Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Pickups => Topic started by: Yamhammer on April 01, 2008, 08:16:00 AM
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Just an important and interesting question:
How can we hear if a pickup is 'good' or 'bad' for a specific guitar?
I always hear many people say the original pickups from their guitars suck or could be (a lot) better in terms of tone...
But how on earth can we know the pickups are the 'bad point' and not the guitar, amp or player in this kind of situations?
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I would generally side with cheaper pickups = cr@p sound. For example, stock Tokai pickups are woeful - no power, no clarity and definition in the sound, just a general muddy mess.
However you do raise a good point, a person could blame their pickups when really they could have a weak amp or terrible technique. I remember reading something from Dan Hawkins (of The Darkness) saying why he loved using Marshall amps because he loved the fact that he had to pound his guitar to get "that" rhythm sound while Justin changed to Rectumfriers because they were a lot more forgiving and did a lot of the work for you.
Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks and all that.
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Good point. I guess the only factor is how you like what you hear. Some may like their stock pups alright. However there are some standards where below them it's pure **** and above it's pure bliss. But again these standards are different for everyone depending on their music influences etc. Just my opinion. :)
Edit: To answer the pickup related question I'd say that it's all about knowing your setup. Once you have a clear idea what characteristics the amp retains when you change pickups, you can then identify the tone 'part' assigned to them. Something like that I guess...
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It's a good question, but difficult to answer. For me, it's usually a case of having played similar guitars, through similar (or the same) amps, and knowing what they "should" sound like.
So, you get an idea of how a Tele should sound, a Strat, an SG, whatever - you might not have the best Tele, Strat or SG but you can tell from the acoustic tone if it's a real stinker.
I don't think the player comes into it much, unless you're making a decision on someone else's playing/equipment - I'm rubbish, but I'm consistently rubbish so I know how to get a certain kind of sound out of my own gear.
Then narrowing it down to the pickups, some things are easy to spot - if the amp overdrives far too easily at low volumes, the pickup's too powerful, it can't be due to anything else. If the treble's painfully piercing, or the bass strings sound mushy, those are things that usually can be fixed/improved by pickup choice.
It's never easy to get exactly the "right" pickup for a particular guitar, and I don't think you can turn a really bad guitar into a good one just by changing pickups. But over time you do get an idea of what pickups are likely to work in certain types of guitars.
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It's all about knowing you and your gear in my opinion. I know how I play, and how my current guitars and amps sound, so when I try a new guitar out I've got experience to refer to. Having changed pickups on guitars in the past, you know what can and can't be done too.
Basically, it's all down to experience. You have to learn over time my young padouin ;)
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Twinfan is right. In time you will know wich part of your rig does what to your sound.
Muddy-ness, mushy-ness, microphonics are often caused by bad pickups.
When you have played guitars with really good pickups you'll know the difference. Some pickups sound allright but it feels like you have to drag the notes out of your guitar or the tone just doesn't sound alive.
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If you havent played the guitar you can guess from cumulation of experience of those woods, the hardware, scale, bridge, shape etc
If you have then its a guess based on the accoustic tone of the guitar; how well the current pickups seem to agree with that and what you want to emphasise and suppress (or keep even) in the guitars sound.
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Basically I just found that I was getting good sounds with my other guitar into the same amp so I guessed it was either the guitar or pickups, and was easy enough to change out the pickups :)
I would generally side with cheaper pickups = cr@p sound. For example, stock Tokai pickups are woeful - no power, no clarity and definition in the sound, just a general muddy mess.
Yep. The stock pickups in my Pearl were awful, same sound as those tokai ones seem to get. Compared to my Epi with Mules it was just undefined and dark/bland. Put a Rebel Yell in the bridge and its so much better, sounds more alive and just good in general :)
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Thanks guys for sharing your personal experiences about this complex subject. I'm taking this really serious.
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My advice? Lose the MT-2.
Then either use the channels on your Screamer for all your tones, or get a simple booster/overdrive like a Tubescreamer/clean boost/EQ pedal.
That will give you a great, simple rig that you should be able to shape your tone with.
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Thanks for your advice.
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Tonight I've worked on my set-up.
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Tonight I've worked on my set-up during band practicing and I'm really happy I did :) :) :)
I removed both the Boss MT-2 and FV-5 volume pedal (!) and instead of that I'm only using an EQ-pedal and footswitch now together with the tone
knobs from the guitar...much, much better. Everything feels more naturel now and now I can understand all the talk about tubescreamers, boosters,
marshalls etc...
You really helped me with this Twinfan and I'm thanking you for your straight advice, definately.
It has opened my eyes (from 2 years of using a 'wrong' set-up). I bet there are still better pedals out there for these purposes, but now I finally know
what's all about and because of that I can also appreciate the whole 'pickup thing' much better...
Of course I haven't had many success before by upgrading the pickups, because of the set-up.
The MT-2 and FV-5 are both going into the 'garbage can'. I've had many serious gigs with them before, so it's quite a radical change for me.
Thursday evening I have a gig with the new set-up. Really looking forward to it....
I love the screamer's lead channels - The boss MT-2 hasn't got anything on it.
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You really helped me with this Twinfan and I'm thanking you for your straight advice, definately.
No problem at all my friend :) Enjoy your new setup!
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But how on earth can we know the pickups are the 'bad point' and not the guitar, amp or player in this kind of situations?
Well, in my case the player is always the "weak link" ;)
However I changed the Duncan JB/Jazz in my Jackson RR1T for a Holy Diver set & the guitar went from being a "backup" guitar (nice neck, but weak sound) to my #1 axe with jaw-droppingly awesome tone.
Seeing as the only thing I changed were the pickups, it's reasonable to suggest that the pickups made the difference...
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But how on earth can we know the pickups are the 'bad point' and not the guitar, amp or player in this kind of situations?
Well, in my case the player is always the "weak link" ;)
However I changed the Duncan JB/Jazz in my Jackson RR1T for a Holy Diver set & the guitar went from being a "backup" guitar (nice neck, but weak sound) to my #1 axe with jaw-droppingly awesome tone.
Seeing as the only thing I changed were the pickups, it's reasonable to suggest that the pickups made the difference...
Twinfan: thanks...