I listened to this with headphones on and not watching the screen to visually see the changes. They all blended together because they all sound almost identical. I literally could not tell one from the next.
the only variance (at best) is minute details most people couldn't pick out of a mix at all. slight boosts on some at certain frequencies. ultimately, its going to be about output levels. that said, the emgs on have a slight peak in the mid, but in the mix with everything else that mid vanishes entirely. and the gus g loses a bit of the top end from the rest past the emg. but again, its (to the ear) gone when in a mix. if you're goal is to play distorted, and in a mix, it reallllllllly doesn't matter what pickup you choose, so long as its of decent build quality. (you do roll the dice with 'budget' pickups, some are good, some aren't). the core of the tone is out of the speaker that produces it. unless you're playing clean tones, or edge of breakup, _everything else_ is psychosomatic. if your goal _is_ to play clean tones, or edge of breakup, then you can play roll your pickups to find ones you like for x, y, or z sound. but mostly that even doesn't matter, if you only plan to stick to a specific type (all alnico 5 hb's for instance). an alnico strat pup isn't going to give you the same clean tones as a ceramic bar style, but it might not be enough for some to notice the difference. avoid stupid cheap pickups (sub $20) pretty much regardless. they might be wound well, made with decent stuff (sometimes, to both), but they're almost never potted, and that's just a bad day. instead of dumping hundreds (or thousands) on pups, pick up a selection (small or large in quantity) of appropriate sized and rated speakers to swap into a cab (and maybe a single or dual cab that allows this easily). you'll get much greater variance in tone. especially for distortion, and your wallet will thank you.
yep, this tells how little hot pickups actually matters in electric guitar. Same pickup and different guitars would be much more something what can be heard.
I'm probably going to get some butthurt replies on this one... This video did a fantastic job of showing casing one thing, once you add any form of distortion, and especially in a mix, your pickups do next to nothing to change your tone at all. If you're watching this video, unless you bought a low end guitar with some real dollar bin pickups in it, they're probably fine. Stop blowing money on set after set of pickups when you can get a set of speakers for your cabinet at the same price, or a new mic, and it will change your tone infinitely more than any set of pickups. I've been playing guitar for over 20 years, thrash, metalcore, deathcore, deathmetal, hardcore, punk you name it. So it's not a matter of "if you're a new player you can't tell the difference" it's literally that there barely is one. Please if you're a new guitar player stop worrying about your pickups. Guitar players hear with their eyes and they see a brand new shiny pair of pickups, or a new amp 4000 dollar amp head that sounds like all the other amp heads because with very few exceptions, they're all modeled after each other, and they see all that expensive gear and they SEE how good it sounds, not bothering to use their ears. The speakers are the one piece of gear you can't see that ACTUALLY change your tone, they are the literal filter that projects whatever you're playing from your guitar, to your ear holes. Invest in some V30's, some greenbacks, whatever speaker fits your tastes. It'll make wayyyy more of a difference.
There's a bit of misinformation out there on this at the moment I think. Amps especially make a huge difference IME. I recently reamped a project for a band using a Triaxis, Tubeworks and 6505 all through the same power amp. Drastically different sounds. Yeah speakers make the biggest overall difference but if you're past the first hurdle of having gear and you've got some good speakers, it's not like the other factors stop mattering. To oversimplify: Speakers = EQ curve. Amp = How the guitar interacts with that EQ curve, how the low end changes across notes, how the transients come across, how fast/slow the response is, how saturated the amp is, etc etc. Imagine the Black Album through a 5150 rather than a Mark - it would have a very different character. Of course the speakers and amp are part of the same instrument so to speak and affect each other dynamically. Check out the Rivera interview where they discuss it in the context of making a load box that acts like a cab. If you take 5 amps that do a similar thing with a similar circuit and throw an overdrive in front then yeah they'll all sound similar. Part of the reason people think amps all sounds the same is they're all playing through post SLO circuit amps that are basically doing the same thing as each other. Pickups make a difference but angling, pole piece height, pickup height, number of pickups, tone knob etc are as big a difference as anything. Wire your bridge direct to jack and take out the other pickups. It'll sound different.
Sure, some minor differences on the isolated tracks, but very hard to detect in the mix. Which means this was a good test - other variables are much more important. Amp, speaker - and the one many don't consider - move your cab around and move yourself around. Room placement is king. Even more importantly - all these pickups sound VERY GOOD. You can spend half a life trying to optimize between them. Or grab a cold one, pick up your guitar, and PLAY....
Everything sounds indistinguishable in the mix. Especially if there is some editing (and RU-vid compression). The point of pickups is they change the sound in the room and the way it feels to play the guitar. A good pickup switch will almost feel like you have a different guitar and inspire you to play certain types of music. Instead of parroting your favorite RU-vidr try switching out some pickups in person. I know it may be hard to believe, but you can experiment with gear and also spend a lot of time practicing.
I’ve noticed that in RU-vid everything kind of sounds the same and it’s even worse when it’s through amp sims. But in person you can tell better. That’s my personal experience cause all my guitars have different pickups
On yt you can't really tell the difference. Totally different case trying them by yoursef. Been playing a invader for years, bought a jackson with the jb/59 combo and the difference is night and day.
The blood stains upon the sacred shroud of metal may have been put there by the EMG 81/85, but its tapestry was woven by the DiMarzio Super Distortion.
The best metal pickup IMO is the Dimarzio X2N. I have 23 guitars all loaded with an assortment of Duncan, Dimarzio, EMG and Fishman pickups but the X2N shines above the rest through my tube amps. Through modellers and plugins the difference isn't noticeable.
Great shootout, the EMG 81 is my absolute favorite and is what I use exclusively. It has an amazing high output razor sharp textureanf tone. While still maintaining warmth where you want it. Out of the passive pickups I have to go with the Invander and Dimenucker. I love the super high output from both pickups without loosing any enunciation. Plus 95 percent of all my favorite guitarist use the EMG 81 and I can hear the reason why while playing them.
They may give you a different feel while playing them, but at hear they sound all the same. Exept for the Hetfield ones and maybe the Dimes, but again nothing that you can't correct with a little of eq. That helped me understanting that I don't need to swap my Duncans, thanks!
By my ears, only 81s and JHs sounds a bit different. All in all they sound like DiMarzios Super Distortion. Thanks a lot for your test ride man. I really appreciate it.
Pickup differences aren't night and day, but they are definitely there. Glenn's claim that all like pickups sound identical is disproved by Keith Merrow's Seymour Duncan Shootout video. I don't know why Glenn is not able to capture tonal differences in pickups in his recordings. But in this video, the reason they all sound the same is clear; that tone is straight ass. No high end definition at all. Just muddy mids. Sounds like his tone knob is turned all the way down, so of course every pickup he plays is going to sound the same.
Yes and no. In this test is noticeable that the signal has a low pass and extreme compression, killing the harmonics and higher frequencies, and also he was only doing palm muting. I mean...the signal looks too processed, and seriously all pickups sound the same. But it was his choice. Particularly...if I spend hundreds or thousands of Euros in a guitar and pickups, I would avoid that kind of processing, because you can make the same sound with a very cheap guitar and it is not necessary spend thousands in equipment. With this huge amount of processing, you can not listen the wood, the pickups, the brand of the guitar...nada. And finally...Seymour Duncan are more low end pickups, and give more lower to medium frequencies. Dinarzios gives more higher frequencies, have more frequency content but less compression.
i have used all the SD pickups here except for the Pegasus and Gus G..for me the SH-8 Invader has a little more bass..the SH-4 JB or TB-4 sound great in multiple guitars..the Black Winters are awesome as well as the SH-13 Dimebucker with the dual rails..for me they produce some great pinch harmonics and when I bend the strings they don't lose as much signal..so overall for me the Black Winters and Dimebucker are what I use mostly for high output bridge pickups..but I like the rest of them too ! I bought a new Jackson SL2Q with the TB-6 Trembucker Mayhem set and that bridge pickup was way too bassy in that guitar so I swapped in the Black Winter and it made a huge difference..but I have used that SD SH-6 Distortion pickup in other guitars and it was perfect... overall excellent video here.
Honestly if you were to tell me it was one pickup the whole time I would believe it. Different picking technique can affect the sound but other than that I really cant telll more than maybe 5 % difference between the two most different.
The takeaway to me is if you're playing high gain guitar, just enjoy playing, and save some dough. If you are in a band and want a attempt to differentiate sonically from your other guitarist I'd say the het set emg stood out the most in clarity (like 5-10% clearer).
They all sound more or less identical. The Hetfield pup sounds like it might have just a slight bit more clarity, but maybe I'm trippin. Need more string action to really be able to tell if there actually is a noticeable difference between pups.
Amazing how little difference there is between them. I'm basically detecting some being a slight bit brighter but not much difference in them being chunkier etc...
Sorry if he said it in the video and I didn't hear it, but what's he running his sound through? If it's digital or a modeler it's probably the reason for such little differences in pickups. I have both and all my different pickups sound mostly the same through my digital setup, but through a tube or solid state amp with some 4x12's you can really hear a difference. It's part of the reason some people like digital so much, it's easier to get a usable sound out of any guitar with because it makes most guitars sound the same, and obviously it's much lighter and smaller. All kickass pickups man thanks for the video 🙂
the dimebucker seems to be the most unique to my ears based on the different samples given here. many of these sound insignificantly different to me, in that with a mix and with that amount of distortion it probably won't make a huge difference which one you pick. but yeah, it depends on each person's ears and being right int front of the sound as opposed to listening over youtube and stuff...
My main rigs are a Gibson SG with SD Distortion (Mayhem set), an Epiphone LP Custom with EMG 81/85 and boost (Kerry King set), and an Epiphone Extura with EMG Jim Roots. They are all exceptional but in the mix they sound virtually identical. The difference is how they respond to the player. Pinched Harmonics are insane and effortless on the Jim Roots, followed closely by the Distortions. The 81/85 set has a different feel to them but that doesn’t mean they are “lesser” or somehow not relevant today. I can play any and be totally happy with sound and performance. Glenn Fricker is right. In the mix there is little difference. The only exception is the Fishman Moderns as they are clearer but have a weird upper mid spike and sound really wimpy in the room. They aren’t “garbage” but they are anemic and “meh” to my ears.
The Nicole guitar is very cool; it's a sweet thing for you to do, but I wonder what Nicole thinks. As for the pickups, on their own there were minute differences (I listened with headphones), but in the mix they sounded EXACTLY THE SAME 🤷♂ This in itself is useful to know.
There is one pickup for metal that for me, stood out among the hundreds I've used over the years but unfortunately they are now extremely rare. It was available from 1990-2000. I went on a tear years ago when production ceased and bought several to hoard for various superstrat projects. If you ever stumble on one, buy it...the Bartolini E90-D. Much higher output than the base E90 which had more of a goosed PAF vibe. The D stood for Distortion and that was a comical understatement. Nothing else is even close. It wasn't some juiced up 20k mosh pit of mush but an incendiary active humbucker with razor sharp definition providing harmonics that would leap off a fretboard. Think EMG 81 that's been wax potted with Red Bull.😂
awesome work. Thanks a ton. i am trying to decide pickups on this guitar rig for what i am writing right now for my 6 string. Have an aftermath in an 8 string.
I'm a drummer, but I have a few LPs that I play. I love metal and have very recently started looking at swapping out the pickups on a couple of my guitars, so I'm stoked I stumbled upon your channel. I like the content and i think if you smooth out the wrinkles in presentation you could get big. This was pretty helpful for someone like me, keep it up. Oh yeah, I think my Gibby is getting EMGs
The emg81 transients are more pronounced in my opinion that on lot of the others. Also the biggest difference between these pickups is in which harmonic is picked up the most.
It’s funny, I’m getting into guitar again after a very long hiatus, and all of the pickups people are reviewing are pretty much the same pickups I was looking at when I played 10 years ago.
There is not a human alive that can tell the difference between any of these in a mix. Mayyyyybe 1 out of 100 might guess when one changed to the next isolated. Unless its single coil vs Humbucker.... pickups make no difference. They are just brilliantly marketed. I've played for more than 20 years. With the effects and gain... you could be playing an Invader or a generic pickup and no one can tell the difference. People who get hung up on their pickups are the same people that cover themselves in brand logo clothing. The pickups dont make you a better player or sound better any more than your Nike gear makes you look any better or in better shape.
Great demo!! I've been playing 33 years, have 27 guitars currently, all set up for metal of course lol, and I'm right there with you on SD and EMG still being my favorites. Nothing like that old school brutally nasty metal tone. Some of this modern stuff is sounding way too pretty and delicate to me lol! 🤘
They sound nearly the same. I play metal about 30 years, live and studio and I use PAF pickups, because strong pickups chug less. Exception is Dimarzio Super Distortion. Just sayin. I had: Invader, Breed, Evo, HB, EVH, Mighty Mite, EMG's etc.
Fishman Fluence Modern are also awesome active pickups, and I have a set of passive DiMarzio Imperium(Dave Davidson signature) and those are gnarly as well. Most of your sound will come from your amp and how you play, though.
If you want your guitar to sound differently, you would have to move the position of the P.U. instead of replacing the P.U. Move it 1/4" (5mm) and it will sound different. The ideal guitar would have a small rail system on which you can move the P.U. Changing P.U.'s (of the same style (single-coil for a single-coil, humbucker for a humbucker)) will only change the output signal a.k.a. volume (If you make weak frequencies louder, you can start hearing them. Giving the illusion of a different frequency response. The same happens in hi-fi (low volume doesn't allow you to hear the full range) Some people will argue that spending $200 on a booootique P.U. HAS to make your guitar sound different... I don't agree.
Very good comparison, steady same riffing and some single notes, mix and guitar track! The more or less more clear differences for me are the EMG HET and 81 plus the SD mayhem distortion (SH-6), which I prefer since years for my own taste. Thx, man!
Incredible video, Jake! I have the Duncan JB, and the EMG 81.. You just can't go wrong with them. *Your Saphue Pickups (from Amazon) demo made me a subscriber to your channel! Awesome job, my friend. PS ..Have you ever tried any GFS pickups? I have bought a few of those as well... I like them.
They all sound pretty much alike with small differences in the high end and more or less flobbyness in the lowend, which frankly could be your general sound. The SD JTF is way to op for the sound youre already running. I could imagine that one would be a lot cooler through a Plexi or JCM800.
SD Nazghul and Sentient are my favorite combo I also like teh Fishman Fluence Modern I LOATHE the EMG 81's I have a Schecter Hellraiser FR and it came with EMGs and I swapped them out for the Fishman's... so much better My Blackjack came with Fullshred and Jb. While I really like them, I swapped out for the Nazghul and Sentient... they are the same tones just MORE
Definitely noticable if you know what to listen for, most of the time the mids stayed the same the only difference was the amount of lows and highs and output, though some were muddy like the sinister gates and the guy g, also the lowe out put ones suckt. I think the minute details could be dialed out by tweaking the map
Did you record a repetitive track with one single guitar and the same pickups? Ultimate troll ❤
8 месяцев назад
For me a mainly passive pup guy the emg 81 and the retro active took the cake. Clarity and oomph in spades there. I have diMarzio d-activators in one guitar and that sounds remarkable similar to the emg 81.
Lets be real, there's not a big difference for pickups with metal, but for me, the "EMG- James Hetfield" sound a bit nicer with however he has his rig setup. Really the only pickup I can pick out of the group with watching the video.
Pickups are a big feel thing.... but one of my favorite pickup is the custom gibson slash burstbucker that's in my gibson slash les paul and the EMG 57 that's in my E ii eclipse!!!! I play through a Orange rockerverb with a dead horse od and sometimes I play through my 5150 iii with no OD and they just slay!!!!
You should try out Lace Alumitones. Namelly the Deathbucker. 0 mud, and razor edge bite. I have them in a few guitars, clean or distortion, they are realy sweet. jmho.
I'm just starting the video, but I can say that the SD Invader bridge pups are my favorites, and I have a JB set in an RG, so I'm looking forward to hearing others here in comparison 🍿 Edit: Damn, that Solar kind of rips! Wasn't expecting quite that good. All hail Ola!
Having a few decades in the game I don't put a huge tag on how they sound...nowadays its visceral...how does it feel in that guitar! P.S....I've never bonded with Dimarzios either!
I barely hear any difference between any. My black winters compared to my EMG's are nights and day. I dont know if it's your recording but mine sound way different.
Sorry but you really can’t tell the difference between them they all sound the same it’s not the pick up that changes the sound it’s the speaker in the amp that changes the sound
I think they matter more than it sounds like in the video. But I think the reason I think that is from Keith Morrows videos. But he was paid to make me think they all have differences. I will say I do not like my pegasus pick up in one of my, guitars. It sounds dull and underpowered.
I cant believe anyone wasted this much time doing this. I could have told you the difference between 9 and 12 gauge strings is greater than any pickup swap for high gain sounds and if you EQ the amp after swapping pickups the difference is very hard to distinguish.
The tone of the rest of the equipment is way too saturated and mid boosted to tell a difference. It's the type of tone I personally despise lol, no offense. This is why the narrative of "pickups don't matter" is pushed nowadays. Thing is not everybody dials their high gain sound like this.
I’m an X2N fan. By the way, in regards to the comments… you can’t demo the feel, and some people’s ears are just better. Pickups do make a difference in sound and feel both. A “small difference” is not “no difference”. Many small differences add up to big differences. I disregard some differences as too small, like battery vs power supply for pedals. I wouldn’t break myself trying every pickup, but when I find one I dislike, I’m changing it. If the one I put in makes me go, “that’s better” I’m keeping it. Pickup tone is pre-equalization before the first gain stage, and that is how it makes a difference. I don’t care one bit if you can’t hear it in a final mix. I can hear it when I’m playing it, and I feel it too. The thing is, I have heard: Pickups make no difference. Wood makes no difference. Tube type makes no difference. Pedal circuits make no difference. Hardware makes no difference. Strings gauge makes no difference. Neck mount type makes no difference. Etc, etc, to infinity. If I add up all the things that people say make no difference because the difference is small, nothing makes a difference. That’s just madness. If it’s all true, all guitars would sound the same and they DON’T. Again, I’m not saying it’s night and day, but rather that the devil is in the details. It all adds up. I’m going with what I hear, what I feel, and what makes me happy. Don’t break yourself getting that, but don’t live with a pickup you cannot stand because somebody else says you should. I suggest everybody else will/should too.