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Does HOW you mount a pickup effect the tone?


stormin1155

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Over in the electric guitar forum there is a thread debating the pros/cons of set vs. neck through designs. One of the "benefits" put forth for neck through is that the pickup is mounted on the same piece of wood as the neck, hence you pick up more/better/truer tone of the guitar.

 

I don't think that's true. A pickup is a magnetic device that sends a signal based on the waves caused by the steel string vibrating above the magnets. It is not a microphone that pickups up other vibrations or ambient noise.

 

Furthermore, since the through-neck/pickups-mounted-directly-on-the-wood is such an intuitively logical conclusion, if it were true, guitar makers would have been jumping all over this decades ago, and the only "great" electrics would have their pickups mounted directly to the wood. Those actually were some of the first designs (dog-ear P-90's, Stratotone soapbars..), but somewhere along the way they figured out that mounting them to plastic (most humbuckers, strats, ...almost everything) or metal (like the tele bridge) had some advantages.

 

So that's my theory... I moved it into this forum hoping there would be someone here that knows more about how pickups work than I do and can either back me up or shed some light on how things really work.

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One thing you'll learn is that guitar players hear with their eyes. Another thing is that guitar players will hear volume and think "tone".


The real answer is that everything is systemic, so that it's difficult if not impossible to isolate variables in determining "tone".

 

 

I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying... hearing with your eyes?? That happened to me back in the '70s once when I was tripping on acid. If it is impossible to isolate variables of tone, then what is the purpose of having a forum like this to discuss those variables?

 

I think my question has a pretty straightforward technical answer, and I'm betting that there are a number of our collegues on this forum that can answer it. Let me restate it. Aside from subtle nuances that 99.9% of humans can't hear, is there a sonic advantage to mounting a pickup directly to the wood versus the mounting systems that are widely used today? (electric guitar, not acoustic) My theory, based on my pretty limited technical knowledge of how magnetic pickups work, is no.

 

And if there is, why aren't guitarmakers doing it? It's not like it would be difficult or expensive.

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Over in the electric guitar forum there is a thread debating the pros/cons of set vs. neck through designs. One of the "benefits" put forth for neck through is that the pickup is mounted on the same piece of wood as the neck, hence you pick up more/better/truer tone of the guitar.


I don't think that's true. A pickup is a magnetic device that sends a signal based on the waves caused by the steel string vibrating above the magnets. It is not a microphone that pickups up other vibrations or ambient noise.


Furthermore, since the through-neck/pickups-mounted-directly-on-the-wood is such an intuitively logical conclusion, if it were true, guitar makers would have been jumping all over this decades ago, and the only "great" electrics would have their pickups mounted directly to the wood. Those actually were some of the first designs (dog-ear P-90's, Stratotone soapbars..), but somewhere along the way they figured out that mounting them to plastic (most humbuckers, strats, ...almost everything) or metal (like the tele bridge) had some advantages.


So that's my theory... I moved it into this forum hoping there would be someone here that knows more about how pickups work than I do and can either back me up or shed some light on how things really work.

 

 

I think is is nearly impossible to truly answer. I agree alot of guitar players do tend to hear with their eyes, especially younger ones (younger than me anyway I'm almost 50 ; ) )

 

How can this be answered anyway? You don't have an option of mounting the pickups in any other places b e it a neck through design or the olther right?

 

So the point is really not ab le to be answered technically. On the other hand there are (I believe) definite differences in the tone in a neck through design compared to a bolt on or set nec k guitar period, pickups are simply going to amplify that tone.

You can hear the quality tone of a guitar before you ever plug in in if it's got any .

 

That's m y experience , and opinion anyway. ; o )

 

Peace!

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You can hear the quality tone of a guitar before you ever plug in in if it's got any .

 

 

Very true. Construction affects tone, and the best way to hear it is to play a guitar unplugged. However, there are so many variables, its nearly impossible or at least very impractacle to sort out the effect of each variable.

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I don't think that's true. A pickup is a magnetic device that sends a signal based on the waves caused by the steel string vibrating above the magnets. It is not a microphone that pickups up other vibrations or ambient noise.

 

 

If I wear my watch on my right wrist the ticking can be heard through the amp. So obviously pickups do amplify ambient noise.

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If I wear my watch on my right wrist the ticking can be heard through the amp. So obviously pickups do amplify ambient noise.

 

 

Unless your watch is the old-fashioned wind-up type it is an electrical device which may very well put out a signal that can be picked up. Also, pickups can go microphonic, in which case they will pick up abient noise. You usually get pretty crappy sound when that happens.

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from what i've heard, and from my own experiences with set-neck vs. bolt-on basses, i think that neck mounts affect sustain rather than tone...though is sustain part of tone? nebulous terms like 'tone' always make communications difficult...

 

as for the other part, i too have to believe that the woods involved make a difference, but that difference is incredibly tiny once the pickups are involved...

 

 

after all, those ampeg lucite axes sound great...

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from what i've heard, and from my own experiences with set-neck vs. bolt-on basses, i think that neck mounts affect sustain rather than tone...though is sustain part of tone? nebulous terms like 'tone' always make communications difficult...


as for the other part, i too have to believe that the woods involved make a difference, but that difference is incredibly tiny once the pickups are involved...

 

 

this is my belief too

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