Upgrading parts and one's memory

JayGee

Rocker said:

Nobody changes a guitar pickup or the trem system or bits of it unless they are looking for a different sound or feel.  Parts get changed if they get broken or unreliable, always remember it is a guitar.  A guitar has tone and volume controls, as has the amp it is plugged into.  

I dunno about that. Quite a lot of people seem to swap out perfectly good components simply because some bloke on YouTube/Facebook/Whatever told them to. Or because “Upgrade!”

It’s a pattern I see a lot, and not just with guitars: Young (or inexperienced) person pops up on forum (might be cameras, might be cars, might be motorbikes, might be kitchen appliances…) asking something along the lines of “I’ve just bought XXX and I’m pretty happy with it, but I’ve seen a bunch of FaceBook videos saying that the YYY lets it down and that to get the best out of it I need to swap the ZZZ for an expensive aftermarket one…”, you ask what they perceive as being the issue, what they want to achieve by the change, etc, and they respond along the lines of “I don’t now, I’ve just been told I need an upgrade”[1], or something like that.

[1] Often by somebody with dubious credentials and not particularly transparent motive…

LastMantra

G.A.S. 

stickyfiddle

I do think there is major risk of confirmation bias in any comparison that relies on memory, and especially where that comparison is between two things that are obstensibly the same (e.g. two different sets of handwound PAFs). 

I generally tend to steer myself away from that sort of mod as much as possible and focus on bigger effects - sapping to get a different output level from a pickup, or hardware changes for specific functionality. 

ThePrettyDamned

stickyfiddle said:

I do think there is major risk of confirmation bias in any comparison that relies on memory, and especially where that comparison is between two things that are obstensibly the same (e.g. two different sets of handwound PAFs). 

I generally tend to steer myself away from that sort of mod as much as possible and focus on bigger effects - sapping to get a different output level from a pickup, or hardware changes for specific functionality. 

Yes, I definitely agree. However, I find that as I increase the gain into more modern territory (jvm marshall/6505 and similar) I definitely get pickier.

Low gain with lower output pickups is pretty much generally going to make nice noises, but at high gain things do seem to get much more complex. It's funny, because low gain PAF fiends would say the opposite  

axisus

Actually, my reason for changing pickups is a dissatisfaction with the sound that I have. I can tell that they are not the sound I am looking for. If I swap I don't need to actually remember the old sound as a comparator, I just need to judge the new sound. 

I have various guitars where I have swapped a lot, then I find the right pickups and never change again.

Dave_Mc

Teetonetal said:

Does it matter? I’m only changing something if I am unhappy with the sound. If I make changes and am now now happy, whether I remember the old correctly is irrelevant.

if I’m still unhappy I may change again or get rid.

That's a very good point. There's definitely a smart alec/killjoy set of people on the internet who seem to delight in telling you that you're not allowed to like certain things or that you have to justify yourself to them before you're allowed to buy something or like something. You don't.

Now, that's not the same as saying that there's no snake oil etc., either. I'm definitely not in favour of snake oil, either.

stickyfiddle said:

I do think there is major risk of confirmation bias in any comparison that relies on memory, and especially where that comparison is between two things that are obstensibly the same (e.g. two different sets of handwound PAFs). 

I generally tend to steer myself away from that sort of mod as much as possible and focus on bigger effects - sapping to get a different output level from a pickup, or hardware changes for specific functionality. 

Yeah I try to do the same. You definitely have the most chance of success* if you change to something completely different- e.g. if your guitar currently has hot pickups and you want vintage-style pickups (or vice-versa). Or even a noticeable change of spec- say a different magnet in a similar output pickup.


*unless you're wrong about wanting something completely different!

ThePrettyDamned said:

Yes, I definitely agree. However, I find that as I increase the gain into more modern territory (jvm marshall/6505 and similar) I definitely get pickier.

Low gain with lower output pickups is pretty much generally going to make nice noises, but at high gain things do seem to get much more complex. It's funny, because low gain PAF fiends would say the opposite  

Yeah. I mean, I think both are important. I don't get why people would try to say that it doesn't matter for high gain, for example. It's not really that it doesn't matter, it's that different things matter.

andy_k

Chris Buck just did a nice vid showing the 'upgrade' from a mis-matched set of Wizz / dry Z, to a matched set of Throbaks.
Quite revealing IMO, he was trying to get his ESP Navigator LP to as close to 50s spec.
He plays it through something Fender Blackface, and personally I preferred the original set of pickups, the Wizz in bridge seemed to overpower the neck dry Z, which meant a more trebly mid position.
The Throbaks are a matched pair, and obviously work well together, but seems to lack the personality of the other set.
Obviously, we are at the mercy of YT compression here, and the 'in the room, and in the hand' effect will not translate.
I have my own experience of sets of Wizz and Throbaks, but have never gone to the effort of swapping them in the same guitars, they all seem to work well in their respective instruments, and my own experiments with pickups have been to try and match specs based on my previous experiences with woods etc, not direct comparisons.
There's a lot of choice these days, and maybe we sometimes expect too much of a difference, ie-improvement.
Pickups are really only a small part of a long chain of things that affect tone, and there is the law of diminishing returns to contend with.
I would honestly say, the effect of Poly vs Nitro is possibly more drastic than pickup A vs Pickup B, but to be able to measure the difference takes considerable effort, just to prove the point.