The effect of pickups on tone..

[Bob Carlucci]

I am a firm believer that tone is in the hands.. To a point.
I feel that the pickup contributes greatly to the tone, timbre and response of a pedal steel, including sustain.. However, there are great masters of pedal steel that disagree, and feel the pickup isn't able to do anything to really alter the sound or response, and is really of less consequence than other factors...
However, if thats true, why do so many of us fall in love with steels or 6 strings we were lukewarm about, after we did a pickup change.
Ever put Fralins in a strat or tele?.. Its an epiphany.
Put a Truetone single coil in a steel that had a muddy, middy humbucker?. To my ringing ears the steel becomes a living entity.. To me its so much more than just an electromagnetic signal.
In any case, I would enjoy continuing the debate that started on another thread I had, where I posted some sound clips.
Is the sound really just in the body and mechanism with the pickup unable to change any of the basic tonal characteristics?... Or is the pickup a seminal part of the sound feel, and response?

All I have to do is think of Gibson guitars I have owned in the past.. So many dozen it boggles the mind. In the 60's they had a strat size single coil, a P-90- a mini humbucker and a humbucker. On some lines, all 4 were optional.. The difference in tone, sustain and response in guitars with identical bodies, neck, hardware but with radically different pickups is astounding.
Would really like to get opinions on this subject... bob

[Dave Mudgett]

Certainly - pickups can have a large effect on the overall sound. I have frequently found that a particular pickup might sound great on one guitar, and not-so-great on another, even the same type of guitar. The interaction between guitar and pickup is critical.

But to me, this extends to any part of the whole system. Any electric instrument and its associated player, pickups, processing, and amplification components are a complex, interconnected system, and everything interacts and contributes to the overall response at a lot of levels. Not only is there the issue of the free vibration of the system after the strings are plucked, there is also the effect of the immediate and dynamic transient response to the player (which the player can sense while playing). Then, with the amp, there is the response of the instrument to what the amp is doing (which the player can also often sense). In other words, it's also a complex, multi-level feedback system, which introduces even further subtleties (I spent a good chunk of my professional life studying feedback systems, and I have found they are often quite tricky and the effects of feedback are not always intuitively obvious.)

The mechanical instrument itself is passive, in the technical sense that you can't extract any more energy out of it than you put into it - in fact, some of it is damped out, so you get less. It has a mechanical vibratory signature, which depends highly on how it's driven (excited by the player who is plucking the strings). But the minute you put a sensor (pickup) on it and run it through active electronic amplification, everything changes - it can add or subtract energy at various frequencies. That whole electronic system is driven by the vibrations the strings put out, but the electronic system has its own signature also.

But I do agree with people who say that an instrument has a sonic signature quite apart from the amplification system. Look at those graphs of a single-string response that Ed Packard is showing, which are typical for a distributed vibrating system. Look at all those fine-grained peaks and nodes in the frequency amplitude response - they are like a 'fingerprint' of the decaying response of the instrument. The way an instrument's vibratory response dynamically reacts to being played is also affected by that specific instrument's mechanics - I think that is even more complex to quantify, and also dependent on how it's driven. But I think if it's measured, it will also prove to be highly fine-grained like the free response.

In contrast, my experience is that magnetic pickups, typical electronic processing equipment, amplifiers, and speakers generally have a pretty smooth frequency response in comparison - there are generally pronounced peaks and nodes in the response, but they are usually much smoother than the mechanical vibratory response. The way I look at it, that very fine-grained peak/node instrument vibratory response (vibratory signature) get superimposed on the smoother electronic system response, which makes relatively coarse-grained but potentially large changes in the overall response. But I do think that the 'fingerprint' mechanical vibratory response comes through - no amount of electronic processing will 'invert' that fine-grained vibratory response into something smooth.

To me, the issue is how that overall response sits in a mix with other instruments, and that depends on a lot of things - but especially the sonic space taken up by the other instruments. I think I can usually distinguish differences between instruments' vibratory fingerprints when played solo or in a light mix that doesn't interfere with them. But in a layered, loud mix with a lot of other voices competing for the same sonic space, I find that fingerprint may become harder to specifically distinguish, although it may well make a huge difference in how it sits in the mix. But sometimes the electronic response may seem to dominate - my experience, at least.

This is complex stuff, no easy answers. Everything, but everything, affects the outcome. Player, strings, instrument, pickup, cables, effects, amp circuit, speaker, room, what's in the room, other instruments playing - everything. Add feedback between the various components and the overall system and the player - good luck sorting it all out. It may give insight to see various pieces of the puzzle, but in the end, you're sitting there playing a guitar and reacting to what's coming out of the amp.

My take.

[Bob Carlucci]

Holy crap Dave,,,, geez, you would think you were a Penn State professor or something. lol...

btw, email me when you get a chance.. have something I would like to talk to you about.. bob

[William Lake]

What Dave said.

[Tim Marcus]

As Muddy Waters once said, “If I forgot my guitar and had to borrow one at the gig, but I still had my amp, I'd have my sound."

Amp first, then guitar, then pickup

Good technique plus all that and you are in great shape!

[Pete Nicholls]

I've heard it said that if the guitar doesn't sound good to you without any amplification, it likely won't sound good to you with amplification. If true, that would say that the construction of the neck may be the biggest factor!

[Bob Carlucci]

I've heard it said that if the guitar doesn't sound good to you without any amplification, it likely won't sound good to you with amplification. If true, that would say that the construction of the neck may be the biggest factor!

A big huge sounding Les Paul makes almost no sound acoustically.. The same guitar amplified, is full, rich, resonant, harmonically complex, and has big sustain, yet acoustically it has a thin plink and dies instantly.
Take out the Gibson Humbuckers in our theoretical LP, put in generic Chinese single coils, and then we'll discuss the tonal qualities... Wood is very important, as is design and hardware. However pickups add harmonics, balance, enhance top mid or bottom, depending on design.

Personally, tone wise, I would rather hear a crap guitar with truly first rate pickups than a "good wood" guitar with crap pickups... bob

[Tim Marcus]

ok - take that same les paul and plug it into a $200 made in China digital modeling amp. Still have that singing sustain and harmonic saturation?

replace the pickups with anything - you still get the same uninspiring sound. All the harmonics are lost in the amplifier.

Now plug that very same guitar into the vintage Marshall 18W amp that it should be plugged into - thats the sound! Now replace the pickups with anything - still got the sound? Yes! The amp is the main tone factor.


You can have the worst guitar in the world with just about any pickups in it, and unless the amp is good you will not notice much difference between it and a $5000 guitar with hand wired pickups and tone wood.

[Kevin Hatton]

I'll agree with that. The amp makes the biggest difference. It's all interactive. You can make a good sounding guitar sound aweful through a bad amp.

[Michael Hummel]

I can't disagree with most postings...however, like all good things, don't we all want a good amp and a good guitar, with a good player who has learned to make the combination speak musically?

I have an early 70's LP that I have played through over a dozen amps (Traynor BassMaster, Fender Twin, Ampeg V4, POD XT, Mesa Boogie DC-3, Fender Princeton, etc.) and I have found that me and everyone I know can identify that particular Les Paul guitar. I don't think I'm a good enough player that they are identifying "my touch" but that guitar.

I think it is everything in the chain. Unless, as we have done in a couple of songs, put the guitar through something like the Zoom "food processor" patch which would indeed make all guitars sound about the same.

Cheers,
Mike

[Brint Hannay]

But I do agree with people who say that an instrument has a sonic signature quite apart from the amplification system. Look at those graphs of a single-string response that Ed Packard is showing, which are typical for a distributed vibrating system. Look at all those fine-grained peaks and nodes in the frequency amplitude response - they are like a 'fingerprint' of the decaying response of the instrument. The way an instrument's vibratory response dynamically reacts to being played is also affected by that specific instrument's mechanics - I think that is even more complex to quantify, and also dependent on how it's driven. But I think if it's measured, it will also prove to be highly fine-grained like the free response.

In contrast, my experience is that magnetic pickups, typical electronic processing equipment, amplifiers, and speakers generally have a pretty smooth frequency response in comparison - there are generally pronounced peaks and nodes in the response, but they are usually much smoother than the mechanical vibratory response. The way I look at it, that very fine-grained peak/node instrument vibratory response (vibratory signature) get superimposed on the smoother electronic system response, which makes relatively coarse-grained but potentially large changes in the overall response. But I do think that the 'fingerprint' mechanical vibratory response comes through - no amount of electronic processing will 'invert' that fine-grained vibratory response into something smooth.

I agree with this, and it's quite well stated.

(BTW, speaking of "vibratory signature", in ed's latest post containing charts--the Fessenden, Emmons Push-Pull and Legrande comparison--he included this:

The top trace is the peak value from a strum, open strings excited at fret 12, pickup load was in the megohms.

Next lower trace is the amount of signal left after 2 seconds.

Next lower trace is the amount of signal left after 4 seconds.

Bottom trace is the amount of signal left after 8 seconds.

Made all the difference for me. Without it, I'd have been left thinking, "But what does each of these different traces represent?" That critical information allowed me to get quite a bit out of those particular charts. We yokels just need a little help.)

My own anecdotal experience: I have put Bill Lawrence 710 pickups on two PSGs of different brands, which sound quite different from each other acoustically. Each had its original single-coil previously. Their amplified sounds differed in the same way as their acoustic sounds. With the 710s, neither guitar sounds significantly different from how it sounded before, but more to the point, although they both now have the same pickup they don't sound any more like each other than they did before.

[Brad Sarno]

It's a bit of everything. I find that with say a GFI guitar in particular, that no matter what pickup you try, it's always gonna sound that way. The guitar itself tends to rapidly absorb a certain spectrum of high frequencies. No pickup in the world will change that harmonic decay envelope inherent to the guitar itself.

I also find that with my ZB, the Alumitone sounds terrible but a 705 sounds great. In my push/pulls, the Alumitone sounds good and the 705 sounds good.


B

[Bob Carlucci]

It's a bit of everything. I find that with say a GFI guitar in particular, that no matter what pickup you try, it's always gonna sound that way. The guitar itself tends to rapidly absorb a certain spectrum of high frequencies. No pickup in the world will change that harmonic decay envelope inherent to the guitar itself.

I also find that with my ZB, the Alumitone sounds terrible but a 705 sounds great. In my push/pulls, the Alumitone sounds good and the 705 sounds good.


B

Its funny you mentioned GFI Brad, because a very bright young lawyer thats a fine musician with a great ear transformed his GFI from a steel he was about to sell as it sounded dull and lifeless, into a spectacular sounding steel by installing a Truetone, instead of the stock GeorgeL bucker.. We did it right here, and I was there to hear it. The difference was dramatic. Certainly not just an EQ issue, and he has a Nasville 112.

there was NO eq'ing a good sweet steel sound into that guitar. It just wasn't there with that pickup.
We transformed the tone and character of that GFI for the better by installing the right pickup for that guitar...bob

[Brad Sarno]

Well that blows my theory... but it's good to know that there's a way to put some life and sparkle into the tone of a GFI.

B

[Mitch Adelman]

I had a recent experience with my Carter. I thought it was dull with no sparkle with its original George L thinking it was it was just the guitar itself for years.Went from amp to amp, some sounded better than others. I just put a Telonics pickup in it and it sounds like a completely different steel, way, way better in all the amps. Never thought it would be that dramatic.So the pickup had huge effect on tone in this case.

[Tim Marcus]

Well that blows my theory... but it's good to know that there's a way to put some life and sparkle into the tone of a GFI.

B

not necessarily - could be that there was a problem with the George L pickup

I kind of agree with you - my Emmons did not sound any different when I put the tonealigner in and took the trutone out. However, the noise floor went down about 100 times.

The big difference when I switched pickups in that steel besides the noise, is the spacing from the magnets to the strings. On the tonealigner, you can set each string to its ideal height and compensate for the different gauges of string. I like everything to be close and hot, and then I back my volume pedal down.

[Scott Appleton]

How many of us have looked for that sound we hear in our hearts. We hear it in others recordings and tried to copy what equipment they had with no luck only to find a strat and marshall 30 watt 112 in a guitar center somewhere that sounds just like SRV .. or bought that NV 400 that just did not get that sound with your 71 Emmons only to find another NV 400 that nailed that tone you were looking for.
Its not only in the Pickup or the guitar or the amp or the player ... its a magic combination and when it happens it blow's your mind ... how could that have happened ... then of course there is the time when that magic combo seems to have gone dead .. its gone away ... so its also the place your playing that adds the final touch to the picture ... there are clubs I love playing in cause my rig sounds so good in there compared to other venues ... then there is the recording of when you thought you sounded horrible that sounds fantastic ... so add another dimension to the mix .. Hands, ears, heart, Soul, guitar, pickup, amp and place
that's what it takes ...

[Bob Carlucci]

How many of us have looked for that sound we hear in our hearts. We hear it in others recordings and tried to copy what equipment they had with no luck only to find a strat and marshall 30 watt 112 in a guitar center somewhere that sounds just like SRV .. or bought that NV 400 that just did not get that sound with your 71 Emmons only to find another NV 400 that nailed that tone you were looking for.
Its not only in the Pickup or the guitar or the amp or the player ... its a magic combination and when it happens it blow's your mind ... how could that have happened ... then of course there is the time when that magic combo seems to have gone dead .. its gone away ... so its also the place your playing that adds the final touch to the picture ... there are clubs I love playing in cause my rig sounds so good in there compared to other venues ... then there is the recording of when you thought you sounded horrible that sounds fantastic ... so add another dimension to the mix .. Hands, ears, heart, Soul, guitar, pickup, amp and place
that's what it takes ...

Those points are all valid and accepted by most playetrs, but you are getting into the intangibles..

My way of thing is this... If you take a vintage Bud, with that magical sound, or lets say a great old PP... You install modern Humbucker pickup wound at 20 K.. Do these 2 guitars retain the magic sound?... I say no.. I say you have changed the tonal characteristics and "essence" of that guitar.
If you took an old fender lap steel, replaced the pickup with a super hot modern humbucker, does it retain the classic Fender sound??.. Not to my ears... bob

[Michael Hummel]

I don't mean to hijack the thread, but I have a newbie question about my recently acquired Sho-Bud Pro III Custom D10 (see picture). The E9 neck has a humbucking pickup, and the C6 has a single-coil. Does anyone know if this was standard on this guitar, whether these are "standard" Sho-Bud pickups, and what I might gain by installing newer, more modern pickups?

(sorry about the poor picture -- my wife took all of our good cameras up to the summer cabin!)

Thanks for any comments.
Mike

[Brint Hannay]

The C6th pickup is the original Sho-Bud. The E9th pickup is not original; it's a Bill Lawrence pickup, either a 710 (most likely) or an XR16.

IMO the 710 is a good choice for a Sho-Bud guitar. Tone a lot like the Sho-Bud single-coil. Lloyd Green uses one on his famous LDG, or at least did for a good while.

Unless you're bugged by hum or excessive microphonics (mechanical noise coming through the amp), I wouldn't change the SB pickup on the back neck. The one on the back neck of my Pro III sounds great, to my ears.

[Michael Hummel]

Brint:

Thanks for the reply and info. Both pickups sound good to me, and you are right -- they sound quite similar to my ears. Neither suffers from hum nor microphonics (the single-coil has a wee bit more buzz, but I really don't use the C6 neck snyway).

Being a newbie I just wondered if the consensus was that newer pickups would make a magical difference.

Other than maybe the slightly unequal pull on 5 and 10 and no easy way to adjust them, it seems like just about everything on these old guitars was done pretty well!

Mike

[Eddie Freeman]

All I know is I changed the GL in my GFI to a True Tone, and it made all the differance in my sound.
All settings left the same on my 112. Now my 3rd string is not tinny, and 10th string is no longer muddy. While I love GL's, they are not the pickup
for my GFI.

[ed packard]

Same pickup, different VPs & amp loads = different sounds...why, because the VPs and amp load the highs out of most pickups, particularly the high resistance ones. The lower the VP resistance, the more the upper range loss.

It is hard to see how a pickup can affect "sustain", but they can move the Sustain band (frequency) by their resonant frequency. The mag field of most pickups does not damp the string vibrations a noticeable amount.

The physical center of the pickup is not necessarily the magnetic center...and we usually accept that the pickup location effects the audible spectrum as does where and how you pick the strings.