What makes expensive pickups better?

[DaveGrima]

The qaulity of the wire and magnets make a lot of diff,

 

 

So they do vary in quality. Why dont the high-end pickups makers use that as a selling point? Why dont they say "We use hi grade alnico magnets ,and copper wire."? I never see that. I read the descriptions of the pickups on Lindy Fralins website, then read the descriptions on GFS or Tone rider, or StewMac or whatever, and they all use the exact same components.

[Musicscotty]

I'm late to this party but I'll throw my 2 cents in.

I use a set of Bare Knuckle Emerald pickups in my LP.

I took a long time in choosing the replacement pickups for it and I can only say that the attention to detail, coupled with quality materials and great workmanship have contributed to the overall excellent end result.

Fitting these basically brought the guitar to life. It was alright with the stock pickups but ... the BKP's just make the guitar so much ... more

Some examples of the BKP pickups LP leads are in my sig.

[ΨWindingΨ]

Workmanship.

I put Tom Holmes pickups in my Lester and they are worth the $600 spent.

What does Tom do which costs so much?

Everything. He builds them from the ground up. He makes all the parts and his shop is setup with all the tooling. He even stamps out his own pickup covers which are exacting replicas of late 50s Gibson PAFs. He cuts the magnates from rods of AlNiCo and magnetizes them on and on.

When you have folks willing to spend that much time perfecting something you will always pay for it.


Yes they are worth it.

[smorgdonkey]

Sorry about that Dave! We now return to your regularly scheduled broadcast.

Yeah...because that last 'response' to my post was narrow-minded and ignorant. There are so many points to argue in it that there is no point. You do have a very f'd view on things though.

[EADGBE]

FWIW, The US has the largest prison population of any country and imprisons more people per capita than any other country... Just saying...

 

 

You're right. But these people are locked up for murder, rape, robbery, etc. Not for trying to start a democracy or have elections, etc. And Americans have rights. The Chinese hardly have any at all.

[EADGBE]

To be completely honest, all this flag waving, patriotic, "I only buy MIA!" stuff, is complete and absolute rubbish.

No it isn't. It makes for a healthy and sustainable economy.

[smorgdonkey]

You're right. But these people are locked up for murder, rape, robbery, etc. Not for trying to start a democracy or have elections, etc. And Americans have rights. The Chinese hardly have any at all.

 

 

Indeed...the guy who won the Nobel Peace Prize is in jail and his wife went to visit him. She told him that he won the award. She is now under house arrest and armed guards are keeping her there. Bizarre place.

[BoneNut]

so in one thread wood doesn't matter, now pickups do not matter. I guess nothing matters and all guitars are the same.

...and to top it off, there are guys here like DCooper, who even manage to make stock Epi pups sound fantastic.

So if the wood doesn't matter and the pups don't either...

[ihavenofish]

Gibson starts out of the gate with much better sounding PU's than Epi. Therefore, if you replace PU's on the Gibson with a SD/DiM/Custom wound, the difference in sound quality will be less than if you did the same thing with an Epi.

 

 

define better sounding.

 

more importantly, explain WHY the gibson ones sound better.

[PlinytheWelder]

 

You're right. But these people are locked up for murder, rape, robbery, etc. Not for trying to start a democracy or have elections, etc. And Americans have rights. The Chinese hardly have any at all.

 

 

 

Well no... From Wikipedia...

 

The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world at 754 persons in prison or jail per 100,000 (as of 2008).[19] A report released Feb. 28, 2008 indicates that more than 1 in 100 adults in the United States are in prison.[20] The United States has less than 5% of the world's population[21] and 23.4% of the world's prison population.[22]

 

One of the biggest contributors to the United States' spike is the war on drugs. Around 1980, the United States had 40,000 people in prison for drug crimes. Currently, the United States houses over 500,000 prisoners for these crimes. Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance said, "We now imprison more people for drug law violations than all of Western Europe (with a much larger population) incarcerates for all offenses". On the other hand, for example Japan and Sweden have applied zero tolerance for illicit drugs at the same time as they have few people in prison and low drug use, so the connection between drug laws and number of prisoners is not simple.[12][13]

As of 2006, 49.3% of state prisoners, or 656,000 individuals, were incarcerated for non-violent crimes. As of 2008, 90.7% of federal prisoners, or 165,457 individuals, were incarcerated for non-violent offenses.[14]

[ihavenofish]

Mattel did. And we got toys with lead paint. They're capable. They just don't do it very often. For example I can't find decent blank DVDs anymore. Almost all of them are now made in China. The USA has never been an empire. And globalization is turning America into a third world country. I'm not prejudiced at all. I just don't want to buy junk and knockoffs made in an Asian sweatshop. I don''t want buy guitars from a police state country. Why do you have a problem with that? I have enough guitars to last me the rest of my life. And there's still a lot of used American made guitars in the shops. I'll pass. Too much pot metal. I don't really want a Gibson or Fender. And none of my guitars have Chinese made parts. No it isn't. It makes for a healthy and sustainable economy.

 

 

plywood bodies... potmetal hardware... sweatshop labour... why you gotta be so down on gibson usa?

[Belva]

You're right. But these people are locked up for murder, rape, robbery, etc. Not for trying to start a democracy or have elections, etc. And Americans have rights. The Chinese hardly have any at all.

 

It's a conspiracy. People are in U.S. prisons for attempting to sell quality pickups at a really cheap price.:poke:

[DavidMgT]

...and to top it off, there are guys here like DCooper, who even manage to make stock Epi pups sound fantastic . So if the wood doesn't matter and the pups don't either...

hmm perhaps it is the p.... no, no it couldn't be:)

[BoneNut]

hmm perhaps it is the p.... no, no it couldn't be:)

No, no, NO!!!

Don't use the P word! That'll start an argument for sure!

[DavidMgT]

No, no, NO!!! Don't use the P word! That'll start an argument for sure!

I better not. On another note I think I'll go p&@! my guitar now:thu:

[goosefartfan]

define better sounding. more importantly, explain WHY the gibson ones sound better.

Better sounding= to most people. Probably not to you :poke:

If you'd like, we can start a poll on who thinks Gibson PU's are better than Epi's. After reading so many threads that are titled "what PU's can I put in my EPI LP, b/c the ones in there suck", I predict most people will say Gibson's.
You can ask all the people who vote yes what does better sounding mean.

I never once read a thread here, or anywhere, that said "hey, I put in Classic 57's in my Epi LP, but I like the original Epi ones better, so I'm putting the Classic 57's on ebay". NOT ONCE

You'll probably object and say "but PU's can't suck, b/c there's no vacuum there!

When I say that supermodel "X" is better looking than old hag "Y", are you going to ask me to define better looking?


Why is it more important to know WHY the gibson ones sound better?? Why don't you ask "why is a Mercedes better than a Fiat?...aren't they both made of steel, plastic, and rubber?":facepalm:

[Edge11]

I know most of the price difference comes from labor cost. US made vs. Overseas. Small handmade operations vs. mass produced. But in terms of the components used they all seem to be made out of the same stuff. I never see ads for pickups that use High quality plastic in their bobbins, or high grade copper coil wire. And even cheap pickups use ALnico. So why should I pay 2 or 3x as much for what seems to me to be a pretty simple device using cheap, easliy aquired materials? Taking production costs out of the equation, what makes a Dimarzio better than a GFS, What makes a Fralin better than a Seymour Duncan? What makes expensive pickups better? Why do some of these boutique shops charge that much for some plastic, magnets and copper wire? This isnt a rant. Its a serious question.

Most cheap pickups use ceramic magnets

[Belva]

Most cheap pickups use ceramic magnets

 

Alnico maggots exist in cheap pups too.

[Saturnine10]

Dont forget the Lego PU winder

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[DaveGrima]

Alnico maggots exist in cheap pups too.

Alot of expenisve pickups use ceramic as well. Seymour DUncan and Dimarzio have a number of models that use ceramic magnets and theyre not any cheaper than the alnico ones. Joe Barden Exclusively uses ceramic in his pickups. This is not a good answer.
I dont know about maggots however. .Do they grind em up and use the goop to pot cheap pups?

[diceman1000]

[YOUTUBE]wyWv93WEu6o[/YOUTUBE]

[ashasha]

Here's an A/B of the Epiphone 57 humbuckers and a set of Gibson 57 Classics that I swapped in a Dot a few years ago.

 

 

I used the same set of strings, measured the pickup height with a micrometer (because I can) and recorded both of them direct into a preamp with no effects or anything. It's as frickin stripped down and boring/bare as you can make a comparison.

 

If you can't hear a difference than you are fortunate because you'll ultimately save a lot of damn money. I know that I can hear it.

 

So to get to the crux of the question being WHY? Well I'm no marketing genius, but in my opinion it comes down to the industry establishing tiers and market price points. Case in point, PC electronics. It costs an insane amount of money to tool several factories to create all the different levels of performance. But they can use the same assembly line and process to create anything from a $100 videocard to a $500 videocard. The difference is in the firmware and usually some circuit traces.

 

The reason for this is because not everyone is going to pay $500 for a videocard. It doesn't cost them that much to make one, but you are paying for the opportunity to use that performance level. They're going to make their money from selling about 100X as many of the cheap ones that cost damn near the exact same price to manufacture.

 

So what does that have to do with guitar pickups? Well my theory is that the Chinese are more than capable of building great sounding pickups. But the whole point of farming that stuff overseas is to build cheap pickups for cheap guitars (not saying {censored}ty, just cheap). If a $20 pickup performed as well as a $150 pickup than no one would ever buy that expensive pickup. It's the same damn parts. Sure there is probably some quality variances (which are probably based on price as well), but we are probably talking about nothing more than $3-5 per piece.

 

The overseas factories can build these things to whatever spec the designer and customer request them to be made for less than they can make them over here and they can be just as good. They don't want to though and to be honest I can't blame them.

 

I guess that what I am saying is that they sound 'lesser' because they are supposed to.

[BG76]

Just because the average HCEG person can't/doesn't/won't pay for/hear the difference in a high quality pickup (Lollar, Wolftone, Holmes, etc...) doesn't mean it's not there.

Buy what you like and like what you buy.

All I know is when I buy pickups (which I never do unless I build something or buy something used with crazy pickups in it) I can buy any of the brands I listed one time.

If I go with the el cheapo HCEG flavor of the month products I'm always let down and end up putting out for the brand I should have bought in the first place.

So for me it's worth it to pay $200 for a set of Lollars once then to buy lower cost brand 1, 2 and 3 before buying the Lollars anyway.

That's just me.

A lot of it depends on how good your amp, guitar and playing is as well. If you're running through a Line 6 or a Marshall MG or tuning down to Q or using a bunch of distortion chances are it will matter less.

To someone like me who hardly even turns the fuzz on I think it makes a bit more difference.

[jrockbridge]

^ I think Ashasha nailed it!

[Belva]

I dont know about maggots however. .Do they grind em up and use the goop to pot cheap pups?

Maggots are indeed ground up for potting. But that's what makes the expensive pups so much more.
Just like naugahyde has gone up in price because it takes a whole lot of naugs to make a hide.
Please don't ask how they make molasses.