Pinch harmonics

[Mr. Air]

What have the biggest influence on pulling off pinch harmonics (apart from technique)? Is it the build of the guitar or the pups? It seems logic to me that a hot pickup should pull off pinch harmonics easier than a vintage voiced pup, but I might be totally wrong. I find it easier to get good pinch harmonics from my MQ loaded Reverend Manta Ray than i do from my Nailbombed LP clone, which I find kinda strange. So please enlighten me  :D

[bucketshred]

I think it's a lot of different factors tbh.

I'm pants at doing the big squealy Zakk Wylde ones on the lower strings (but I know some players who just seem to get them perfectly)

[darkbluemurder]

I find it easier to get good pinch harmonics from my MQ loaded Reverend Manta Ray than i do from my Nailbombed LP clone, which I find kinda strange. So please enlighten me  :D

It's probably the guitars then, not so much the pickups. The guitar I have the A-Bomb in does pinch harmonics well enough.

Cheers Stephan

[dingleberry]

From what I can tell, scale length of the guitars seems to be a big factor.   Where lengthwise you 'pinch' the string obviously effects which note gets produced.  Those notes are in slightly different places relative to the bridge on different scale lengths.  Find the scale length that works most naturally for you and go from there.  Also a boost pedal goes a long way

[JJretroTONEGOD]

hotter pickups help with pinch harmonics, ceramics sound good and seem to bring them out even more, also active p/ups like emgs

[TheyCallMeVolume]

I would think technique would have something to do with it too. Everyone seems to have a different way of doing it, some work better than others. If Billy G can do those pinches with a Les Paul, PAF's, and a Marshall, you don't necessarily need high output pickups and high gain amps and long-scale guitars.

When I saw ZZ, I noticed Billy had a really weird (at least to me) way of doing the pinches where he put his pick away and used either thumb and finger or nail and a finger. Sounded awesome!

[Telerocker]

I can get easily pinched harmonics from the Mules in my Saint Blues. I guess technique is the most important thing.

[BigB]

I have different results with different guitars on the same amp, with same guitar on different amps, with different pups on the same guitar, with same pup on different guitars... and let's not forget the strings, pedals and wutnot. IOW, everything in the chain impacts the result xD

[FELINEGUITARS]

It's all down to technique and how you hold the pick etc
In the mid to late 80s I used to practise playing scales with every note being a pinched harmonic and learning the proportional distances relative to the fretted note to get the right octave/interval

Some pickups help by really emphasising the frequencies that make the pinched harmonic squeal.
+1 for ceramic pickups on that score.
Some guitars maybe make it easier but it should be possible on ALL guitars.
Works best on bridge pickups as the node may be in a bad place for the neck pickup to hear it.

I recall Joe Satriani or Reb Beech doing a series of articles on it in Guitar world magazine in the late 80s/early 90s which were very informative.

EDIT: If you are picking directly over the bridge pickup you wont get a good pinch harmonic as you are creating a node above that pickup and a node is a quiet spot  so the pickup wont hear anything.
Try holding down a single note and go up and down the string with your picking hand trying to se where you can get harmonics and note the frequency relationship to the held note.
You will open up a whole world of pinched options.

[tekbow]

I lucked into the technique years back, just seemed to be able to do it, on anything i put my hands on (at least it's one thing on the guitar i can do well), so thats the baseline. Starting from there i can say that i get varying degrees of potency depending on the guitar. I would have said pickups, but i suspect the guitar itself has more to do with it. for example, you have a hard time not doing pinches on my axis. but they're definitely not as lively on my Mcarty Trem. The axis has dimarzio's and the Mcarty has a nailbomb, i have a hard time believing i wouldn't get the same squealy results from the axis if the Nailbomb was in there.

[BigB]

I would have said pickups, but i suspect the guitar itself has more to do with it.

Both, really.  I often play unplugged and definitly agree that the guitar itself makes an obvious difference BUT some pups really help. Unplugged it's easier on my Vox Custom 24 (maple going-thru neck, maple sides, quite a lot of harmonic content) than on my - rather dark - SG (all mahogany, hence a more pronounced fundamental and less prominent harmonic content), but when plugged (same amp, same settings), it's a bit easier on the SG (ABomb bridge, quite a lot of upper-mids / highs) than on the Vox (Crawler bridge, warmer and with way more rounded highs).

In the end it mostly have to do with harmonic contents - the more you have, the easier it gets. No surprise the Steve Steven signature BKP is so bright ;)

[Toe-Knee]

I find its more technique & practice than anything, I can easily pull them off on any guitar even acoustics.

[dave_mc]

gain/compression/mids i'd say. a boost pedal on a valve amp helps too at lower volumes. edit: also bridge pickup, guitar tone and volume controls up full.

i think the whole "it's only technique" thing is kinda misleading- obviously if you can't do them competently it doesn't matter what gear you're using, but once you can get them, getting them to really squeal is massively affected by what gear you're using.

[Telerocker]

It certainly does help when all the frequencies can blossom. I mean that you need to dial in a reasonable amount of uppermids, especially with darker voiced pickups like the Crawler, to get the harmonics pinched. It's a bit easier with the VHII in my other strat.

[GuitarIv]

My custom Strat (Poplar Body, Maple Neck and Fretboard) loaded with a Holydiver Bridge just spits out pinch harmonics like crazy. Now the guitar itself is pretty bright and even unplugged you can squeal with ease. Then again the Jackson Dinky DK2M my bassist owns (Alder Body, Maple Neck and Fretboard) has more the kind of darker pinch harmonics, but it's loaded with a Seymour Duncan Jeff Beck (which imho is the best pickup SD has ever made) which itself is a pretty bright pickup.

Another interesting thing is the Blackhawk comparison (Alnico V vs. Ceramic) Nolly has uploaded on his Soundcloud:

http://soundcloud.com/nolly/sets/black-hawk-7-alnico-vs-ceramic/

Notice that here the Alnico Harmonic sounds better than the ceramic one (at least to my ears). So there are for sure a lot of things that contribute to good pinch harmonics. Alexi from COB btw was always an ace for fast picked pinches to me.