Is Glen right?

A lot of us old Sneapsters interacted with him before his YT channel kicked off. He's an okay dude. I mean that sincerely. I just don't buy everything he's selling. This time around he's trying to nullify the nuances between pickups. Next month he'll be trying to sell you "the best clippar in the world!!!!" ... which in all likelihood amounts to nothing more than:

for sample in buffer:
if sample > threshold:
sample == threshold
else:
sample == BASSISTS ARE SHITE!
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I own cheap guitars and expensive ones, the only thing I need to justify my purchasing choices is the enjoyment I have playing with them and no asshat YouTuber is going to take that away. Not even a teeny tiny little bit, no matter how much he compares my favorite piece of gear to an Ipad or whatever.

I already explained my exact reasoning for calling this stupid and it was specifically with high gain and a pickup change that facilitated what I wanted to record much better. I’ll repeat it in case it was lost- I was recording a trash metal song at a high tempo, I had the tone dialed in how I wanted it to sound so any alteration of that tone was now taking away from what I actually wanted. I start recording and the JB just wasn’t tight enough to do what I was doing, that’s not an uncommon statement about JB’s. Just today on this forum someone said “If you’re looking for a tighter JB-ish pickup…” It’s that simple. Sure, I can start tweaking other sh*t to make it work, getting further away from the tone I really dug and wanted to use, where the same problem would pop up again in the future, or I can just change the pickups and never deal with it again.

Now if there weren’t wide characteristic changes between pickups, I’d say “Sure, Glen’s right”, but there’s a huge amount of difference between a PAF and a modern high gain humbucker. I have a Suhr SSH+ humbucker that sounds f*cking horrible with high gain tones because it’s so underpowered. If someone is just swapping between several high output pickups all aimed at playing high gain metal, then yeah, the differences are far less apparent and again, I’d agree with him. But that’s not how things are at all.
 
DrewJD82 said:
I own cheap guitars and expensive ones, the only thing I need to justify my purchasing choices is the enjoyment I have playing with them and no asshat YouTuber is going to take that away. Not even a teeny tiny little bit, no matter how much he compares my favorite piece of gear to an Ipad or whatever.

I already explained my exact reasoning for calling this stupid and it was specifically with high gain and a pickup change that facilitated what I wanted to record much better. I’ll repeat it in case it was lost- I was recording a trash metal song at a high tempo, I had the tone dialed in how I wanted it to sound so any alteration of that tone was now taking away from what I actually wanted. I start recording and the JB just wasn’t tight enough to do what I was doing, that’s not an uncommon statement about JB’s. Just today on this forum someone said “If you’re looking for a tighter JB-ish pickup…” It’s that simple. Sure, I can start tweaking other sh*t to make it work, getting further away from the tone I really dug and wanted to use, where the same problem would pop up again in the future, or I can just change the pickups and never deal with it again.

Now if there weren’t wide characteristic changes between pickups, I’d say “Sure, Glen’s right”, but there’s a huge amount of difference between a PAF and a modern high gain humbucker. I have a Suhr SSH+ humbucker that sounds f*cking horrible with high gain tones because it’s so underpowered. If someone is just swapping between several high output pickups all aimed at playing high gain metal, then yeah, the differences are far less apparent and again, I’d agree with him. But that’s not how things are at all.
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Yeah I have no precious views on pickups, speakers or tonewood. I love cheap stuff if it does the job \m/
 
laxu said:
But Glenn's "this thing does not matter" videos do give validation to people who believe that having an expensive guitar or amp is not worth the money. Same as those Jim Lill "where does tone come from" videos that are often not particularly scientific and tend to make wrong conclusions.
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I'm sure your evidence's counter to Jim Lil's will be forthcoming right?
 
pipelineaudio said:
This is all based on a strawman, glenn never said he doesn't like expensive gear....thats a strawman you guys made in order to cope with defending your purchases
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As you can see at my post here, one of my favorite guitars is a DIY I made with a $78 neck and a $49 body that I purchased from Ali Express (pic below), while I got rid of a Tom Anderson, 2 Suhrs, 2 JEMs, 1 JS2450, Fender Jeff Beck, and other expensive pieces because they did not have appeal or mojo to me or, in some cases, they had a dead note. So no, I do not have any need to defend my expensive purchases to you or to anyone. I simply get rid of the gear that I do not enjoy, and I keep what I enjoy and sounds good, regardless of its price.

00.jpg
 
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Piing said:
As you can see at my post here, one of my favorite guitars is a DIY I made with a $78 neck and a $49 body that I purchased from Ali Express (pic bellow), while I got rid of a Tom Anderson, 2 Suhrs, 2 JEMs, 1 JS2450, and other expensive pieces because they did not have appeal or mojo to me or, in some cases, they had a dead note. So no, I do not have any need to defend my expensive purchases to you or to anyone. I simply get rid of the gear that I do not enjoy, and I keep what I enjoy and sounds good, regardless of its price.

View attachment 3933
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mmmm hungry....

1674517430228.png
 
pipelineaudio said:
I'm sure your evidence's counter to Jim Lil's will be forthcoming right?
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As an example to his "only pickups matter" video, his "air guitar" was nothing more than a big headstock and body - two tables.

I feel like he's the kind of guy who takes a premise, starts experimenting without reading previous knowledge on the matter then turns it into an entertaining video.
 
pipelineaudio said:
That isn't exactly a counter, just confirmation.
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So, personal experience is not valid unless your share it on youtube?

And, for shits and giggles, any unpotted low output PAF-style pick up will squeal like a MF when used in a high gain context even with moderately low monitoring levels, and sometimes even just in the general vicinity of the output transformer of a guitar amp.
That will give you substantially different results to tape than, say an EMG 81.

The proof is in the pudding.
And I vastly prefer having pudding over watching youtube...
 
woody said:
So, personal experience is not valid unless your share it on youtube?

And, for s***s and giggles, any unpotted low output PAF-style pick up will squeal like a MF when used in a high gain context even with moderately low monitoring levels, and sometimes even just in the general vicinity of the output transformer of a guitar amp.
That will give you substantially different results to tape than, say an EMG 81.

The proof is in the pudding.
And I vastly prefer having pudding over watching youtube...
Click to expand...
I'll see your anecdata and raise you one anecdata. I agree that even if it's on YouTube it's not scientific. Pickups and guitar gear aren't some crazy complicated thing though. If the pickup manufacturers would just post the frequency response and the actual output with respect to some common metric that'd be great.

Sounds like you're talking about pickups sensing some EM.

Comparing a passive an active is missing the point a bit.

Do different pickups change the sound, yea, it's basic physics. Is it the most efficient way to do so? Hell no. Does it matter to a person who likes guitar as a hobby and enjoys buying gear sure.

If you enjoy swapping pickups go for it, just don't try to convince me there's some magical thing that only that pickup can do because that's just bs.
 
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