How to A/B pickups?

[mrjamiam]

Thanks to a fellow HFCer's generosity, I have a loaner box of humbuckers to demo for my pseudo-Big Apple Strat modification of a Legacy I picked up fairly recently.

I've wired up a pickguard and have been swapping pickups in and out, but I wonder if I'm getting all that I could get out of their time installed.

I see pickup demos on YouTube, like everyone has, and unless they feature some ace player showing how much EVH sound they can get out of a non-EVH-endorsed pickup (for example ), they usually feature some clean picking and strumming, and some distorted picking and strumming, with maybe a stop in between. But what they're doing is showing off what the pickup can do, and I expect the amp/signal chain has been dialed in to show it off to advantage.

Of course when you decide on a pickup you want to dial in your sound(s), but isn't that a different task from comparing them? What I've been doing is that I set up a couple of amps, let's say Fender-y and Marshall-ish, to edge-of-breakup settings with one of my guitars equipped with moderate-output humbuckers rolled up wide open. I can pick it lightly for cleanish sounds, and bear down for breakup. I can step on a pedal for full-on distortion, too, but that way I'm hearing more of the pedal and less of the pickup, I feel.

Then I plug in the guitar with the demo pickups. I figure that way I can gauge the "hotness" of the pickup - if I have to roll it off to get clean sounds, it's hotter. If I have to roll it down quite a bit, it's quite a bit hotter, etc. I want to leave the amp settings untouched so as to try to narrow down the variables to just the pickup sound, but there are still other variables, pickup height being one of them. I have fooled with setups a bit, but I feel like I should stay away from customizing the setup for each pickup in order to keep the comparison to an apples-to-apples level.

Then I pull the pickguard, solder in new pickups, and try to remember what the last set sounded like compared with the current set.

Am I overcomplicating this process? Am I missing something that should be obvious? Is there a setting that is notoriously hard to get right and therefore separates the best pickups from the rest? How do YOU do it?

ETA: another pesky question.

[cynic]

Here's a 15 minute ho-to by our very own zenmindbeginner:

There's also a great explanation here done by our very own Veatch

[mrjamiam]

Nice, thanks! All I have here for recording is a smartphone, and I don't trust it not to automagically adjust itself. That's a big difference between what I've been trying and the examples above - I'm relying on memory.

In the JB demo clip, I found that I heard the most difference in the low gain lead samples. Similarly, in the Light OD mode of the P90 clips. YMMV, obviously, but I think I'll concentrate there on the task at hand for now.

[mrjamiam]

Thinking about the bother involved with installing/uninstalling/reinstalling pickups to try them in quick succession - isn't there an overly elaborate solution to this seldom-occuring task that I could spend time planning and implementing, instead of practicing?

I think there is. I'm thinking that it's unlikely that I'll get my money back out of the Slammer Series Centauras that I started out with. What if I deepened the route of the humbucker on one of them straight through to the back side of the body, and rigged a non-ferrous bracket to hold a pickup in place when loaded from the back side? I'm thinking that I could extend the wiring out to a pair (or more, for coil-splitting) of screw-down terminals like you see on audio system speaker hook-ups for quick-on, quick-off installation. Should be about a 5 minute turnaround, and the bracket could probably be arranged to allow pickup height adjustment.

I'd have to give up the trem operation, though, probably, and work out a way to fix the bridge.

[scottcald]

I think I read years ago about Michael Schenker having a guitar routed to one side of the pickups and some contact connectors so he could simply slide one out under the strings and slide the new one in. Maybe with some solderless connectors you could do something like that?

[velorush]

Yep, Veatch's comparisons are some of the best I've heard in that they simply show the pickups put through a series of the same passages under the same conditions.

There is no telling how much time he put into these, but the result is nothing short of amazing in its utility.

[mrjamiam]

Yep, Veatch's comparisons are some of the best I've heard in that they simply show the pickups put through a series of the same passages under the same conditions.

There is no telling how much time he put into these, but the result is nothing short of amazing in its utility.

Concur. He definitely paid it forward with that effort!

[The Shark]

For me, there's no easy way. I have to replace them and play the guitar through my rig for about a half hour to figure out how it reacts to my playing. And that's the crux of the matter. The pickup has to sound good through the guitar with me playing it.

I've spent tons of money on pickups that don't like me.

[veatch]

^^^

Yup. That is the biggest downside to the way i did my comparisons. The clips *will* show the difference between pups. But, in the end, it's about getting the entire rig dialed in - as Jay likes to say - the sum of the parts.

The clips i did had mic positioning, pup height, amp settings, etc all the same. but if you had a pup that was too bright, you'll likely adjust for that on the pup setup or on the amp itself.

Then throw in the gig factor. What sounds good by itself doesn't always work in the band. :/

Not to mention that there is no way to measure the "feel" of the guitar when you're listening to someone else's recordings. For example, the ease that i could lead the Lollar Imperials to controllable feedback without squealing was almost magical. Aside from hearing feedback on the recordings, that "feel" is likely not even considered by a listener.

Really the best way to test a pup is to put it in, dial it in, and gig with it learning how far up or back to push the amp for any given song, etc. Figure out how much you love it, and move on to the next pup.

But recorded comparisons are a quick start. I think comparing an SD hot P90 to a Fralin gives a pretty clear difference - hopefully a head start to make the pup selection a *little* easier.

Anyways, thanks for all of the kind words above. I have some other pups i do want to record and compare.Maybe sometime over the winter.

[gorch]

To prevent that memory thing, the only way to come around is recording. It is becoming complicated if you don't want or can invest in the proper tools.

But even with proper recording equipment, the difference between pickups may be hard to spot.