Members mbengs1 Posted April 28, 2015 Members Share Posted April 28, 2015 I guess logically when the current pickups are bad. but what if they are mediocre sounding. just good enough to get by. is it still ok to change pickups? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted April 28, 2015 Members Share Posted April 28, 2015 The amp or the amp speakers are going to give you a much bigger bang for the buck. Manufacturers usually choose pickups to give you optimal tone through the greatest range of amps. Pickups rarely break unless you tinker with them. All they are is one long piece of wire wrapped around a bar magnet. If you have your dream amp and speakers and still don't like the pickups tone, then changing pickups do two things. They change the gain and the frequency response you get from the strings. With most pickups this is an inverse relationship. If the magnet strength remains the same and you add more winds, frequency range goes down. You lose high and low frequency response as the increased coil winds makes the signal stringer. This added gain can drive amps and pedals into saturation more easily and clean tones become difficult or impossible to dial up. Along with that you have mostly midrange tones and turning the mids down on the amp and cranking the treble and bass leave the instrument sounding thin and weak. As you reduce winds the frequency response increases up to a point where all the string tones are captured. Going beyond, the signal gradually weakens and it becomes difficult to drive both amps and pedals into saturation even with their gains cranked. Many vintage Fender pickups were made this way and can jangle nicely. The key is what do you consider better. To a metal head an overwound pickup that sound scooped and unrecognizable is what they like. To a country player, a vintage wind may be the ideal sound for his chicken pickin. I prefer winds that lean towards being more vintage. If I turn the volume to 10 on the guitar I like a nice classic rock tone and I can get more if I add pedals and drive them up to get some metal tones. Then I want the tone to clean up a bit and get a nice crunch, half clean and half drive at #8. If I turn down any more it gets a clean jangle and below 5 an acoustic tone. For Humbuckers this means a vintage wind around 5~6K. I'm not real hot on higher or lower impedance Humbuckers. I have at least 25 sets of over wound pickups that have all been removed from instruments I repaired or updated and others I bought to try out. There are a few hotter wound pickups made by Seymour and Dimarzio that are good, but those companies know how to decrease magnet strength as they increase winds to reduce some of the frequency losses. There are also some under wound pickups made by various manufacturers that can sound coo. Gold foil pups come to mind. Best suggestion is first get the amp you like. Then worry about the guitar. Most pups are more then adequate and its often the guitar build that lacks tone, not the pickups. From there getting a cheap guitar to do modding experiments is the best way to go. Buy used pickups for chump change on places like EBay and stick them in the beater first. They don't have to be fancy mount jobs, they just have to be functional so you can see if you like them. If you don't, resell them and get something else till you find what you'd like to use in your main instrument. Trying out other players guitars is a key item too. When I first started playing I used to hang with allot of older players who bought great gear. I'd get to try it out and make decisions from there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted April 29, 2015 Moderators Share Posted April 29, 2015 It's always okay when it's your guitar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SoulSonicFX Posted April 29, 2015 Members Share Posted April 29, 2015 Swapping pickups is alot of fun. Only downside is that if you really get into it, you're guitar will be taken apart half the time while you're experimenting. LOL There are tons of good sounding pickups out there, and it really just comes down to taste. But if what you have in there now has practical problems, ie; they're squeal-y - don't think twice about ditching them for something decent. Changing the value of tone cap is a fun experiment too. .0068uF gives you a funky mid-peak when you roll it off all the way... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ewizard Posted May 1, 2015 Members Share Posted May 1, 2015 It is always ok to do whenever you and your pocket book desires. Probably best to save it for a time when you need to change strings. At least then you can save on that cost. I think the biggest down side to pickups is that like a box of chocolates, you never know what your going to get. You have an idea of what it will be, but the same pickup does not sound the same on every guitar. String gauge, pickup height and of course even the pots in the guitar can change the way a pickup sounds. I have never heard a pickup I didn't like for one reason or another. They all sound good in one way or more. I like HOT wound pickups because I like the sound of the guitar when it's rolled back in volume a bit through a high gain amp. It has a more rounded sound and if I need some more rip, I simply roll in more volume. I can leave the amps a little brighter and keep definition. I don't mind the ploinkiness of single coils, as I usually have the volume rolled down, but find it harder to put some push on the front end of the amp. But I do prefer the sound of single coil pickups in the neck and although I usually use a humbucker, I wire the neck in parallel to give it a more single coil like sound. I don't use tone controls on my guitars, so I will even disconnect them form the circuit to help the tone a bit if it does in fact improve it. As mentioned you get more mileage out of speakers, or the amp for a total change in tone. Even little things like modding an amp with a few dollars in parts can make a huge difference. If your changing the pickups to get a desired sort of sound, then that is the only way, but if you like the basic sound that you have and only want to change the character of it, start elsewhere first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted May 1, 2015 Members Share Posted May 1, 2015 Just changing brands of strings can have a huge jump in gain too. I swapped some pure nickel strings out for some nickel plated steel strings last night and it was like I added another gain box before the amp. I would exhaust those less invasive and less expensive options before jacking with the guitar electronics. Even different gain pedals will do way more then a pickup change can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Temple of Light Posted May 1, 2015 Members Share Posted May 1, 2015 Cost not being a factor? I dont want to encourage kids here {anyone under 25} to waste money they don't have, but...I would say as soon as you find the ones that have the tone you really, really KNOW you want. I have stock pickups in most of my guitars, that suit them extremely well for the design of the guitar itself, but they generally don't have the exact tone I would like, I'd have to finagle and finesse it to get it through my amps, effects etc...but once in a great while along comes a pickup{s} that you hear that really lights your fire, well then it's time to replace the stock ones with what you KNOW is what you want a particular guitar to sound like...A lot of people just keep buying guitars and or pickups to try out until something clicks. It's really about knowing and hearing the exact tone you want for what your trying to play. I play mostly experimental heavyrockjazzblueselectronicsynth fusion, and though I have guitars designed for each of those 3 main styles, none of them really give me the sound I want from them for most of the playing of things...When I heard certain pickups that have recently been introduced I knew unquestionably to which guitar they should belong.So now four sticks of my guitars will be getting new sets of pups as soon as money permits.Does it make me a better player? Hell ya it will, cuz it gives me the tone I have been chasing for years that inspires me before any effects, amp, or processing. So as soon as possible a pair of SD Whole Lotta Humbuckers: bridge, a pair of SD Whole Lotta Humbuckers: Neck,A pair of SD Alternative8 SH15's and a pair of SD SH14's Custom 5's will be going into 4 of my humbucker equuipped guitars.Certain combinations of the above nail exactly the tones I've been hearing and craving since I first heard sound itself.It's totally the sound of thunder, earthquakes, tidal waves and hurricanes all rolled into nice little coil-tap-able packages...Granted, this is all for generally high end recording applications, only one of these guitars will actually see the light of day in performance.My strats and teles are beautiful, perfect and lovely just the way they are...Ambitious? Ya I know, but knowledge is power, and once you know better you should do better...so you sound better.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members AJ6stringsting Posted May 3, 2015 Members Share Posted May 3, 2015 A majority of the times that I've changed pickups is when my tastes in tone occurs. Before my favorites were the Dimarzio Evolution, Seymour Duncan JB, Bare Knuckle War Pigs, Dimarzio Fast Track 2, Bill Lawrence L-250 / XL500 and others.Tastes change and so do pickups .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members verterepes Posted May 4, 2015 Members Share Posted May 4, 2015 Lots of great pickup info from a guy in Australia with a lot of experience (30 yrs.) modding guitars and changing pickups at this link:http://gmarts.org/index.php?go=230Check out Matching Pickups (in regards to combining pickups directly and impedance matching interactions without active buffering...which limits your combinations...in other words pickups that sound great separately can sound bad when combined directly due to their impedance and loading effects changing their sound):http://gmarts.org/index.php?go=235 Is the pickup the heart of the guitar sound?http://www.guitarsite.com/news/music_news_from_around_the_world/electric-guitar-wood-myth-busted/https://www.google.com/#q=electric+g...the+pickups%3FThe "Log" guitar?http://www.premierguitar.com/article...lidbody_Guitar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.