Theirs a hack to making your new pickups sound better ...leave the price tag on ..works every time

Your videos over the years have literally saved me thousands. With patience, I managed to get the best tone I've ever gotten simply by using 2 mics and taking the time to place them strategically.

All the drastic changes made by speaker, microphone, and placement aside, I definitely had a preference for the tone of the Crossfire Alnico pickups.

I've been following you for a couple of years now and this is by far my favourite video you've done. Guitarists really need to see this. I can't believe how much effort goes into endless discussions about this pickup vs that pickup being essential for the ultimate chugging sound. Last year I bought an aftermarket pickup for the very first time and put it into my Jackson guitar, I was surprised by how little difference it actually made to the tone. People must be really kidding themselves once they've spent all that money

Got a challenge for you: Have the pickup and tone wood discussion live with Adam (Nolly) Getgood, Paul Reed Smith and Tim Mills (Bare Knuckle Pickups). These three guys have built significant careers on chasing the things that you're attempting to debunk. I'm interested to hear how they respond to your points.

The main message I took away is that unless your pickups are busted, there are a few other things you should be checking that would have a bigger effect on your tone

Changing pickups doesn't get that massive shift, no, but it does make a difference for sure. Comes down to what sounds and feels good for the player. I don't want my guitar to fight me, I just want it to hit the amp the way I want, and pushes certain frequencies the way I want. Fuzz can also be really picky about the kind of pickups. My last large pickup shootout I made sure to let everyone know the differences won't be massive, that it comes much more down to the amp, cab, speakers and mics. I also showed clean, crunch and high gain to show how it pushes the amps. Never would I ever say pickups are going to be a massive make or break for tones.

As someone who plays clean 90% of the time, and rarely plays with heavy distortion this is really helpful. I am shopping for a guitar to keep in drop C and it makes it much easier to not have to worry about pickups so much.

The pickups do sound different but it's very subtle compared to the other differences in speaker and mic placement. I think the pickups accentuate one specific detail in one's playing style. Definitely the speaker, cab, and mic/mic placement are by far the biggest effect on tone. Great vid!

in my opinion the differences are so minimal the only reason i could see for swapping pickups is if a pickup doesn’t work or is a cheap microphonic pickup. this video actually definitely helped me actualize how to achieve certain tones without having the prospect of new gear that wont change anything shoved down my throat. definitely going to start investing in better speakers and microphones now! thx glen, this video was super helpful as usual

I found your channel by doing my general music and recording tricks research. I am not your standard metal enthousiast (I love some hard rock, nightwish, viking metal here and there) but your content is so valuable. Thank you for being so honest and taking the time to make these videos!

Absolutely loved this video. Different approach to testing. You got me each time with the changing cabs and mics 😂 Well done. ❤ Thank you 🙏

I've said it before, Metal stands out as a genre where dynamics are pretty much eliminated. Which is where you hear the most differences from any instrument, of any kind. Turn up the gain and crank a keytar or accordion and you'll get there too.

I think it would be cool to see you do a comparison of High to Low output pickups with similar characteristics, then get 2 pickups that are around the same output but are supposed to have very different characteristics and see which has the biggest difference, all from the same manufacturer. Dimarzio has ratings for EQ and Output for all their pickups.

Wow Glenn, thanks for getting to the point so quickly - I watched up until 6:28 and you really demonstrated how much different pickups change your tone! Brb, I'm off to swap out all my pickups, and then I can catch the rest of the vid.

Great video! I have to say that changing pickups on one of my guitar really made a huge difference, but of course, I don't do a ton of power chords with distortion in my playing, so that difference would maybe not come across here.

There's definitely a much more noticeable tonal difference in moving around mics/swapping cabs than having different pick-ups!

That is a brilliant idea...the hot swap out pickups. I first saw this brilliant idea over 5 years ago when I stumbled across Relish guitars made in Sweden. Absolute genius. I love your videos. Straight to the point. You make it entertaining Glenn. If it wasn't for you and your channel I would not have learnt what I now know about recording metal. I am only an amateur but all the knowledge you share is gold. Thanks dude and all the best for the new year. Have a great 2023 \m/...

Gleeennnnnn! I really want to hear this test with clean sounds. Not arguing anything at all; just appreciate what you’re doing and wondering how much it applies to different situations. Thanks for the great work and happy fucking New Year!

I’ve found that I can affect my tone much more with a relatively cheap EQ pedal. My cheap EQ pedal also has an output level adjustment with a WAY wider range than anything I’ve ever experienced swapping out humbuckers.

I would love to see you do a experiment with passive vs active pickups see if we could tell a difference!

Video with tons of useful info and a lot of humour. It's like a magic position to put a smile on your face. Love it!

So, this does confirm a long time suspicion of mine that there isn't much difference in voicing within a range from XYZ brand...just different output and gain characteristics. Would definitely be interested in seeing a shootout between a similar flagship passive pickup from different manufacturers (ie: Duncan TB1 vs EMG H3 vs DiMarzio PAF Pro). Thanks for everything you do for us, Glen. And have a happy New Year!

I’ve always noticed small not noticeably different tones with pickup swaps. Especially in the mid gain and cleaner tones. Sometimes it’s worth it, sometimes it’s not. Biggest difference I found was when I swapped the burstbuckers out of my Les Paul…sounded very trebly and then I put a 59/custom hybrid and it had way more balls and a thicker and more aggressive sound.

So I'm listening to this on my Adam Audio T7V and I notice a difference between 2 pick ups or so but it's not enough to make a sizable difference. Cabs, mics and mic placement make a huge difference for sure. great work.

I would actually love to see this detail with a few more pickups (Seymours ofc), and for cleanish tones too. I get that "this is a metal channel", but there are plenty of clean/pseudo clean sections interspersed through the world of metal songs. In general though, as long as your pickup isn't doing something weird you can always EQ it

This was great... definitely one of the best videos I've seen thus far form this channel! A real eye opener! I guess it's hard sometimes to realize that not all aspects of the guitar rig have the same degree of importance in terms of palpable effect! Especially when it comes to tracking.

probably would be a good idea to rank all the pieces in a signal chain based on how much they do or don't affect the tone, from "tonewood", strings, picks, pickups, cable, amp/tubes, speaker, cab, mic and whatever else I missed alongside what kinds of changes can be expected and a demonstration for each for us to see/hear how the changes play out.

Hey Glenn, just thought I'd mention that there are noticeable differences in output and clarity when pickups are wired differently (i.e. serial, parallel). For an experiment, I rewired a humbucker (which are normally in series) to parallel, which made the sound a lot twangier and the output became a lot lower, somewhat akin to a single coil. But regardless, finding a good set of speakers is still the most important key to your overall sound.

This video is pure gold ! I mistaken it with another video, that's also pure gold. This content is one of a kind.

This video was brilliant! By the 2nd fast one I was listening to critically to guess what had changed! I knew for damn sure that the tone short wasn't the pickup! FU and cheers from BC

Having blades instead of pole pieces on a pickup does make a difference though, especially when you're doing bends. Makes the magnetic field more even so large bends get picked up better, especially on the neck pickup.

Thank you for making this test. I'm actually very surprised as to how little it changed the sound. Rock on!

I love everyone in the comments huffing on glue and screaming "NO MY PICKUPS HAVE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE, I PAID 200$ FOR A DIMEBUCKER IT HAS TO MAKE ME A BETTER PLAYER"

Great comparison, thanks. I did want to let you know that something significant did change. When I turned up the volume on my headset the sound noticeably got louder!

Well done. Fantastic, valuable info! Very appreciative.

Thats very interesting. Im a newbie and this blew me away! I really thought there was a big difference until your big reveal. Thank you for this. This is a perfect example of why experience matters knowing how things work and why a great sound guy is essential.

Loved this video, especially when you basically showed all the ways big name manufacturers might change the tone of the pickups in their own shootouts. I think it's been mentioned but I'd be interested to see the difference in active pickups vs. passive. Will active pickups give you more clarity or is the only benefit the added maintenance of swapping a 9 volt every 6 months. We now see that passive pickups won't make a significant difference in tone, but will active?

I noticed a massive difference in chord clarity and tightness/note definition between my old set of Air Norton/Tone Zone vs. a Bareknuckle Juggernaut set. It was definitely worth the investment for me, but you're right, sometimes the differences between them are minuscule and proper EQing can help out!

💯🙌🏼 great video !! I like the energy 🔥

Great vid Glenn! Pickup height and/or height difference at the treble/bass side also makes a tonal difference. I have 2 les pauls one with higher output ceramics and one with lower output paf like alnicos. I've messed around just a little bit with the pickup heights (mostly in order to avoid unwanted gain jumps when swapping guitars in a band situation) and they basically sound the same :) another funny thing - before height adjusting the one with tge ceramics seemed to have much more bottom end. "yeah the wood ages, resonates better" - some would say this but it turned out that the pu's were way to close to the bass side of the strings - as soon as you set it back to factory specs no real difference again :)

You pretty much brought up the same difference that I heard. When you mentioned that one pickup had some more twang. Transient response is the biggest thing I noticed there, along with of course how hard it was pushing the amp.

Your videos are great. Love how you mess with us 👍👍 great comparison in this vid

For me consistency and reliability are the most important for me. I have guitars with pickups that sound beautiful clean or even with light gain, but sound weak and not great with high gain and vice-versa. It's usually why I stink with EMGs. They sound consistent and sound good both clean and dirty. While I can hear slight differences in most pickups, it's not the end of the world if an 85 in the bridge sounds different then an 81 in the bridge to me if they sound good. Although one thing that I always wanted to know is if pickup covers change the tone ever so slightly. Great vid Glenn!

Cool video. Would be interesting if you made a video on trying to get an EMG 81 to sound like a single coil pickup with just EQ and maybe some other processing if its even possible. Would really like to use the same type of pickup for everything to keep things simple, not to mention I have that pickup in a few different guitars. Feeling that might be great for clean parts

I think swapping pickups made more sense back in the 70s and early 80s when peak high gain was a Marshall JMP and overdrive selection was more limited. Guitarists didn't have as much options available, and the focus was on getting the hottest pickups because that cost benefit analysis made a little more sense then to squeeze every bit of gain out of a system you could. We're blessed with amplifiers now that often have way more gain than needed, so I think we tend to forget that that component isn't as necessary now, and pickup manufacturers don't want to lose that market they've built up over the years.

Hi Glenn , greetings from the UK . Thanks for the pickup demo the biggest surprise really was the difference between speakers / mics and mic placement . Good job carry on 👍

Perfect timing since I was digging around for a new set of pick-ups. Thanks for helping, and by the sun, fuck you, and thank you. Happy new year

I finally got to hear how little the pickups don't really matter. I think the only thing that really matters is clarity, and whether they feedback or bit.

I can hear significant differences between the ceramic and the PAF, the Duchess just sounds like a hot single coil, no doubt. The ceramic has a lot more high end, scooped mid range. PAF's have a huge bottom end, and are more pushed in the lower mids. Blindfold me, and smack me in the head with a bat, and I promise I could still pick these out in a muffled room. Granted, changing speaker, or mic if you're recording is going to make a bigger difference, but I'm not going to act like pickup choice isn't a major component in the final tone. All I know, is that all of this shit still matters more than tonewood.

Happy new year Glen!!! Love you man.

i ve changed pickups in many guitars and mostly for hotter ones. So i always got the "loud is more good" response. But in the last few years i noticed that the pickup changes did not do much, sometimes even preferring the cheap ones, because of the clearer picture and more dynamic nature in the less hot ones. Thanx for making your point in a fun way :D

A characteristic for each were apparent to me, even with all the switcherew going on. I wrote pickups down 1-4 and wrote down what I was hearing before you explained what was going on. And I did so the other two times. I ended up still having the same impressions. Whisperbucker to me is darker with sweetened overtones, duchess was tinnier than the other three, crossfire is less tinny than the duchess and a little more mid-forward, the last one is my favorite sounding and based on this video is now in my cue of a potential next pickup I might purchase... the crossfire alnico, has the overtone sweetness of the whisperbucker but not as dark. Don't bite my head off. I did totally get the gist of the message of the video, and I do agree in-part that speaker and mic placement have the larger game changing differences. There should be messaging to folks who DO have the money, its not the worst thing to explore.

I’d love to see a video on bass pickups, even something budget friendly like the Ibanez soundgear series has a three band eq and a boost and it would be really interesting to see a breakdown of how it actually works

Thanks for doing this video, very informative.

Excellent work. Thank you!

A few years a go I swapped the pickups in my 2013 Epi LP. I replaced the stock pickups for the Seymour Duncan Hot Rodded Humbucker Set. I didn't get a massive tone shift, they are a bit brighter than the stock pickups though. What I did get was more clarity from each note.

The type of magnet also usually dictate the number of wire turns, which I believe has more effect to the frequency response than the magnets. Off the shelf pickups rarely stray away from that. Therefore, the only way to have a significant change in tone is to have a pickup custom made. But then, there is very limited (physical) space to play around with the number of windings. So unless you actually change the physical size or shape of the pickup, a custom wound pickup would still be not too different from off the shelf pickups.

Reminds me of a quote from Jimi Hendrix's tech. He basically said he tried a ton of other pickups and found that the only difference was more windings gave more output with more bass, and less windings gave lower output with less bass. He spent a bunch of time fiddling with finding the perfect balanced winding resistance and it was exactly what comes stock on a Fender... After that he stopped fiddling. And just to top it off, if you really want control over your guitar's voicing, bass levels and output: BUY AN EQ PEDAL! You can pick them up for like $30 bucks. And even the cheapest one will do more for your tone than a pickup swap.

Once again an honest and true demonstration on guitar tone, Bravo Glen! Speaking of tone: (with the Iommi guitar sound episode in mind) how about an episode on how the Geddy Lee/ Chris Squire Rickenbacker bass sound is created, Speak of iconic sound which gives a guy an instant... well... you know... What speakers/amps/effects do (did) they use? Would very much look forward to another enlightening video! And yes... i'm a bassplayer.. as well as a guitar player. Cheers!

Pups sure do have their own EQ such as resonant peaks (the main difference between humbuckers and single coils ) etc, but it's so minimal and so early in the signal chain, going through so much shaping that it's absolutely negligible as shown. Awesome work Glenn!

Pickups definitely make a difference, but they're to refine the last 5% or so of your tone. Many are similar in spec too, but I hear a huge difference between a vintage PAF and an EMG. If you're building your tone from scratch, worry about the more important stuff first

Hey. I’m not a high gain player but I learn a TON from your insights. Thanks man, keep up the awesome work.

Hello Glen! This definately made my day. Keep on busting ’em myths!!

First of all - good informative video, with a great learning, but I still want to chime in on a slightly different conclusion based on personal experience. I do hear a difference, especially between the Duchess and the other pickups, as you pointed out. Also, yes, the differences are small, but my personal experience boils down to how responsive my playing is reflected through whatever signal chain I have. And I learnt, that a lot of this has to do with high output/having the pickup close to the strings (for me, normally around 3mm on a Seymour Duncan SH-5). And high output in turn comes with a lot of windings, with in turn requires thinner wire to get those windings down to generate the hot output needed for this "attack". And that, total fine explainable through normal electro-physical properties, does in fact leads to a dampened higher frequencies (wire-specific resistivity and capacitive elements in transducers). And this can be actually counteracted by a lot of different things, such as unbalanced number of windings on the different coils of a humbucker, right choice of the magnet etc. So pickup winding and development in fact is an craft in itself, which has it's justification. But yes, this is a "cherry on the top" thing to look at, if you are looking for perfect optimization of your tone, and yes, changing speakers makes a greater difference in your overall signal chain.

I really hope you plan on showing some frequency mapping from each one of those pickups. Or whatever you’d like to call it

Grrrrrreat video! I love how you fooled us over and over again, my smile was getting wider and wider, I knew right from the beginning what was going on. :D I learned this by pure coincidence when I was playing guitar for pfff...a year? Fun story goes like this: I walked into the practice room and saw my guitar teacher brought a fancy guitar over to the music school (I think it was some Framus). I asked if I could try it out and he allowed me to. I plugged it in (50w 1x12 Marshall JVM combo, I remember that...good stuff), dialed in some high gain tone (because more gain is more cool for a 15 year old, ya know..) , started playing some very uninspired riffs and discovered the guitar had an extra little switch. Played around with that and after a very short while asked what the switch was doing, because the difference was pretty underwhelming. A little bit of a shift in the high end but 95 precent of the tone stayed the same. My teacher kindly replied "This is a coil split and it's a very nice thing on cleans or light drive, but in the realms of high gain, pickups matter much less than you think, unless they're not totally muddy or noisy." Man, this advice has probably saved me a lot of money over the last two decades.

Always a great and entertaining comparison. When I started playing guitar I had some high school shop electronic experience at the time (early 2000's). So in turn I would always buy cheaper midrange guitars at the time and hotrod the electronics. Although well constructed with good woods they would always have cheap substandard electronics in many ways. In my experiences changing electronics and pickups was never really meant to change the sound as a whole. Moreso to enhance the sound you're trying to go for. Along with make it work better with the amp for mixing purposes. To this day I still like to hotrod cheaper good guitars. More recent I put a set of Seymour Duncans JB and Jazz in a Jackson Dinky JS32 Dinky DKA-M. The purpose of it was to be overdriven through a Marshall tube amp in D standard. The stock pickups were decent but had no clarity with the ceramic pickups it had. So I wired in the new duncans and it was instantly clearer and more punchy. More recent also a Jackson Warrior JS32. Meant to be a Chuck Schuldiner style D standard guitar. The original pickups worked nicely but lacked the output in the bridge I was looking for. Using a similar setup with the overdriven Marshall I installed a DiMarzio X2N and had great results. In the end yes it won't change the sound of your guitar. Mainly just the dynamics and responsiveness along with clarity of everything.

For anyone interested in pickup comparison videos, this is a great source: m.youtube.com/@mikestamper Clean chanel is where the differences are obvious. But yeah... with cranked distortion, not so much.

Although the differences in the pickups are small and different mic techniques could probably achieve the same results, I did feel that the alnico pickups have more clarity to the ceramic ones, which in my opinion does change the tone.

Very insightful pup shootout... I have to agree with you that there is not massively significant difference in tone shift between those pickups. Yes, there was some difference but the overall "tone" was pretty much in the same ballpark going from one pup to another. The most noticeable tone shifts did indeed come from speaker, cabinet, mic and mic placement changes. Thanks for the info and taking the time to do this comparison video :)

I've been watching you forever now and I'm still not in any metal projects whatsoever I'm more into punk than metal but your work still helps greatly. I now have more justification to keep my epiphone the way it is

I have a guitar with custom pickups from Peg City Pickups. One thing that's different from any other guitar I own Is the higher strings are hotter than the lower ones. This helps lead parts cut through when playing a combination of rhythm and lead. It's a great sounding guitar.

Of course you won't hear differences between a PAF copy and another PAF copy, or a Super Distortion and something similar. But you can definitely hear a difference between some completely different types of pickups, like a Seymour Duncan Invader (really high output, very low resonant peak) and a Fishman Fluence Modern Ceramic (really high output and "pre-shaped" tone because of an active preamp). The Fishman has significantly less low end. Some pickups can also have a big impact on the response to your playing, compare an EMG 81 to a Lundgren Black heaven and you'll notice that the EMG will always kinda have the same output level while the Lundgren will get much much quieter if you play with less force.

As you called it, the obligatory "The higher your gain is, the less the guitar itself matters, and the more the amp, speakers and mic do" is obligatory. Which yes, was your point. I know high gain is your thing, but I would love to see these played at different levels of gain, to run the gamut from clean to edge of break up and into metal. It would be interesting to see at what volume level they break up, and if their edge of break up or clean tones are notably different. Once again, high gain is your bailiwick, but it's just one part of that sound landscape. It would be interesting to see if the "hotness" of the pickup just means that they break up at different levels of gain, rather than actually signifies a change in tone. Finally PRS has been talking about how their TCI pickups notably changes the EQ curve of the pickup. It would be interesting to see that pickup, along with a few other popular 3rd party pickups tossed in there to see if pickups by different companies might sound different.

Great video, thanks for doing all these tests (like the speaker subject, actually looking to swap the V30 - probably the old one - with a Hesu Demon in my 1*12 mesa cab 😈). Pickups certainly do not influence the tone massively, just in a subtle manner. Still can hear the differences between the duncan solars I had in my Solar and the Bareknuckles I put in afterwards (both passives). No real clue to what the differences really were but ya the difference was audible but not massive like a speaker change or a mic placement.

I never changed a pickup for a “massive tone difference”. They DO make a slight difference. It’s more for fine tuning your tone instead of using it as a building block. I knew Glenn was up to his normal fuckery in the first 3 tests. 😂. Because I never heard that kind of tone shift from a pickup change. That’s up to my amp (no…not the power tubes) and even more, the speaker. But what it does do for me (I can only speak from my own experience and no one else’s) is the feel of the guitar through the amp. And yes…..feel is a thing.

Thanks for making these videos and showing the truth of the matter. I really appreciate your work educating your audience. You are genuine and don’t hold back. Major kudos to you!! I am curious though, can pickups affect the high gain tone of melody or solos? You have shown that via direct input clean tones are effected. But since your main work is for high gain, you play examples using riffs, mostly multi string parallel 5th power chords, but not single note melodies (or harmonies). Have you done and a test of different pickups effecting (or not effecting) melody, solo or harmony tone?

Great and amusing video. 😊I hear what you say. I've swapped out various DiMarzio Area and Rails pickups. Ironically I'm back with first bridge pickup an Area 61, because with overdrive, all the other pickups sounded slightly different, but not by much.

I have gotten into Wilkinson pickups recently, they sound great and they're dirt cheap!

Tone isn't the only reason to change pickups, though (mind you, having a neck humbucker that's slightly single-coil-y even under gain, like the SD '59, is actually my preference). Pickup output levels _do_ matter - especially in a live context, where you may find that pickup with higher output gets you to the level of distortion on a maxed rhythm channel and you don't want yet another pedal to tap-dance on. That's often the case with Soldano-style amps, for example. If you really want an eye-opener, try Lace Sensor Duallies like the Red/Blue. With both coils on, it's a humbucker. With just Red, it's a different-sounding humbucker (really). With just Blue, you'd swear you were playing a high-output Strat.

First, greatly appreciate doing these videos as it's always great to hear multiple points of view, along with the experimentation to go with it. Regarding the PU differences, obviously I think when we're discussing "what kind of a difference does it make?" it's a highly subjective thing. For some, those changes across PUs heard in this experiment are important, for others it's not. So of course it's going to be up to the individual as to how much that difference is worth. Also as a guitarist myself, the PUs can provide other differences outside of the pure tone that are equally important (for example, note clarity at higher gain settings in terms of playing / arpeggiating a chord, increased / lessened pick attack, sustain, etc...). For this example, I would also posit one thing that flaws the experiment a bit. It's only using a limited set of PUs from 1 manufacturer, hence you're only getting a very limited array of sound examples. If you chat with artists that have gone the route of making a signature pickup, there's a LOT of elements that go into making a pickup that all affect it's output (and by output I mean everything from tone to clarity to sustain etc...). I mean there are videos done by Keith Merrow and Ola Englund years ago where they took the exact same guitar and same strings and swapped like... 10 different Seymour Duncan PU models through it and you can definitely hear differences (and again, that's subjective as to whether people find those differences important). Of course, these videos suffer the same issue in that it's all from the same manufacturer (they were not meant to be experiments but rather marketing material), but having the larger number shows more of the breadth of possible changes. Anyways, always appreciate the time and effort you put into these kinds of test (whether I personally agree with the methods or not) as it's nice to get other opinions and listen to experiments. Someone else mentioned it below already, but it might be worth doing an interview with artists like Nolly or Ola or Rabea that have gone through the process of making a signature PU to see what they were looking for, and the differences they heard / felt along the way, and why they found them to be significant or not (I think this kind of perspective would be great to hear). Keep on keepin' on!!

You were on 70K tons on 2020, Brother. Was cool seeing you aboard and glad you had a memorable time 🤘🧐🤘

I've noticed a bigger difference between active and passive, but with the active you influence the signal with some amplification. Great video as always. I have to listen to random people play guitar all day, people's fingers sound more different than anything else.

I only mess with passive pickups, so I can only speak to that, but they can absolutely sound different from each other. Does it make you play better? No. Does it completely transform your guitar? No. But it still remains a fact. Just like WHERE the pickup placement is on a guitar makes a difference.

Awesome video. I changed one set of pickups but it was because of clarity (original crappy Jackson’s) and I wanted hotter pickups for D standard tuning. I have a set of pickups with “voicing” but I truly only can tell the difference between the humbucker and single coil voices, especially when high gain.

WITHOUT QUESTION, whether I listened to the pure pickup swap thru my home theater system OR MY PHONE, CLEARLY the alnico stood out from the ceramic with more clarity and depth, the ceramic more mid range, less natural tone separation and resonance, more "metallic" sound. My opinion. I've been playing lead guitar since 1969, and during practice and gigs, after set up and sound checks, I ALWAYS used ear protection! I will soon be 70 years young, and my hearing tests very good. Seriously, it is a good idea to get a thorough hearing test if you are consistently exposed to loud sound for extended periods of time. Good video, funny bait and switch schtick!

From 30 years experience in producing and mixing metal music. I can confirm that everything on this channel is true. When it comes down to metal, it does not not matter: guitar woods, pickups, tubes, amplifier etc. It's just variants of noise and most bands sucks anyways... With other music genres, it's a different story, of course... 😄

So my comment got deleted or something, so I'll just drop this video of Keith Merrow testing a ton of pickups here, instead of only four that Glenn tested: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gciCn8aVs669dIE.html And also, EQ before distortion is NOT the same as EQ after distortion, so pickups do make a difference in how the amp reacts to your playing.

Ingenious video!👏🤘🔥

Jim Lill also did a lot of research in this area...the bench guitar blew my mind. Cheers from Canada

I would love to see active/passive comparison. For some reason I am always disappointed with actives when i try them and eventually change them to passives.

From all the pickup comparisons I’ve watched I’ve noticed differences. But unless you’re directly comparing them they are subtle. Usually it’s more highs or more pronounced mids. The pickups can affect your tone when using a clean or slightly dirty amp but tend to be much less once you get into gain territory. Some pickups sound more dull than others but Glen is right. It’s one of the least effective changes in the chain.

I think just for me is getting clarity out of the strings for me, and getting the response I want out of the pick up.

Agreed completely!!! Only difference I’ve ever notice with high gain was active vs passive. Only swap I’ve done and noticed a difference was putting a EMG 85 in the bridge instead of the 81. Lot darker and muddy

I have an honest question. How come all humbucker guitars don't sound the same? If tonewood doesn't matter, if pickups don't matter, then why in the world does a Strat with a Humbucker sound different than a Les Paul with a humbucker. Scale length? Ok, ok, maybe. Then why does an SG sound different than a Les Paul? Pickup placement? Maybe, I've never measured them, so maybe the pickup is in a different spot. Then why don't all Les Pauls sound pretty much the same? I'm not disagreeing with your conclusion that speakers are the best investment for sound change, but I've played several Les Pauls and some of them sound pretty different through the same amp.

There was definitely a tone difference between the pickups. What next Glen says different microphones wont affect tone?

That 1977 black back was sick, loved the sound, wish I had one

I remember the first time I changed pickups was in a Frankenstein P Bass, and I got EMG's, not because I thought I'd get a drastic tonal improvement but because the stock pickups were noisy and EMG's are solder-less. I did notice improved evenness from string to string, and increased volume, but it's still a P Bass.

That was freaking awesome and I can hear the meltdowns! After seeing how you can change your tone, do you have any recommendations for mic and speaker combos? I'm a drummer that dabbles in guitar, so please excuse my ignorance. Keep on making these outstanding videos!