I notice many Gibson guitars use 57 Humbuckers, yet the guitars sound different.
Electric Guitars are the inspiration for cries of "Turn that damn thing down"-Gibson website
Elements/Factors that affect sound of a pickup
Title says it all. What makes one pickup sound different from another pickup? Would the same pickup in two different guitars sound the same?
I notice many Gibson guitars use 57 Humbuckers, yet the guitars sound different.
I notice many Gibson guitars use 57 Humbuckers, yet the guitars sound different.
# 1
On this thread I give some background on how pickups work. There are a lot of factors that determine what a pickup sound like - type of magnet material; size, orientation, and number of magnets; number and orientation of coils; size of wire in the coils; the spacing between the parts; the loading impedance presented by the controls (just to name a few).
Then you have to consider the guitar. In terms of vibration, it's a very complex system, with contributions from the materials used, and how they are put together (I really simplified that part!).
To (try to) answer your second question: maybe.
Some pickups, like EMG 81/85s, tend to 'swamp out' the tone contributed by the guitar, so they sound pretty much the same in any axe.
Ohters, like DiMarzio PAF Pro or Tone Zone, derive a lot of their sound from the guitar, so any differences are going to show up in the sound.
The biggest factor is the [u]player[/u]. Get six people to play the same piece of music with the same guitar and amp and you'll get... six different sounds!
Then you have to consider the guitar. In terms of vibration, it's a very complex system, with contributions from the materials used, and how they are put together (I really simplified that part!).
To (try to) answer your second question: maybe.
Some pickups, like EMG 81/85s, tend to 'swamp out' the tone contributed by the guitar, so they sound pretty much the same in any axe.
Ohters, like DiMarzio PAF Pro or Tone Zone, derive a lot of their sound from the guitar, so any differences are going to show up in the sound.
The biggest factor is the [u]player[/u]. Get six people to play the same piece of music with the same guitar and amp and you'll get... six different sounds!
# 2
The biggest factor is the player. Get six people to play the same piece of music with the same guitar and amp and you'll get... six different sounds!
[/B]
Thats a very interesting comment. I may try that one day and see what happens.
By virtue of their electrical properties, tubes generate a special waveform when they're saturated, which is why tube engineering has tremendous tonal advantages over solid state or DSP solutions, particularly for crunch and lead sounds. Tubes enter the saturation zone gradually or softly, which lends tube-driven tone its trademark yet totally unique character.
# 3
Wow thanks alot for that thread. You mentioned there are books on pickups, any good ones come to mind?
Electric Guitars are the inspiration for cries of "Turn that damn thing down"-Gibson website
# 4
I don't know of any that are devoted specifically to pickups. You have to pick your way through physics and electronics texts on magnetics, tranformer theory, and impedance matching.
I'm sorry :( - until Larry DiMarzio, Seymour Duncan, and a few others get around to publishing their memoires, that's all we have.
I'm sorry :( - until Larry DiMarzio, Seymour Duncan, and a few others get around to publishing their memoires, that's all we have.
# 5
Originally posted by Death55The biggest factor is the player. Get six people to play the same piece of music with the same guitar and amp and you'll get... six different sounds!
Thats a very interesting comment. I may try that one day and see what happens. [/B]The first thing that happens when anybody tries out another guy's rig, is they start changing the control settings. The guitar, the amp, the effects - everything gets tweaked until it sounds 'right'.
Then when you add in the differences in pick angle, stiffness, and position along the string, and the fretting differences in bending, muting, hammer-on, and pull-off, plus timing, phrasing, and choice of position on the neck, and it becomes obvious why people tend to sound like themselves regardless of whose rig they're playing.
# 6
