a specific situations if you know what you’re looking for (single coil, humbucker), but you’re totally right that you don’t have to spend a ton of money; because most listeners don’t give a damn. Can’t wait to see what you have brewing up next
I build custom guitars, and do luthier work, and if I'm not told a specific pickup to use, I use the pickups from GuitarFetish, every time. They sound great, just as good as a "good" pickup, while being 1/4 of the price, and the build quality is fantastic!
I think different pickups are mainly a response / character thing, and not so much of a tone thing. When I play a guitar with seymours it seems tighter and more smooth than with EMG's for instance. I think you can compare it a bit to making minor adjustments with an EQ infront of the amplifier, it doesn't change the tone that much, the amplifier just responds in a different way. Atleast that's my view on this topic and i'm not a studio owner, so take it with a grain of salt ;)
The "feel" is a huge part of it, the way the magnet powers the current effects how quick it responds to your pick attack. When the gain is high you need your pickup to have loads of attack so that it has clarity but if you set your gain lower or even clean you need to reduce how quickly the pickup responds to suit your level of gain. If you use a high output ceramic magnet pickup for blues or jazz it will sound harsh and "ice pick-ey" likewise a low output jazz pickup will sound muddy at hi gain.
Ironic, just today I was thinking I like EMGs the most because they give such a defined tone compared to passives
@@CassiniProjekt thats because they have a preamp to boost the output rather than just overwinding the coils which pushes the mids. So, they are a nice sounding low output pickup with a fairly flat EQ which is boosted, preserving the high end clarity
@@murrayguitarpickups9545
High output ceramics does not mean tons of high frequency if the poles and windings compensate for it.
For a very tight rythm sound for metal I find that utilizing multiple gain stages makes it respond tighter than switching pickups, but I guess going insane gain on one pedal and adding a fast gate with something like the Cock Blocker does the same thing, only issue gating that fast is when playing leads, hence why I prefer close to no gating and a few gain stages instead, like 2 gain pedals with very little amount of gain before the amps gain, it’s more a matter of shaping what the final gain and frequencies sound like and how it responds to techniques.
My main issue atm. is to keep thecstring ringing when fretting at the highest/last fret, but that is most probably me missing out on some technique.
This comment right here ! It's the response and character, not so much of tone. You can't tell me that a pair of EMG 60s is similar to a pair of fishmens and blackouts. They all respond far different from my experience
As someone who used to repair wind instruments, it was mind blowing how many items are just placebos that make absolutely no actual impact on tone themselves, but the mentality they provide helps the player. Hell, I've done a number of free "tune ups" where I just brought a perfectly working horn into the back for a bit, maybe hit a hammer against a can or something a couple times, and brought the instrument back out in exactly the same condition claiming I'd "made adjustments" to hear then happily say that it now played much better.
So placebo also exists in the orchestra side? I thought only metal players are susceptible to that.
@bassyey until metal players start putting small strips of aluminum tape on random parts of their guitars, gluing literal rocks to "nodal points", using high mass screws, buying "cryogenically treated" parts, or arguing that unlaquered guitars play "fuller"; they have nothing on the band/orchestra side.
I've found out that, as long as the gear isn't crap (and you're not playing hardcore on a nylon string guitar) you should be able to get a pretty solid tone.
Also, a nice thing to do, at least for me who's used to old, dusty guitars, is to replace the potentiometers if they're ancient relics. Sometimes that alone will save you from changing pickups ('specially if you tweak the values, like "muddy ? => bigger ohm" "harsh ? => lower ohm" ) The only reason i see today to do so is so you want to personalize your guitar, for instance from high-output ceramic to lower-output PAF-on-steroids style (or the opposite) if you're really about subtle nuances in tone. But that's about it, really. I would rather buy books than more expensive pickups these days.
Point taken! I have a Schecter with “Duncan designed” humbuckers that sounds *very* different than my Les Paul with 57 Classic Plus humbuckers at relatively low gain, but with high gain the difference is extremely negligible, especially in a mix.
I think pickups are more of a “feel” thing than actual tone. I tend to gravitate toward emg’s for their tightness and pick attack. I can definitely feel a difference between them and most passives, regardless of how much gain, or boost you throw at them.
Exactly my thoughts even before watching the first video!
I came here after thinking about this a lot. Certain pickups will make me wanna play different because of how they feel. Some call for super tight chuggin some for loosey goosey fat open string riffs.
They definitely effect tone differently but it's only really discernable if the signal is fairly clean. A PAF and an Invader through a 5150 will sound similar
@@voodoocustompickups2547 I think that point is well proven. This test however, is under high gain. One point I rarely see is pickup placement. Guitar manufacturers sometimes have wildly different placements, and that can considerably change the character of a pickup.
@Metalsthelaw Absolutely. A pickup is just an inductor so where it is and how close to the strings it is makes a huge difference. The closer it is and closer to the magnetic field the stronger the signal will be
I will also say that for guys who rely on pedals for their dirt, you still need the right amp for the sound you're after.
I spent a few years trying to get a vintage vox style amp to sound like a high gain monster. I got high gain tones, but there was always something lacking. I even tried different cabs and speakers. It helped; but ultimately the best thing for the sound I was after (70's and 80's Marshall) was to get a Marshall or something based on that. I find myself now using the amp's OD and boosting with pedals and I'm much happier.
I have other amps geared toward a more Fender style sound that I use sometimes too and the high gain pedals do alright with that, but I usually find the Marshall style amps form the foundation of my sound and I put the other amps on tracks that just fill out the sound. You don't really notice them until they are muted.
I did a blind test on my channel with a Seymour Duncan vs a twenty dollar pup from Aliexpress. Half of the people guessed wrong, and out of the other half a lot weren't even sure. Some were shocked when they found out they were wrong. So yeah, you are 100% correct. No need to spend a ton of money on pickups.
So cool you included the raw tracks this time. Really puts it in perspective to hear the differences from guitar to guitar, and then hear them completely vanish under all the gain. I use more cleaner tones, or "edge of breakup" as they say, but also have way too many fuzz pedals haha. Knowing how much "tone" is lost even with moderate amounts of gain tells me that if I want to vary the tone for a lead or overdub part rather than grab a different guitar instead focus more on the stuff like amp/cab, mics and mic position, etc.
...and how DARE you save me time in the studio, Glenn, you ass...if my tracks don't take days to finish then the bassist won't be rushed and will try to *gulp* write basslines hahaha
Keep the uncomfortable truth science experiments coming, I'm laughing and learning at the same time
One thing I would add - active pickups such as EMG or Fishman (or any of the other active pickup brands) they tend to be quieter than some passive pickups (but not all of them) so to my ears are better for recording high gain sounds. Some passive pickups (and especially single coils) tend to be noisier so there can be a problem in recording high gain type sounds. Very interesting video - some of the changes were so miniscule! It was even more revealing to just listen to the audio of this video in headphones while not looking at the screen!
This series gets better and better because of your continued honesty and refining of your thesis to being specifically about high gain tone. That only puts more weight on the question of how much of a difference there really is on clean tone too! (There is but let’s be critical instead of susceptible to marketing). It’s hard to purchase and figure these out for yourself so tests like this help us avoid the mistakes and time taken to get them and put all that back in music. Much appreciated 🤘🏼🤘🏼 hope you try a filtertron soon, would love to see you do a pup video on magnets as that seems to be the sauce to me. Some good ones already out there but never enough! Also I’m sure it’s dumb but I did hear slight more sustain in the Nazgûl’s notes and I thought the same same thing as the commenter you highlighted, is it because I wanted to?? If you’re going high gain hope this saves you money and gets you to where you’re going, thank you Glenn!!
I love the fact that he doesn't shill for guitar companies like so many of these other guys do , they are bitches to whatever company sends them a guitar to review even if the guitar sucks!
As a pickup builder… I loved this. It was fantastic
Love it preaching the truth let the amp work. The bridge pup in eddies Frankenstein was 7.9 max output.
The pickup comparison was great and i would say a real eye opener. I know Glenn is just doing this for the sake of high gain distortion but I would love to see this same test applied to a variety of effects. That would be amazing to see.
I thought the same thing, so I made a video using Glenn's DI signals into different profiles/models in ToneX (like a kemper).
ruclips.net/video/e9ilpw-lJj0/видео.html
Spoiler in case you don't want to watch, The general rule he spelled out applies pretty well that adding more and more gain tends to make the differences smaller. The other obvious thing when doing this to me was those active harley benton pickups are LOUD compared to everything else...and the "tone is in the fingers" also applies--as this riff sounds better and better with high gain (as that is obviously what he played it for). It doesn't shine clean, or even sound too good with moderate vintage fender overdrive.
@@homerzeppelin will definitely check this out. Thank you!
Okay, I really need to hear this test:
Glenn, if you could, I'd love to see a shootout between the "big four" pickups in the bridge position of a guitar - a p90, a filtertron, a passive humbucker, and a fender-style-single coil, all setup for high gain (and cleans if you want). I've done some blind tests and I'm fairly confident that even with super high gain, I can tell the 4 apart pretty reliably, but I still think it would be cool.
Fr
I hate to be mr. well actually, but a lot of these pickups are built to be very similar in result- super over compressed active pickup stuff. I appreciated seeing the Nazgûl in there because it definitely has quite the unique tone to it in comparison. I'd love to see some Bareknuckles in here or even some lace death buckers or something similar. this feels very much like a "why does my 9mm Glock make the same size holes as someone else's 9mm 1911?"
regardless, this is a very nicely done video, and I quite appreciate what you're doing for folks regarding the "who cares about gear" war
Recently I started taking speakers so much more seriously than the after thought that they used to be. I've also dropped thousands on guitar pickups over the years and I'm finally happy to be leaving that rabbit hole. So yeah, you've helped a lot. A big thanks for pointing me in the right direction to help level up my recordings.
I agree !
This is the best shootout video regarding high gain settings with different guitars and pickups! Thanks for that, Glenn!
Yes, clean sounds is where we can hear the differences. So, I would agree that this would be something to consider only if the clean sound is really important, because again, if you use lots of effects and an EQ (like on a Helix system) you can definitely "change" your tone as much as you want. I'll love to see the same test with different strings, though. I feel there's a more noticeable change in sound when I change strings compared to changing the pickups!
I don't know you guys but even if I don't play clean that much, the moment the cleans need to sound, they need to sound glorious so I can't go cheap.
My best guitar has some Alnico 2 in the neck and a Full Shred in the bridge. Alnico 2 is weak but delivers some amazing cleans while my full shred reacts good enough with high gain
@@ClaimedEagle yeah, a low output alnico on the neck does sound great. But what mean is that I use 3 completely different guitars, each one with different pickups (one is the ESP design pickups from the H200 model) and, other than different tunings, no one can tell if one sounds better from one to the other as we play only metalcore, high gain at all times hehehe .
"Did you learn anything from this shootout"?? Hell yes!! I use Neural DSP plugins with 2 guitars w/ Humbuckers- Plus an acoustic with clean tones, plus the same acoustic guitar with a Neural DSP "crunch tone"-End result is a layering or thickening effect (for me anyways). Fully understand how Amp/Mic placement affects Tone, but kind of stuck with using Plugins for now. And..Revelation-changing the Mic placement and/or Mics themselves within the Plugin also gives you a Tonal difference.
As long as you are happy with your recording workflow, and you are getting the "Tone" you want for a given arrangement-you are good!
Your videos enable us/show us simple Rock/Metal players to work smarter!! (And save a few bucks) Again-another great video! Thank You Sir!!
I definitely think that if you have an amp and a set of pickups that blend really well together to create the harmonic character that you're after, then that's all that really matters. With that being said, i feel as if the most important part about picking out new guitar pickups is finding a set that you feel best captures the way you pick, and has enough output to where it can be pushed into high gain.
Does the amount of a pickups output push newer ultra high gain amps into more gain?
Old amps sure, but I doubt that it has much affect on newer ones set to crazy amounts of clipping.
You missed the point here
Out of the dozens of guitars I’ve owned over 25 years, I’ve only upgraded pickups once. The tonal changes were noticeable, but certainly more so with cleans. As soon as I add high gain, the nuances are minimized. My old Schecter with Duncan Designed pickups still sounds killer through a decent setup of amp and it’s settings, cab, and speakers. 🤘
I've learned over many years that most tone is in the Hands.
Thanks for sharing.
That’s not even remotely close to being true. Source: numerous tests conducted right here. Please watch a few & save your money!
I think aftermarket pickups make the most sense if you’re building a guitar or if there’s something actually wrong with the old pickups. Beyond that it’s just 15% better at best.
Yeah, and 15% is already a stretch
Or if you have a lot of money. This channel is great for encouraging those to allocate limited resources more effectively. I'd swap out my pickups only if I was wealthy. There's much more important shit to buy. I might get back into playing guitar and I've been wondering what a good cost effective rig would be. For example right now, I'd like a decent 100 watt solid state head like the new katana pro for headroom and maybe a 20 watt tube head. Not sure if tubes are really needed anymore. Maybe I just want to own one because I never had one. A good serviceable tube amp is expensive even at 20 watts. Add a few cabinets. Maybe a few of the higher end import guitars. Perhaps a chain of eight or so pedals and maybe a separate multi effects unit direct to PA. When I add up the costs even this rig ooks to cost about 10 grand in total if you add everything I think I may possibly want to it.
@@EvilTB I often think about the whole thing like that. But then I question myself... Like, do I really NEED a tube amp?
@@EvilTB You know, there are cabinets that operate only as a power section, designed to be used with all these new IR pedals, like the Helix and stuff. So as a suggestion, use your guitar, use your pedals, buy the Sonicake IR pedal and one of these cabinets. and you'll have tons of valve amps to try
It pleases my heart and my wallet knowing that spending 17 dollars on a GFS pickup will get me 85% of the way to the sound of a 70 usd Fender/DiMarzio/Seymour
It is amazing how similar pickups are when you AB them with same exact volume
Great video! Your earlier short video telling us that we can avoid spending $$$ on new pickups by slightly boosting the gain makes complete sense now!
Glenn is low key the Dave Ramsey of the RUclips guitar community. It would be impossible to accurately assess, but I am curious to know the total amount of money Glenn has saved viewers from buying new, unnecessary gear. Thanks for doing the experimenting so we didn’t have to, my man!
Has to be in the millions at this point
The more of his videos I watch the less I want to replace my pawnshop Squier and G10 mkii until I know why.
Lmao Glenn and Dave on the same stage
Dave Ramsay is a total fraud. That’s kind of an insult to Glenn.
I gotta say, your videos have inspired me to go and buy a cheaper guitar and run it through the same paces I do my more expensive ones. Not that I’m disillusioned about why I paid more money on some than others (mostly aesthetics). My curiosity is getting the best of me and who knows, maybe I find an inexpensive hidden gem that ends up in regular rotation.
I've bought guitars from the $200 range all the way up to the $1000 range. The best guitars I bought were usually the ones in the $300 range, just from personal experience.
LOVE IT!!!! you opened my eyes where I was MARKETING blind (Pickups, wood, fingers, all the stoopid blah, blah, blah) and you supported that little "wisdom" I already had for 20 years: put the EQ behind the PREAMP and be a MASTER
Glenn, because you've put so much great info into showing us how pickups react to high gain, I really want to hear your thoughts on what happens that 2% of the time you do work on clean tones. Do you ever run into having a really great high-gain tone only to find that the clean tone on the same guitar sucks? And if this happens, do the pickups even come into question? (I'd imagine the answer would still be to check the amps other equipment before blaming the guitar.)
Some pickups like EMGs or Lace Sensors are supposed to be quieter and pick up less noise and hum on stage. Did you notice any of those noise differences in your test, and is it an important factor for recording metal? Btw, David Gilmour famously switched to EMG pickups in his strat for noise reasons and sounded amazing, which would tend to support your conclusions regarding pickup tone.
Active pickups are not the be all end all.
I can use some pretty high output pups in front of my tone bender, as soon as I use active pickups it completely craps out.
Some things also sound better with lower output, like that I personally prefer Yngwie’s lead tone pre Seymour Duncan.
I suspect David Gilmour would sound amazing even on a Gibson ^^
@@CyberChrist He played quite a few songs on a Gibson LP, so yes.
The EMG’s he uses are medium output coupled to a fully fledged active EQ, so it’s a bit more than just pickups and volume/tone control.
Not sure if he still uses some of the old stomp boxes, if so pickups and the whole circuit have a lot to say, since even a modern muff pi triangle fuzz reacts different to what different pickups feed into it.
Besides that he is known for blending the neck with the bridge pickup.
3:43 to 4:28
Bro Glenn, there is ABSOLUTELY a huge difference in dynamics(how the pickup responds to your playing) here and you have made the proof.
Cheers! :3
I love these videos. I've learned a ton from them. I've played a bunch of different guitars, pickups etc over the years. I'm an EMG guy and I'm not ashamed! 🤘🤘😄😄😄
I use them because they're consistent. I know what I'm getting with each purchase.
Keep the great content coming Glen!!!
I love the solderless wiring system from EMG
Have to say this channel has been great at dispelling lots of myths that i assumed were true over 20 years of guitar playing, and it's helped me realize what's important in tone and guitar sound..
Watch your videos "absolutely" change my way to shopping..Glenn, I'm 63 and always searching for tone I don't worry about my vacuum tubes anymore. And now I don't have to worry about pickups. Thanks Glenn
I can’t wait to see you explore the EQ and speaker topic. It’s so fascinating to see what types of effects and differences the speaker would have vs a standard EQ curve
The Fishman Fluence pickups sounded totally different coming through my 5.1 Surround setup. They had more depth and clarity. Overall though, you’re absolutely right that pickups aren’t that important particularly for chugging and rhythm. There’s definitely an argument to be made for specialist pickups for cleans and leads.
Tell me you have Fishmans installed in your guitars without telling me you have Fishmans installed in your guitars 🐟 🎸
RUclips only outputs in stereo. Meaning on your 5.1 Surround setup, you would only be either getting 2 speakers working, or the same stereo signal coming out duplicated from both the front and back pair, depending on how your system is routed. Meaning, it doesn't matter, and, at best it would have just sounded louder. Have a marvelous day.
@@dmanandcmac I have them in one of my guitars and I hate them. My only guess on the original video was that guitar 8 had Fishmans, and I was right because they actually make a difference.
@@dmanandcmac I play acoustic folk music. I’m listening to the video on a home theater system which has a different audio fidelity from your computer monitors, TV speakers, soundbar or headphones. I noticed they sounded different. Am I here sucking Fishman’s dick? No. I fucking hate their acoustic magnetic pickups… they sound like shit, but I could absolutely hear a difference in them through my specific audio playback setup.
@@vladv5126 ok? If the only thing that changes is the pickups, and I hear a difference in some of them, that just means I can hear a difference. Clearly something makes them sound differently when the pickups are the only variable. Did I claim I thought it sounded better? No. I only stated that they sounded different through my audio setup. Your mileage may vary.
I recorded a riff with with two different guitars (yahama pacifica 612 and prs SE tremonti signature) both with bridge humbucker (yamaha has some seymour duncan pickup and tremonti has the signature humbucker pickup in the bridge position). At the time of recording i thought "well the yamaha has more mids " and tremonti has scooped mids. The amp, mic position and all the gain settings were same. After A/B testing, i can assure i could not hear .00001 % difference. I followed your advice glenn and got a new speaker (vintage 30) for my Laney lv200 amp, it sucked before (was going to sell it to save up for a "better" amp) , it sucks less and the tone is quite usefull now, Thanks a lot glenn keep up the great work.
I have tried a lot of pickups and can say that even under high gain they do make quite a difference. Not so much in the shape of the tone (although there is still a difference) but more in the attack and way it sustains and breaks up. Pickups have resonant frequencies which cause a boost at certain frequencies and those boosted frequencies will break up first much in the same way a boost such as a tube screamer works.
Also most modern metal tones could sound way better and less similar if you dial the gain back a little so the distortion isn't compressed to the point that you lose all the pick attack and feel of the playing.
And this is what people aren’t getting.
Did you watch the video?
If you dial back the gain you lose the cool tone you get from the compression, the uniformity in the pick attack when doing the melo death riffing. Different strokes for different folks, but nothing beats a guitar with EMGs (high output and compressed) into a 5150 with gain on 6-7 being boosted by an overdrive pedal.
@@serdiezv I agree for the most part. You can get the best of both worlds if you set your gain just right so that it compresses more when you hit the strings hard but has less compression when you don't. Add a little pick control and you will get good uniformity in the attack.
I prefer less compression and more dynamics in picking.
I also agree for active EMG is the way to go. I really like the new EMG-X. I tried the Fishman fluence moderns and found them to be lifeless and dull.
@@serdiezv , and the BETTER YOUR PICKUPS ARE the LESS you'll need to "dial gain back" , if you even need to at all!!!!
To me I mainly just notice the output level so I get to the edge breakup at different points, but yeah humbucker vs single coil is what I can hear a significant tone difference on.
The pickups are tool that guitarist use how he likes the guitar response his playing. Same way as drummers choose their cymbals, pedals, drumheads or sticks. Average listener can't hear difference from them recorded but yet drummers prefer one over another.
The thing with different pickups is also that you would not dial them all in same way while recording cause some of them are heavy in treble, some in middle and some in low end. This "debunking" just slaps them all in same setup and dialed sound and the conclusion is that there is no diffrence cause they are all played thru same dialed tone. Didn't convince me
@@raakareiska9804 But... if all other variables are controlled and the same... he is kind of proving that it doesn't matter for high gain. Certainly no where near as much as an acoustic instrument like a cymbal.
@@joshshultz1250 I guarantee if there would be extreme metal cymbal demo where every setup would be reviewed by blast beats and heavy hitting the difference in outcome would be like in these pickups.
I will offer a counterpoint. I had a pre-2012 Epiphone Les Paul Classic with the intentionally muddy pickups and equally unimpressive pots and caps. I took it into the music store for a shootout with an AIO Wolf LP copy equipped with the IYV brand Destiny wound pickups. The Epiphone sounded like it was played through a wet blanket. I sold the Epi and bought the Wolf because it was easier and cheaper than swapping pickups. If you buy used, with the amount of options you have these days, it's easier to sell the bad pickups and buy better ones with the guitar attached.
I've always thought that pickups don't matter that much with high gain as long as they're not cheap microphonic pickups but it's really cool to have it confirmed. Thanks Glenn and keep up the search for the truth. 👍
Great video, Glenn!
As I get older I more and more realize, that most gear (except speakers, mics etc) doesn't make that much of a difference once you are in a band/live situation or a full mix.
Keep up the good work!
One of the reasons my Band switched to using HX Stomps live :D To me the benefits of digital amps exceed analog ones by far - less to carry around, in ear always sounds the same, the rig is midi controllable (there are amps that can do that to, but not to the degree digital amps are capable of doing) and in general, there are far less problems which can occur live (Think of a cable breaking on your pedalboard or something like that). Oh, and every sound engineer will be thankful, that they have one microphone less to watch over. In the Studio it's an other ballgame of course - Mic placement and trying out different mic combinations are just far too awesome and probably will never be replaced by digital amps. So yeah, I completely agree.
@@Vincentpadrutt same here. My band is on the verge of switching to digital amps and in ear monitoring. Makes life so much easier...
The thing is that a lot of us just play in our bedrooms and the you can tell the difference in that context. Once it's recorded or playing live you can't really tell. but that is Like 1% of my playing. The rest of the time I'm in my bedroom and I can certainly hear the subtle differences in each of my guitars. I like all the gear, but if my guitar isn't putting out what I want it to, I'll swap pickups and that's solve the problem. Sure speakers are more important, but the pickups do play a part in the guitar's tone. Subtle as it is.
Yeah, but you'll lose some edge and wind up sounding like an mp3. It'll sound good, but not as good as tubes. The trade off is probably worth it, but nothing beats a tube amp. @@JohnDoe9764
@@chrismccarthy7107 absolutely right 👍
Dude, you have to try Heavy core strings then!! Either the Dunlop, DR ddt or Ernie ball ( the Hetfield signature )! They’re so freaking tight even though they feel tiny!
I do agree with the pickup marketing, though there are clear tone differences between pickup magnets, the other variation is the windings ( to make it a low or high output). That’s it, each “era” of tone was determined by the pickup style (P90, humbucker or single coil), number of windings and magnet used at the time. DiMarzio also experimented with diff metal for the pole pieces and a hybrid magnet (ceramic and alnico), though IMO the difference in tone wasn’t really remarkable.
For example, older P90s have that twangy full spectrum response (a lot of that tone is because single coils and P90s don’t cancel noise, unlike humbuckers) and mix that with your magnet material selection and you get the pickup tone mixing the pickup type and magnet material.
Now this sounds needs to go into the distortion and then it will get the eq cut and focused in the mixing stage and this is were the tone starts getting lost literally “in the mix”.
This is where you start contemplating if it’s worth it, for a tiny difference.
Now, we do need to recognize there’s a problem with brands and their “metal” guitars that typically come with overwound windings with a ceramic pickup that makes it really muddy. Alnico 8 magnets can help but it’s a matter of taste, some like the mud so go figure lmao
Learned something new today. Please, Glenn, Don't ever ever stop making videos such as this. This made me appreciate the pickups that I have on my guitar even more. Keep rockin 🤘. Greetings from Philippines 🇵🇭.
The results definitely affected my thoughts on my next purchase. I'm looking at getting a multiscale, specifically for down tuning and metal (what a surprise!) so this helped a bunch to cut out one factor from the comparisons. I've already got clean tones I like on another guitar, so the only pickup related question I'll have left is whether to go active vs. passive.
That was fun to watch. I learned a good bit here. It makes me less concerned about pick ups and more about my amp and pedal chain. Thanks mate.
When starting the journey with my own studio, I bought an orange amp for that “British” tone and an EVH 5150 for a more metal tone and recordings. Thought about switching from the factory humbuckers to something like the Juggernauts for my guitars to sound more massive tone wise. Boy, was I wrong about the whole thing. Thank you Glenn for the great videos about tone, comparison of different speakers, and showing us what difference they make.
Greetings from Moldova! 🤘🤘🤘
I've listened to this with my eyes closed, and while I agree that as long as the pup is good quality you can very similar tones from different specs, I also immediately recognized the active ones as my least favorites, so that's a nice confirm
Just a rando here, but I have to say thank you for these kinds of videos. I've been watching for quite awhile and well I trust you. You're clearly an authority on metal tone in my opinion and yes this will affect what I buy in the future now that I know it doesn't matter. Thanks Glenn!
no thanks stop lying i see you created your account 2 minutes ago
For rhythm I agree, but leads also are more affected by the pickup as well as overall feel of the neck and frets. Some pickups just do not sing when holding single notes. Active pickups seem to be the best for me but I've also liked the Nazgul and Black Winters for leads. Probably not sonically noticeable but I can feel the difference pretty substantially.
I switched from Active to Passive pickups. What you are describing could simply be the active pickups having more gain. You could possibly achieve a similar result with passive pickups, by turning up the amp gain (or drive pedal, if using one)
I appreciate the experiment and the insight. Since most of these guitars were already aimed at the metal crowd, I'd be curious to see how a low output PAF style pickup would compare to a Fluence or Nazgul at high gain (impedance, resonant frequency, harmonics, attack, etc...). I'd also like to hear more about how the tone is shaped by the amp, any external overdrives, and then the speaker. Anyway, good stuff and keep up the great work!
You might want to check out jim lill's youtube channel. He tested out in what way strings, amps, speakers etc. effect your guitar tone. Really interesting.
My first foray into swapping pickups, listening to differences etc was when I borrowed a Jem and compared it to my RG 750 Ibanez - basically the same guitar but I preferred the old Ibanez F2 to the Dimarzios. I could get my sweet rg750 in the zone easier, it reacted to the music better - in the bridge. I then started looking for improvement and ended up replacing the neck with a '59 and the bridge with a duncan distortion (the bridge was a ceramic Dimarzio designed F2). Later the mid was swapped for a Texas special. Sweet guitar. Zero bad pickup positions.
This was amp specific and absolutely sang with 80's Marshalls - not so much with other amps.
Was it worth it? absolutely because in those days, you went into your 2210 without many effects, without using a boost pedal and it rocked straight off the bat.
Now you could throw a lot of extra gain, eq and processing at the same setup and make the Jem sound the same - but the pickup swap is more efficient at the end of the day.
Interesting fact - The Jem owner wanted to sell and was taken aback when I didn't even want to swap.
Honestly, a set of new strings makes more difference to guitar tone than changing pickups! I recently brought my first guitar from back in the 90s out of storage, a Yamaha Pacifica 112M. I decided to have a play with it through my VST amps and it sounded horrible. Swapped out to some brand new strings that weren't over a decade old and wow, what would you know, it sounded great!
I'd love to see a comparison between actual amp+cabinet/speaker stacks and software modeled combos
This video saved me a bunch of money in changing pickups on my metal guitar....lol. Another badass video from SMG! Keep it reel!
That Nazgul and the Fishman sounded best to me. A bit less muddier, but to be honest this is something you can do in the EQ as well. Great video Glen!
I totally agree.
I was surprised with how similar the Nazgul and the 81 were
I have a Nazgul. Propably one of the best pickups for low tunnings.
Gretsch guitars are an underrated gem. You might have to put a booster in the chain to hit them amp hard enough for metal as their pick up output is closer to a hot single coil. But for classic hard rock if you roll off the tone and crank the amp they sound amazing. All of their solid body guitars are chambered so it doesn't matter which one you grab.
Agreed.
I got G5260 baritone and its really something else comparing to any other baritone I ever tried but also their normal guitars are awesome. Bigsby is garbage but hard tail version I would buy every single one.
just got a new 4k OLED monitor for my studio space, and I'm really appreciating your video in a whole new light, best looking shots on RUclips!
Absolutely love this series of debunking, genuinely surprised how little difference there really is. I do wonder if some of these variations come from things like the height of the pickups and differing caps and tolerances on the tone circuit (if there is one). Would genuinely be curious if all high gain pedals also end up sounding the same, especially if you match the EQ on them. Looking forward to seeing what the next thing to be disproven will be....
FWIW, tone caps only matter once you start rolling off the tone knob, at 10 a straight piece of wire will sound the same as any cap. Pot values have a much bigger effect for everything on 10.
He should use better sound for demo. I would never use that much of low end in guitar recording. It's overwhelming. This is why I also hate Dimarzio Tone Zone cause you always drop that bass down
Pickup height and picking/strumming. We are humans, you don't strum EXACTLY the same way each time, the human factor kicks in.
I would definitely like to see a video done about the difference (whether there is any) between active and passive pickups
From my experience and some videos i've seen, I think its about the same as this here. I don't remember who but one popular guitar RUclipsr said active pickups are simply easier to get a better tone since you often have a 2-3 band eq on the guitar.
Passives sound different,in different wood bodies. Like a mahogany body compared to Ash. Actives have preamps to basically clone the manufacturer's designed for sound
There's really big differences between actives and passives and a lot of it is feel and dynamics, and how they affect you when you play. You can especially hear and feel the difference in Tom Anderson passive pickups vs more traditional humbuckers and when compared to actives it's like a whole other world. You really just have to listen to samples of a bunch and then compare the ones you liked the most in person and if you're really paying attention, you will notice each one hits differently and inspires a different path or approach to your playing based on the sonic textures you're hearing.
@@rollme1kenobi768 wood only makes a difference in acoustic. anything else you'v heard is bullshit.
I'm not sure if this was mentioned early on in the video but with high gain, I totally agree with you! With lower gain settings, I really hear differences in pickup changes though. Great video and keep it up!
Pickups absolutely make a difference. The question is, what should you change first? The biggest change you could make first would be amp, and then I'd say speaker and/or pickup. I've tried a lot of pickups out, and the biggest difference IMO is clarity and output. Yes, you can EQ a lot of things, but some pickups just have more clarity/note and chord definition under gain than others. I compared the Suhr Aldrich, Duncan JB, and BKP Holy Diver all to each other, and the Holy Diver has the best clarity under gain. They're all good pickups, but playing a chord with a JB isn't like playing a chord with a Holy Diver, no matter how much you EQ. I actually did a comparison vid of the two on my channel. I've noticed that when you upload a lot of stuff to RUclips, it compresses the sound, so any differences you're hearing in person are negated and sound more subtle. But in person, you can hear and "feel" the difference.
You also have to consider how many guitars you have and what you're using them for. If you're only doing high gain but have a guitar with a low output Gibson PAF and another guitar with a JB, you're going to have to EQ, mess with gain, maybe use a boost pedal, and do a lot of stuff every time you switch guitars. That's ok for at home or recording, but not great in a live sense if you switch between multiple guitars for tunings, tremolos, etc.
And that's it, as soon as you mix everything and upload it to a streaming platform all the subtle differences vanishes. If changes get lost after doing everything then they're not that important, what do you think about it?
@@kainagami that's why I also added nuances to what I said. Playing live or with other people, pickups make a difference due to clarity and output. If you can't hear the notes you're playing clearly, then you're guessing.
Granted, when I did my own comparison I was just recording direct with a multi-effects unit. I've noticed that multi-effects units like FM9 or Helix have their own compression and make differences between pickups a little harder to tell. But the differences are bigger when you're using a real amp.
It would be cool to see at what point do the guitars still sound significantly different as you're adding gain.
Now that you are busting elctric guitar myths, it would be great to see these experiments on a bass guitar as well.
I like this idea, does crunch gain sound different across all those pickups or is it close to no differences as in the heavy gain demo we just watched?
There's a RUclips channel called Mike Stamper Official where you can listen to a ton of videos that do just that. My Evo just went microphonic on me, and I decided to get something with more output because I'm kind of tired of having to adjust my volume on stage when switching guitars, and even my wife noticed that once you get into high gain, there really isn't a noticeable difference. I use cleans in about 6 of our songs, so clean is important to me, as well as output. It's difficult to compare output from a recording, but I ultimately went with a Super Distortion because of how it sounds with cleans, and the output should be more in line with my stock Ibanez V8 in my other 2 guitars.
@@travisspaulding2222 I follow his channel! It's very good. Love his demos. Really liked this Ajo pickups
Bass is mostly played clean, even in metal, so I guess there is a more significant difference between different bass pickups, and especially with shitloads of different pickup designs compared to guitar, different style single coils and humbuckers with variable placement. My fav bass sound ever is with two P style pickups, and, for some reason, that setup is very rare.
This vid basically brings out that the difference in pickups is output and how they compress the pick attack. To me the best sounding were the EMG and the Duncan Nazgul, and they were almost the same sound wise. That headless Harley Benton did sound super cool too.
if you're able, i think it'd be a good idea to show us some frequency response graphs from these guitars so we can all visualize exactly how similar they are, and point out whatever differences are there, however minor they seem to be
A pickup with higher resistance will filter off more of the higher frequency and can really change how the GBE strings sound. Glen is right though with gain the differences are very small however when you have a pickup with very high resistance it can be noticeable with gain there is a pickup that is over 50kohms to put that in perspective most pickups are wound at 8kohms and i think humbuckers are at 6kohms don't quote me on that though. So with that spicy 50+kohms, a lot of the highs are cut out even with gain making for some pretty cool-sounding solos. It also adds a lot of distortion even in clean channels.
Here is an example of a 54kohm humbucker really spicy and I believe he is playing it through a clean channel
ruclips.net/video/UfLU486vHzQ/видео.html
That's the real proof in the pudding and I think you guys will be surprised just how different they actually are from each other. Not to mention how different they affect the vibration of the strings due to their magnetic properties.
Not having done a real test myself apart from fiddling around on my guitar a bit at times, but I think he'd need to exactly match the distance between strings and pickup for each guitar. This is not a guitar channel, other people have done those tests though. It's a test for your ears and the listener won't care about graphs
Imagine this, The year is 2050, all instruments have become midi controllers hooked to sample library’s… and Glenn is still having to SHOW the guitar snobs that infinitesimal details like what kind of solder was used bares no relevance to the tone! It’s like a never ending game of chess against a pigeon. Excellent work as always dude!
That will be a horrible day for music.
Personal experience:
I had a PRS SE Custom 22 made in 2008 with cheap SE humbuckers. They sounded good for rock and playing power chords, however, if you wanted to play something more complex like a minor chord or some six-string sus7sus11blahblah chord, it sounded super muddy, clarity was close to none. Then I got PRS SE Mark Holcomb instead of this guitar. It has Seymour Duncan Alpha and Omega pickups, and clarity is their main feature. When playing said six-string chords, I can hear every note in them. Also, these pickups have a very unique sounding coil-split - it instantly gives that "djent" sound.
The same was with my PRS SE SVN 7-string guitar. I tune it to Drop F#, and stock 85/15 "S" pickups sounded good for single note riffs but lacked clarity in very low chords like F#5 power chord. I replaced them with BKP Ragnaroks and that fixed clarity problems. I don't know if that's about a magnet type, or the way pickups are EQ-ed, but that worked for me.
However, I have other guitars, and I wouldn't say which is which in a blind test. JB, Super Distortion, and EMG81 sound very similar on high gain. Minor differences are there when you're hearing just the guitar but in the context of a full mix, you'd never tell which pickup was used.
Thanks for ripping apart all those guitar myths for us. I put my guitars through a similar test. The only difference for me was play, feel and response but not the recorded signal. But then…I only know that I know nothing! Can’t wait for the EQ/DIST deep-dive. You’re my favourite guitar scientist :)
Most of us here have already seen the Jim Lill video on amplifiers, but the EQ vs gain / clipping stages thing is explored and put into practice in it, I can only recommend it.
@@void_snw Thanks, will have a look at it!
The more times I listened the more differences I heard. The Solar FF #3 was my fav in the first video-and it still is here. Reminds me of my fav metalcore records. Pickups may only be 10% of the sound but that 10% matters to me. When you study recording you realize your final sound is the sum of hundreds of small changes. A 3 dB dip at 400hz seems incredibly small until you make that same move on 13 tracks. Pickups might be a small part of the total but the more parts you get right the better your final output is.
I think the outrage is better spent on guitar makers rather than just pickups. There may be a few hundred dollars difference in pickups, but there are thousands of dollars difference in guitars and God knows tone wood is worst myth of them all.
When I bought my first guitar after my starter, I tried the PRS SE Custom 24 and the SE Mark Tremonti. I eventually went for the Mark Tremonti over the Custom 24 because of how the pickups FELT like in my hands
I'm talking about dynamics and output
High output means it hits the amp harder and hitting the amp harder means more saturation
More saturation means higher perceived loudness
Higher perceived loudness means "better" tone right?
The other thing was that the neck pickup in the Tremonti guitar was pretty low output while the bridge pickup has much higher output allowing me to go from clean to a distorted tone simply by switching pickups. This technically also worked for high gain amps but I'd have to roll back on the volume a ton and play really softly
Would love a vid on seeing if its possible to EQ humbuckers to sound close to single coils and vice versa. Love the work you do Glen, cheers.
The SD JB is the most recorded pickup in history. I've thought how my buddy's hand-wound Loller clone sounded quite similar, and the same with the DiMarzio Tone Zone. But I haven't felt that way about just any and all. It's the musician's tendency to hear these differences when ALONE in the room with a rig. I mean, in my own home, over my amp and pedals and cab, I don't have to listen for the difference, I already know which guitars have my favorite sounds. I feel like a lot of what "we" are getting that you don't has to do with response. Like, when I play over the EMG 81, I can't palm mute the same way, or it gets to "chinky" and metallic instead of tight. The Bare Knuckles give me a muddy "bark" in the lows at times. My "hands" don't think these differences are as subtle, as it drives me nuts and keeps me from liking the guitar as much as others in my small collection. I can't seem to "connect" with EMG actives for example. Where I agree with your principles is that a listening audience just can't care about any of this. They just want to sing along.
This is so true. We don't buy gear for the audience (they're drunk anyway), we buy it for ourselves. The feel of the guitar and how it interacts with the amp is so important, and you're the only person who will ever notice.
I can hear a fairly obvious difference in the low end response and attack on several. As a metal player, those are the first two things I listen and 'feel' for. When you start in on leads, the differences become way more pronounced, particularly in that irritating mid range of about 1.5- 3khz. May not sound like much but that's an entire octave where it can be smooth or pierce your ears in certain note ranges.
I've swapped pups in one guitar over half a dozen times over the years and I have to revamp my amp tone/gain/eq to accommodate each and every time. Passive and active.
Pups make a huge difference... but you're definitely not going to notice as much by playing a simple, generic, hi-gain crunch riff in one limited area of the instrument.
There are so many variations of tone you can get with different pickups but once you get to a certain point with gain it starts to not matter as much but it still does matter. Really depends if you want tone or white noise, best sounds are always perfectly tuned without causing too much stress to the song. Perfect example is to listen to Enter Sandman the guitar has barely any gain at, all perfectly tuned for the song
I love how you're working to myth bust so much industry bullshit Glenn Keep up the great work, yours is definitely the go to channel for music production querys.
I have watched this video a few times. Mainly cause it really proves the point of the guitar pick snake oil theory. So i put 11 of my guitars to the test. They are load with Fishmans, seymour duncan(passive and active), MOJO tone , emg , Roswell, HBZ, tesla (stock loaded Harley benton) stock loaded ibanez pick ups and also Rockfeild. So I recorded everything direct wrote down with channel was what guitar waited a about 3 days and listened back to each track dirty and clean... and oit of the 11 I got 3 right.. the hbz and the 2 that have fishmans.. the only reason I could pick those 3 out from all the others was due to volume. The tone difference was to small to really pick out. I really hope others try this test out for yourself im sure results may vary but it was fun. Great video Glenn looking forward to the next test !!
a $40 distortion pedal would change the guitar tone way more 😂 than them pickup
The first paragraph of the comment at 10:55 nails it. When one has so much clipping and other types of distortion, the nuances of the pickups, guitars or even amps get lost.
Definitely EQ changes (speakers, eq shaping circuitry, microphone placement, etc.) will have the most impact on the sound.
I just ordered a custom loaded pick guard from Planet Tone. Switching my Strat from SSS to HSS. With everything that I’m getting, included being modded, I’m getting at a 1/3 of the cost if I would’ve found one comparable from a major manufacture. I can’t wait to get it!!! It will be my first HSS. I’ve always had single coils Strats with the exception of a few hot rails I had installed years ago on a couple of guitars in the bridge position.
I don’t play high gain, though sometimes i do record artists playing that style, but this has been really ear opening! I’ve just recently bought a Harley Benton JA baritone (once I got over my snobby pride 😂) and I’ve been thinking I’m gonna swap the pickups for something ”better”…. This and a number of other of your other blind test videos are now making me rethink what to spend my precious shekels on. You’re doing the Lords work!
Hey Glenn, thanks for this video!! Tried it out myself (and filmed and posted it) and, whoah, mus agree!!! In terms of high gain, the differences ARE rather subtle.
Some years ago a guy told me to adjust the pole pieces of my humbuckers, it never occurred to me that the pole peces could be adjusted to increase out and to adjust them to fit the radius of your strings. The difference was night and day! My tip is that pick material (black ice 1mm picks for me) gives the best output for a metal tone, pick attack and pickup adjustmenr.
I think tone-wise, there’s very small differences if any at all. But feel-wise, I think there’s a noticeable difference? I tested my EMG-armed Jackson against my stock Gibson LP Studio and I did notice some differences in the feel when chugging it out. It felt like the chugs were easier to obtain with EMGs compared to the stock passives that came with my LP.
If I was performing live and doing some thrash stuff, this would probably matter, but in a recording setup, I can probably get the LP to that level tone-wise and not spend that extra for an EMG upgrade, but I just have to work harder on my picking hand or add some EQ to help me lift that thunderous bass when chugging - and only if I really wanted to!
Because I do like the LP feel too, even in metal, it’s got that 24” scale guitar “bark” when chugging that reminds me of the old times when metal was young 😊
Awesome Test, awesome video! I own a 1985 Washburn HM-5V with the blood splatter finnish and the (home made, I think) washburn pickups are still doin' a great job sawing peoples limbs of when this little beast is played on a brutal amp. \m/
Glad you added the caveat (big word for bass players I know) about how it doesn't really matter for high gain stuff. Was at an amp show a while back and a booth had a high gain setup and guys were trying all these different guitars, and guess what... all the guitars sounded exactly the same. Lower gain and clean is where guitars and pickups matter.
It's funny, the discussion question at the end there really got me thinking.
I run a one man boutique custom guitar shop and wind my own pickups for my builds. I wondered how much of the tone difference is like a psychoacoustic thing. From all my testing with winding pickups (spectrum analysis and everything) i settled on three different pickup designs to offer customers for high gain tones. I was, and still am, convinced that there is a really big difference in tone of these pickups but going over it again in the studio comparing plugins, reamping to outboard gear etc i have to admit that for all the work i put into researching, testing and winding pickups for high gain tones the actual difference in terms of shaping the sound is negligible compared to everything before or after the guitar in the signal chain.
Now this isn't particularly surprising at all but i was very eye opening. Reestablishing the fact that the player is ultimately the most important piece of equipment in the chain by debunking your own psychoacoustic biases and professional opinions puts everything i do on a daily basis back in the proper perspective. If it sounds good it is good, ain't nothing more to it ;D