I would hate to be a Pickup maker......

TA22GT

You must go to hell and back for your craft!

You get some exposure and the 'phone starts ringing.......

"Hello! I've heard about your pickups and I want to try a set for my Les Paul. It's a great guitar and I bought it from the third week of May production from 2014 and the Forums tell me that's the week to go for. I saw it on the shop wall and the light from the window lit it up with a celestial glow and I knew it was meant for me! It really is the one!
I play it through an amazing Marshall amp and I use Dunlop Tortex .73 plectrums but I shave 2 thou off for better tone.
It just lacks a bit tone wise with the original pickups cos everyone knows Gibson pickups are shite, but I know when it gets the right pickups my tone will be complete and my playing will elevate to Rock God status.
 
Can you help me?"

Two weeks later the new pickups are in.....

"Hey mate, these pickups are awesome and I'm now playing like a Pro and I have tone exploding from my fingers!"

Four weeks later......  Pickup maker sees the set for sale on the T'internet.

Six weeks later .....Pickup maker reads a Forum post.

"Yeah don't buy those mate! I bought some and they are shite! Couldn't get great tone out of them and I know what I'm talking about cos I have THE Les Paul."

I hope you have good times too!!

Kudos to all of you that try your best to please us.

midlifecrisis

could apply to anything to do with guitars, or anything else for that matter.

barnstorm

The bit I imagine is a nightmare is interpreting a load of largely unhelpful adjectives when someone places a custom order.

flying_pie

barnstorm said:

The bit I imagine is a nightmare is interpreting a load of largely unhelpful adjectives when someone places a custom order.

It must be like being a mens hairdresser.

What would you like, sir?

- Can you make it shorter but not too short and like that guy from the telly whose name I can't remember?

thegummy

Very good point.

I wonder where these people get their "ideal tone" from. Are they expecting to pluck a guitar plugged into an amp and it sound exactly like a record they've heard where it's been recorded by a mic then processed in the studio. More importantly played by someone else so even if they would have taken over during that studio session while the artist went for a fag they still wouldn't sound the same.

It makes me wonder if the people chasing these minute indescribable subtleties in tone are really just on the futile quest to buy themselves into being better at playing.

Also wonder if they sit plucking a single note and absorbing the tiny details of the sound their 10 grands worth of gear puts out; just like with wine or coffee buffs I wonder if they sit in a room with no tv or music or books (or company) and just engulf themselves in thinking about all the "notes"

Boromedic

Wis awarded, on the money @thegummy I think a lot of folk are trying to buy their way to being better players, and I lump myself in with that fact also tbh. I will caveat that with the reason that I know if I buy quality, one I buy once and two, I know it's not the gear for sure!

John Suhr said it best once on TGP, "most tone issues can be solved with practice......"

hotpickups

I know I don't get it either. Most sound the same to me except for the crap ones of course. There's a limit I'll pay for the snake oil though  

I think many get carried away with this tone thang

Good post @TA22GT it may me chuckle. Especially as it sounds like some of the emails I've been firing off recently to some winders LOL

TA22GT

@Boromedic ;    Love that John Suhr quote! I'll remember that one!

TA22GT

hotpickups said:

I know I don't get it either. Most sound the same to me except for the crap ones of course. There's a limit I'll pay for the snake oil though  

I think many get carried away with this tone thang

I've almost certainly been that guy in the past...but as you get older you realise that......"most tone issues can be solved with practice"..!!!

Boom Boom!

crunchman

Most of the time when I've changed pickups, I've not liked it afterwards either.  If the guitar sounds good, then any half decent pickups will sound good, and I don't want to change them.  If it's a bad sounding one, then changing the pickups probably won't help.

Boromedic

TA22GT said:

@Boromedic ;    Love that John Suhr quote! I'll remember that one!

Hahaha, no worries made me laugh at the time. These guys that deal with great players on a regular basis must really fall over laughing when they scan the forums!!

impmann

crunchman said:

Most of the time when I've changed pickups, I've not liked it afterwards either.  If the guitar sounds good, then any half decent pickups will sound good, and I don't want to change them.  If it's a bad sounding one, then changing the pickups probably won't help.

I agree to a point but some guitars genuinely are made with poor sounding ones...

Example 1: my SG. It left the Gibson factory as an SG 'Special' in 2003. The original pickups did the rawk thing well, but everything else *badly*. It was a middly, muddly mess and the neck pickup sucked ass. HUGE output - but no tone. I changed them out for a less high output and more classically voiced set (Classic 57s - marmite, but I love them) and the guitar came to life. Its still one of my fave guitars in the world.

Example 2: ANY Tele Deluxe or Custom fitted with the woeful Fender Wide Range MudBucker humbucker. Fender's original pickups are shockingly bad. My Deluxe now has Mojos and it now sounds rich and... full range!

In both those cases, no amount of "practice" would change the sound - the pickups were poor and improved by the fitment of new ones.

thegummy

When I first got my LP I pretty much immediately put in bare knuckles that I'd been given as a present. But now those pickups are in a different guitar and I'm waiting to afford p90s for the LP, Ive been playing it with the stock 490 or whatever pickups and they're still pretty good.

Also, in the PRS SE custom 24 I've read a lot of people complaining about the pickups but after trying back and forth between stock and seymour duncan I liked both but actually preferred stock.

Funkfingers

thegummy said:

I wonder where these people get their "ideal tone" from. 

I arrive at mine by trial and error. (It helps to have a stash of pre-owned pickup on hand to swap over.)

If, for the sake of argument, a supposedly accurate P.A.F. style humbucker sounds weedy in a particular guitar, try another humbucker with more output - especially in the mid range frequencies.

Quite often, a theoretically unlikely choice turns out to work far better than anticipated. If/when I stumble across something exceptionally good, I stick with it.

It possible that I only do all the pickup changing because I am addicted to 60/40 solder fumes.

thegummy

Funkfingers said:

thegummy said:

I wonder where these people get their "ideal tone" from. 

I arrive at mine by trial and error. (It helps to have a stash of pre-owned pickup on hand to swap over.)

If, for the sake of argument, a supposedly accurate P.A.F. style humbucker sounds weedy in a particular guitar, try another humbucker with more output - especially in the mid range frequencies.

Quite often, a theoretically unlikely choice turns out to work far better than anticipated. If/when I stumble across something exceptionally good, I stick with it.

It possible that I only do all the pickup changing because I am addicted to 60/40 solder fumes.

That's a smart and realistic way to do it. Arrive at a tone you like.

I was more referring to people who never manage to find their ideal tone and probably never will but keep searching.

DrJazzTap

I've never replaced any pickups in any of my guitars. I'm aware of my own failings and that I'll fall into a never ending rabbit hole with chasing pickups.

HAL9000

I’ve changed pickups in two guitars - One was an MIM Strat which I swapped out the original units for a set of OilCity StoneTones with a baseplate on the bridge pickup. This was more about the thin-sounding bridge than a quest for tone.That said, the OilCity pickups were a definite improvement on the stock items.

The other was a MIM Telecaster which became an Esquire-alike. Since the guitar was being pulled apart anyway, I took the opportunity to change the (one remaining) pickup for an OilCity Alligator 90. This, I guess, was a quest to improve the tone but to my mind it didn't work as well as hoped. No fault of the pickup which is actually superb and covers a lot of ground - more a bad choice by me. This will likely at some point be replaced by something more vintage sounding.

That said I definitely don't see this as a hunt for some elusive holy grail of tone - I just want something in the right ballpark. As long as I'm there or thereabouts then I'm happy. Also, a lot of tweaking can be done using the amp's EQ and gain controls, and the guitar's tone and volume - the pickups are simply part of a larger system.

richardhomer

Somewhere the internet decided that Les Pauls should sound ‘like a Tele on steriods’ - that annoying sod Greg Koch is a proponent of this.

My favourite LP tones are on ZZ Top’s first album and early Clapton. Both are really thick - admittedly with an articulate high-end - but nothing like the ‘plinky’, too-much-right-hand-attack sound that Koch gets. I suspect any pick-up he liked, wouldn’t suit me at all....

Strat54

PIckup makers must cringe too when they hear some of those dreadful Youtube videos their customers make. 
However, I wouldn't mind being the ones that sell their set of Tele pickups at $350 a time and have long wait lists.

crunchman

impmann said:

crunchman said:

Most of the time when I've changed pickups, I've not liked it afterwards either.  If the guitar sounds good, then any half decent pickups will sound good, and I don't want to change them.  If it's a bad sounding one, then changing the pickups probably won't help.

I agree to a point but some guitars genuinely are made with poor sounding ones...

Example 1: my SG. It left the Gibson factory as an SG 'Special' in 2003. The original pickups did the rawk thing well, but everything else *badly*. It was a middly, muddly mess and the neck pickup sucked ass. HUGE output - but no tone. I changed them out for a less high output and more classically voiced set (Classic 57s - marmite, but I love them) and the guitar came to life. Its still one of my fave guitars in the world.

Example 2: ANY Tele Deluxe or Custom fitted with the woeful Fender Wide Range MudBucker humbucker. Fender's original pickups are shockingly bad. My Deluxe now has Mojos and it now sounds rich and... full range!

In both those cases, no amount of "practice" would change the sound - the pickups were poor and improved by the fitment of new ones.

Good point, but if you get something with half decent pickups to start with, changing them to the latest boutique offering won't transfrom a guitar.  If you buy a Gibson with Burstbuckers, they might not be the absolute greatest, but they are competent.  If it doesn't sound good with Burstbuckers, it probably won't sound good with Monty, OX4, or Mules.   Those pickups might add a little bit, but it's like adding peppercorn sauce to steak.  You need good steak to start with.  If the steak is tough, chewy and overcooked, no sauce will rescue it.

There are pickups that can ruin a guitar (Texas Specials come to mind) but where I've changed pickups in a guitar because I didn't like the sound, I've almost always ended up moving it on anyway because it's the guitar not the pickups.

Chalky

I have a stash of pickups and have changed lots on my guitars. What its taught me is that the pickup and guitar have to be suited well.  Both can negatively impact the other if they don't marry nicely.

Plus no pickup can make up for crappy pots, switches and wiring. And no pickup can make up for crappy bridge and tuners that kill sustain and deaden tone.

Expensive pickups in a cheap guitar can work wonders but its a rarer event than I expected.