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 €

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.

@@AmericanNationalist852 expensive guitars are a literal waste of money unless your a professional yourself

@@gaboxd4407 that's just not true. That's a cope for people who can't afford better gear.

@@AmericanNationalist852 there are far more important things to spend money when playing music. A proper setup is far more important than buying an overpriced piece of wood that probably costed less than 30$ to be made. Do you even play with other people? Nowadays most people cant even pursue a career in music...

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.

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 kzfaq.info/get/bejne/g92Jjcxkz9i6c2Q.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.

*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. 😂

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 .

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.

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

@@jacobfurst4266 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.

I love the solderless wiring system from EMG

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 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!

Does not make a difference. There’s videos already covering it.

I agree !

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

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.

As someone who has put custom pickups into guitars multiple times (and has been very much an enthusiast for it), I don't really recommend it for metal unless you have something very specific you're going for. The differences aren't very discernible when it comes to ultra-high-gain stuff, and you can get pretty much any pickup to sound like anything anyway if you plan on using the DAW with modern amp modeling software. For lower gain stuff (or pretty much anything that doesn't have an overdrive or distortion pedal in front of it), the differences are more discernible, but you kinda have to know what you're going for. Just upgrading isn't necessarily going to get you something better, the value of Duncan/Dimarzio is being able to pick exactly what kind of sound you want.

I thought the same thing, so I made a video using Glenn's DI signals into different profiles/models in ToneX (like a kemper). kzfaq.info/get/bejne/m5-Zn9OoktKummQ.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!

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.

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

Fr

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

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.

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

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.

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!!!!

Wrong…watch more videos.

That’s not even remotely close to being true. Source: numerous tests conducted right here. Please watch a few & save your money!

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

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 👍

no thanks stop lying i see you created your account 2 minutes ago

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.

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.

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 KZfaqr 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 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)

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.

Tell me you have Fishmans installed in your guitars without telling me you have Fishmans installed in your guitars 🐟 🎸

KZfaq 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.

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.

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 kzfaq.info/get/bejne/i8x8iJdpm9ysqoU.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

That will be a horrible day for music.

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.

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.

What do you expect from a Tonepod Mod? That's just a kind of EQ, a low pass. That's exactly what Glen talks about all the time. The tonepod is the most unnecessary part of a metal guitar. he normally flies out first. Tonewood is the next buzz word. Wrong channel dude. cheers

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 KZfaq 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.