BK Users EQ Charts - Your Experiences Please

[ratspeak]

I skimmed through each page and didn't see myself (other than my over-enthusiasm, page 2), so. estimates for you:

Ceramic Warpig (Bridge):

B: 8
M: 8
T: 6.5

Tight, very hot, good for leads, good cleans from a ceramic.

Alnico WP (neck):

B: 8.5
M: 6
T: 6

Fat, dark. Bass can get overbearing on the low strings (I had to angle it quite a bit). Excellent cleans.

[Shotgun]

I have a Painkiller in full koa body and ebony fingerboard with dropH tuning. It sounds like this:

Bass: 6
Mids: 9
Treble: 5

It has a lot of mids, upper mids especially, cut like a knife, very quick attack. There is a great bass too, but it's very tight. Trebles are smooth, not harsh, I give a little treble to it on my ENGL, but the others are 12 o'clock. Very good pickup for mahagony and other heavy woods. Great for modern, tight, djenty metal, like Periphery or Sikth. Clean is OK.

[MDV]

Thanks fellas

And welcome, shotgun :)

[Keven]

This may or may not be useful but i spent the afternoon carefully calibrating both of my axes and thought this might be useful for your database needs

i only took pics for the black dog so far but if you think it's useful i'll run all of my 4 BKP

Signal chain

Schecter loomis 7 with black dog bridge. 2 week old elixir strings gauged 10-68 in Bb. maple neck and fretboard and ash body. set neck. 10' lead into a simple behringer guitar link sound card. playing both a heavy gallop riff on the low B and some lead fiddle on the high e b g and d. the black dog is set quite close to the strings (2mm fretted on the 24th fret, the closest it can be)

here are the graphs i got. just for reference, on my cold sweat the range from maybe 6k to 12k doesn't roll off. i'll do some more if you think they can be of help.

this is the guitar direct into the analyzer, it's as pure as it can be. first image is the riff. second image is the lead.

[MDV]

I think that sort of analysis (fourier transforms) really has a lot of potential for pickup EQ analysis, and thanks for doing it!

The downfalls that it may have are that that response is specific to the pickup in that guitar, that tuning, that string guage; you could take a lot of fourier power spectra of the same pickup in lots of guitars and average them up, and then do away with this vague and really quite unhelpfull convention of 'bass mid treble, 0-10', but thats considerably more effort from people with the means, know-how and inclination to do them (but if its worth doing its worth doing; its just a bit of work).

The other thing is interpretability. Most people arent accustomed to seeing fourier spectra and really understanding what they're seeing and how it relates to guitar sound and human hearing (fletcher munson equal loudness curves should probably be included!)

BUT!

If people like these, then I for one would be up for seeing, say, a curve for X pickup in a les paul/SG/dark guitar and a curve for a stereotypical bright guitar, superstrat type thing alongside the average numbers, and can and would create similar curves for the pickups I have now (not many left - I simplified my pickup setups to 2x c-bomb and 2 x aftermath bridge, so the aftermaths out for a start, because it doesnt officially exist yet, and the c-bomb is a 'custom' variation, not a main line).

I dont expect many people can provide them, though. (That said, if tim likes the idea, he has the means to do it; lots of guitars and lots of BKs; theres plenty of software around that will create a fourier power spectra for a sound sample).

I'll fire Tim a PM and reference him to your graphs, this page of the thread, or whatever. Actually screw it I'll just phone him now; I'll let you know what he says.

[Keven]

that's what i was thinking actually. but i'm afraid that all the tonal differences between woods and pickups might blur the line. some guitar might have a natural spike on the 1khz while another will have it much lower. once i post the graphs for the CS guitar you'll see what i meant, you have to look carefully to see the differences, and then the peaks really differ depending on where on the string you play too! the graphs were done over a 5-10 second recording and i just took a picture of the peaks. a better way to do it might be to check the graph for each string. and see how it averages out.

it's alot of work but this is a bit closer to the ''output'' measurement so many people ask for.

one thing i noticed. my CS is quite compressed, i could bang real hard and it would never go over -7.0 dB

on my black dog, a nice spank on the high e brought it up to -4.0 dB. so much for medium output :D

[MDV]

that's what i was thinking actually. but i'm afraid that all the tonal differences between woods and pickups might blur the line. some guitar might have a natural spike on the 1khz while another will have it much lower. once i post the graphs for the CS guitar you'll see what i meant, you have to look carefully to see the differences, and then the peaks really differ depending on where on the string you play too! the graphs were done over a 5-10 second recording and i just took a picture of the peaks. a better way to do it might be to check the graph for each string. and see how it averages out.

it's alot of work but this is a bit closer to the ''output'' measurement so many people ask for.

one thing i noticed. my CS is quite compressed, i could bang real hard and it would never go over -7.0 dB

on my black dog, a nice spank on the high e brought it up to -4.0 dB. so much for medium output :D

Yeah, but in what frequency range was that peak, how long did it last and is it really telling you whether and if so how its going to clip an amps pre?

The best way to get something representative for a given guitar would be to play chromatically right up the neck, every note, and then take an aggregate transform of the lot, rather than an instantaneous one. That way youre using all the strings and going through the guitars full range. Most of the data is still in overtones, however, which is extremely string and guitar dependent. A set of 10s in E is going to be really, really different to 13s in B.

It is, in the grand scheme, the 'right' thing to do, I think, if gone about in the same sort of way as the B M T thing the thread is for - lots of guitars, lots of data, lots of players, take an average. The reason I say that is its not subjective, its quantitative, but its still subject to a tremendous number of variables and it would be much harder to gather a large data set thats statistically valid and the different setups used all start to cancel each other out (its hard enough just getting bass/mid/treble off people; some pickups still only have one estimate in my data for this!).

While we're on about variables, theres a chance that you could eliminate one; pick attack and how the player does it (and how that affects the readings) by violining the notes.

[Pale Rider]

Interesting thread and a difficult task I guess. You have to consider a lot etc. But even if different gear can get in the way of making an accurate estimation of the tone of a pickup, people who have tried quite a few can have a good picture of what the bass, mids, treble of a pickup could be compared to other ones. It's because the more pickups you've tried, the more accurately you know where a pickup sound would fall in the scale. And this doesn't have to do with gear if you think about it, because every pickup you tried has gone through yours. Even your different amp settings are made with the original pickup sound in mind. Even adjusting your gear every time you get a new pickup is a way of estimating the pickup's tone automatically. I guess it's the brain's ability to equalize every other factor when focusing into something. ;) (I don't know if I can type what exactly I have in my mind right now....:P)

So I think this is quite a valid way of doing the job. You just need a lot of inputs...

Anyway...it's just my opinion. ;)

Another way would be to have the most neutral sounding guitar with a flat EQ wood and try every pickup using a spectrum analyzer in a PC by just struming all the strings open. A good way but tough to carry out I guess. :P

 To the point:

I have only tried the Holydiver from BKs:


B: 6 / M: 6 / T: 5

The pickup is clear, tight, smooth with a bald type of distortion (think Megadeth - Youthanasia and Countdown to Extinction). Warm sounding highs and the sound is thick and very balanced overall. Nice amount bass and mids and the lead tone is great. Very 80s-like. Reminds me of Kee Marcello from Europe sometimes.

Keep up the good work. ;)

[MDV]

Job done.

The data that you lot gave agreed very well with tims own estimates, and as far as I can tell from that agreement and the fact that all the data sets big enough to exhibit such behaviour did indeed fit a gausian means all indicators point to the project being a success.

More data would be needed to absolutely confirm this though, or so  the scientist in me says - the less thorough, more practical side of me says that we can be sure enough that its worked and theres enough to be getting on with.

The data gathered will be used in conjunction with Tims estimates (with an equal weighting of the data here and tims own values) to make the new sites EQ charts.

Give yourselves a pat on the back.

[brian_ward]

in weight relevied lp studio: black dog bass 6- mids 6- treble 6  :D (seriously though.) pretty grindy sounding.

in sg classic: bkp91 (aIV) bass 5- mids 6- treble 5. smooths out the typically (to my ears) sound of p90s while not removing it altogether.

[WhiteRam]

Miracle Man Bridge:

Bass = 7.5

Mids = 5.5

Treble = 7.5

Awesome Pickup. . .  it's light on the upper mids, which makes it soooo not fatiguing on the ears, stupendous design for my dream tone.  :D

WR

[MDV]

TO reiterate chaps

JOB DONE

No more estimates, thankyouplease; they arent getting used for anything as of 2 posts ago.

[Slava]

And when we'll see results  may I ask?

[cthulhu]

And when we'll see results  may I ask?

+1 to this may I add?

[MDV]

When the new site is up.

They will be averaged with Tims own, which were very close to the averages here, so what you see will pretty much be the results of this (some were exactly the same, most were only 1 different)