Humbuckers - really - do we need the proliferation of all these different so called "voicings"

FelineGuitars

Rox said:

jd0272 said:

Underwound, overwound

Ah!!  I see you've discovered Womble Pickups.

Underwound, overwound Wombling free,
The Wombles of Wimbledon wind pickups you see,
Making good use of the magnets they find,
Winding to specs that Seth Lover designed...

Genius!

I guess the reference to the 80s sounding pickup is the ASL Tomcat pickup that I developed primarily for myself with Ash from Oil City

I had fun refining the specs and coming up with something that gave me the sound in my head.

Would probably have made sense for me to have learnt to play the guitar a bit better instead, after all a better player sounds good no matter what they play, but I enjoy tone-chasing and I think a lot of other people do too.

Some people buy different golf clubs in an attempt to get a couple of extra yards on the fairway, Formula 1 teams squander millions in the pursuit of each tenth of a second.

Actually it would make sense for me to practise guitar more and let the technique speak for itself, but I'm easily distracted by toys.

RocknRollDave

Are you winding me up? Just a load of old bobbins, if you ask me...

Gru

imalone;515931" said:

Gru said:

Its funny, I have had various h/b guitars never really worried about the sound they give.



My 335 has Gibson 57 &57+ pickups. That's good enough for me. In my house I play it and maybe adjust the tone on the guitar or amp. I have no business spending £80+ or more on pickups for my own pleasure, in the same way I don't see the point of buying looms etc if the current one still works (building a new guitar is different)



If you are performing maybe this is an issue? But seriously!



You've got decent pickups that do what you want. But a simple tone control wont, for example, add treble that's simply not there. You can't completely change the voicing and gain, though maybe a parametric e.q. could get closer. I really do have an awful muddy humbucker that someone is welcome to if they either don't believe it's possible or really don't care how it sounds.

Maybe I was a little overzealous in my previous post.

I have never thought about the 57s doing what I want, more that they just do what they do in the guitar that they are in.

I understand that pickups do sound different which is why i chose the CV Strat with Alnico Vs over the American Special with Texas specials. However if I hasn't tried the CV side by side with the USAS I would have still been happy with the latter sounding like a Strat (shame I didn't like the feel of it)

Could this not just be a never ending circle? What if the tone you want isn't achievable in the guitar you have?

imalone

Gru said:

Could this not just be a never ending circle? What if the tone you want isn't achievable in the guitar you have?

Get a moog.

seany65

Just think how much worse the problem would be, if guitar and pup makers could come up with a 'slot in contact' arrangement for the pups, much like just putting a plug into a socket with no-one having to mess about with the wiring and soldering! How many more pups would they have to make, just to please the guitarist who insisted on swapping pups between songs?