Thank you to everyone for watching and engaging with my latest video! Being as there's over 800 comments currently (and a lot of them are just the same thing over and over again) I figured I'd leave some responses here in a pinned post. 1. The title and thumbnail's language was too strong and that was a legit criticism. I was have a bit of fun and being cheeky and pushed the envelop too far. After some thought I've decided to change it to language more in line with the tone of the video. While I still feel the same way and I do believe he's being dishonest and misleading deliberately, I obviously wasn't in the room and can't prove what happened. He could just be a bad engineer who dialed a crappy guitar tone....incompetency is a possibility too! 2. If you can't hear the differences in the clips then we have nothing to talk about; it's a non-starter. I can hear them, and you say you can't.....so we're done here. 3. If you can hear the changes but think they're small enough to fall in line with Glenn's original point, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. I obviously disagree...that's literally the whole point of the video. I think the examples and rational given here speaks for itself and if you actually watch the video with an open mind, you'll get what I'm saying. At the end of the day you can come to whatever conclusion you want. 4. My 'steel manning' section accurately represents Glenn's opinion...that's why it's called a steel man. "The amp colors the tone so completely that you BASICALLY can't hear any difference" is the same as saying 'there's subtle differences but they're tiny'. I just didn't say it the way you wanted me to say it, it's an argument about semantics and it's silly. That just about does it I think! Thanks again to everyone who's watched and engaged with the video...the positive, the negative and the incomprehensible, I'm thankful for it all. To the 600+ new subs, HELLO! I post new videos every Monday at 9am EST and have new original music and other great videos on the way for the spring and summer and think you'll really dig em. Rock on!
Because YOU can hear the differences between the pickups doesn't amount to a pinch of shit. It's us that matter, the consumer, the amateur recording guitar player. I'm thinking you proved Glenn correct and got a little upset.
About half way through it became very clear you missed the point. Glen has been very clear with how and why he makes his experiments. Don't have to agree with everything but calling him dishonest is misleading. How a guitar plays matters more to a player than an engineer. He said he was only testing how it sounds so that was clear. He spent a few minutes comparing levels matched and unmatched so that was also very clear. To this day he recognizes the differences between pickups, but the point is he wouldn't spend money upgrading pickups because of how limited of a difference they make... boy does it feel weird to justify Glen
Ok.... You say pickups make only a SMALL DIFFERENCE.... Well, that's cool, they're a SMALL PRICE.... I put in a Duncan DISTORTION for 100$ basically.... I am SORRY but if you aren't willing to spend 100 for a small improvement maybe you should rethink even playing and recording!!!!
This is an argument with no true conclusion because I think the people arguing are in such different listening environments. A guy sitting at his DAW with headphones strapped on or even listening thru studio monitors is simply going to hear differently than a guy sitting in an open room using a Marshall halfstack. There are too many variables to harness to do a true experiment that everyone can share.
I barely heard a difference that mattered in your A/B clips. He didn’t do it for cheap clips. He’s saying focus on songwriting and being prepared. He’s also talking about saving young players money. He never said there was NO difference. His point was the differences with different pickups, especially when recording hi-gain metal, are small. I agree with Glenn. To me, your video proved Glenn’s point. His core audience are home recording musicians like yourself and even if he level matched or did other tricks, THIS proves that the home musician can dial in a great tone without expensive pickups.
EXACTLY! How or why are everyone missing this point, especially since he reiterates it every time someone says"hey...i do hear a difference" Glen right you wrong on this one;)
I was thinking the same thing. If anything, this video proves Glenn's point even more. I mean, the guy if the video even admits that the reason he's able to hear the subtle differences is because he's been playing and recording professionally for 15 years. For most guitarists, if you were to do a blind test, nobody would be able to hear any noticeable differences between similar pickups, different tonewoods and amp tubes. Glenn's entire point is to stop worrying too much about what guitar wood to buy, which pickups to get,etc... Stop being a tone snob, and just practice your instrument.
Glenn is a great sound engineer but a very amateur guitarist. His advice is great for beginners but its like saying to a young athlete to focus on training instead of wasting money on expensive running shoes, ok good advice but at a professional level you absolutely need quality footwear, it would laughable to turn up for a 100 metre sprint in a pair of converse all stars!
Glen is not a guitarist. Twenty years into guitar the dude does not even know why pinch harmonics are easier on one guitar and he's struggling with the other) The man's myth busting videos are a joke. And he does not hear the tonal the difference even if there is one. If Glen really wants to save my money tell what the diffs are and how to use them. Unsubbed from that clown.
@@murrayguitarpickups9545 This post brought to you by Seymour Duncan. Sound great by spending money! Seriously, Glenn's argument was and is don't spend money where you don't have to. If you've bought new speakers, and you've bought new amps, and you've bought new software, and you've tried all the settings, then...maybe pickups will give you the tonal change you need. But it's so slight that it won't matter. Also, back-to-back gold medalist marathon runner in the Olympics (Abebe Bikila) ran barefoot, so metaphor point debunked too?
Maybe I'm deaf or something, but I'm listening with high quality headphones and I think the differences are quite subtle. Yes there is A difference, but Glenn never said there wasn't. It's just subtle enough that for a lot, if not most, musicians it wouldn't warrant spending a lot of money on pickups and would be better spend on things that do make substantial differences to your sound.
Glenn’s point was not there being zero difference but rather if $200 is worth turning the gain knob or bumping the EQ a bit. He also acknowledged the output difference. Glenn is trying to save guitar players time and money. And TBH dude? I just didn’t hear 3 figures of difference in any of your tones man and I’ve been playing metal for 25 years. I know some dudes get a kick out of customizing and that’s cool. If subtle differences get your rocks off great. You can sit there and say “your ears aren’t as good as mine” but also to Glenn’s point are you going to say that to the vast majority of people who will listen to your track who don’t hear the “subtle” difference in mids? They won’t care man. It’s great the 5 guitar players who have superior ears will he’s those nuances and if that’s your goal? Awesome. But to an average listener? They ain’t gonna care man.
@bloomtikbloom9593 interestingly enough I wonder if you would have had he not shown you what he was playing as he played it. Our eyes fool us into hearing what we think we will hear. A lot of Glenn’s tests were blind or purposefully misleading. If I tell you “this pickup will be brighter than that one” our minds will tell us it’s true a lot of the time. Either way I listened on my monitors and didn’t hear a night and day difference.
So $300 for better pickups = small gain in tone quality. More money for better recording equipment here and there = small gains in tone quality too. Add them all up through the chain and perhaps there is a big difference in tone quality.
Also for someone who professionally records or at least is at the same talent level as an engineer can make almost anything sound "good". So that can be misleading as well. Ola does a good job of showing that. Most players are bedroom players. It's a hobby for most and there's a big difference between standing in front of a stack and hearing it on a professionally recorded video. Maybe because I grew up learning and playing by ear but as someone who has multiple guitars with the same pickups but different woods/weights I can tell you I definitely notice the difference. I guess maybe it's just something that comes with time. Granted I've been playing for going on 16 years off and on.
Also some pickups have very distinct tones.. The Invader Neck p/u comes to mind as being one of those. This feels like one of those bandwagons people jump on like Tone Snobs, Tube vs Whatever.. People just like to dig their heels in and gatekeep for some reason.
When you say that we need expensive speakers to hear the subtle differences between humbuckers, you're saying exactly what Glenn said, but in other words. However, he went further and argued that they are not worth the extra money and that there are others faster and cheaper ways to improve your tone.
Sorry, it's all sounded more or less the same, there is subtle differences, but not a game changer. The pick-ups won't make your performance stand out more that what a little EQ would have done.
I think that's kinda the point with all this there is a difference none of them sound bad each of them will do just fine its whatever your ear likes best ultimately they will all work and none sound bad but they do sound different and it's whatever sounds best to you
They'd have all sounded more similar if there was any effort to match levels and overall EQ ahead of the distortion. Yes, you can hear differences, but it's not at all clear that you should change pickups to get the tone you prefer. And that's one of the reasons Glenn says you should record a clean tone so that it can be reamped---even if you use the same amp or amp sim, you can get different tones by changing the EQ going into it.
And therein lies the problem, most people just don't have good ears. I've been playing for over 40 years, I have tinnitus and I can still easily hear the differences, I'm also an ear player and can learn songs faster than most, even if you use tabs {i've NEVER used tabs, couldn't be bothered}.... I see shitloads of guitarists banging on in these video's about "can you put up tabs", or "what tuning are you using", if you can't work that out by ear in a couple of seconds then you have no right commenting on tone, your ears just aren't that good....
Not a fan of Glenn but as an engineer I agree with him. Fundamentally what is wrong with the design of experiments you content creators make is that it is all based on your perception not in any measurable way.
Neuroscientists like Dr. Dan Levitin have already demonstrated that human perception can most definitely be measured, particularly when it comes to audio and music. The problem is no one on TH-cam is qualified to do it.
Agreed. There is no scientific method going on here, and he outright lies that Glenn Fricker said that there are no subtle differences. I went and watched his video. He says it as clear as day.
@@jsullivan2112 the point is it isn’t your perception that needs to be measured it is the audio output like using a frequency response analyzer. My point is all these test are based on a preconceived notion a person has and placebo. I don’t know Levitan but non STEM sciences I find rather flaky.
@@bluwng Pickup A. needs to be measured to see if there’s more energy around high mid range frequencies than pickup B, yes. Perception of whether someone can hear that? Absolutely not. It’s no different than how a hearing test is performed; volume sensitivity at defined frequencies: Can a person hear 1khz at 50db? Or does it have to be turned up to 53db? None of us hear all frequencies at the same amplitude. So someone could hear differences in a pickup someone else doesn’t. It can definitely be measured. You can also do double-blind testing to draw a consensus between listeners across various demographics the same as audio engineers do when developing the latest lossy audio compression formats, to see if the average listener can tell, or care. We can see if people can identify pickups or styles, without a bias of their own or one being created for them (Glen’s vintage guitar trick). There’s definitely measurable science behind it. Like I said, the problem is no one is doing this shit but either pretending they are (like Glen Fricker) or saying it can’t be done.
There's nothing non-STEM about psychoacoustics. You can do very good experiments about what kinds of differences people do or don't actually notice, and what kinds of preferences they actually have when they listen to things without knowing whether the sounds come from an expensive guitar or a cheap one. Unfortunately doing double-blind experiments with large groups of people (to get statistical significance) is a real pain in the ass, so less of it gets done than simple measurements of things like the resonant frequencies of bodies and necks, which people might or might not notice, and might or might not have a preference about if they do notice. By the way, Dan Levitin isn't just a music perception guy. He also wrote the book A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking with Statistics and the Scientific Method. I suspect he knows what he's doing.
Pickups matter if you play clean. Glenn always clarifies that his channel is all about Metal and distorted guitar tones, where the distortion becomes the guitar's tone. But even clean, you gotta remember, except for EMGS, Lace, and Fluence, they are all just magnets and wire wrapped around a bobbin. There's no sonic magic attached to name brands. Whatever differences a pick up might make, are easily compensated with tone controls or EQ. Its not a question of whether pickups differ in sound, it's a matter of whether it's worth extra money when you could just turn a knob and save a hundred bucks.
Go listen to his newest test. Sure there’s a difference but you couldn’t tell it in a mix, and it’s in the range of just being eq’d to change it. Pickups are simply a waste of money after a certain point. My Pacifica 112j has a terribly muddy pickup in the room, but when mic’d it’s ever so slightly different from my Kramer with a Duncan JB. Now, if I buy a set of 40 dollar Wilkinson pickups, I can get an almost identical sound to the Duncan JB. If you absolutely want to swap pickups, just don’t be dumb, don’t go for name brands.
I think a lot of the point is that guitarists get obsessed with the wrong things. Pickups (let alone body wood and other nonsense like that) don't count for shit with high-gain sounds compared to your mic/cab/amp, yet guitarists fixate on them far more. Even the output of your pickups can effectively be changed by just tweaking your gain knob slightly, or if you want a slightly different EQ curve.. use an EQ pedal, it's a hell of a lot less money and effort than changing your pickups. Honestly, the only reason I'd change out my pickups these days is if they were excessively noisy or I was changing them to an entirely different type.
It’s people that want to feel accomplished by purchasing rather than practicing. To put it simply, guitarists are genuinely just stupid, they want the short term gratification that comes from new stuff, rather than the long term gratification that comes with practice.
"Sizeable difference"? No it isn't. What's more, is that people who understand how electronics work know there is very little difference between one pickup and another. First off, a pickup is just the most basic of inducers. It's a thin copper wire coiled around metal poles with a magnet spanned across them. It's not very complex. You can make these in your basement. The more windings you add, the more output you get. The feature of humbuckers are the two coils running in opposite phase that cancels out noise while adding output. Also, the location of the pickup affects the tone more more than the pickup itself because it changes how close they are to the vibration nodes of the strings. The thing about our ears is that louder audio sounds different despite being the same source because of the way our ears are more sensitive to frequencies that occupy the vocal range (Imagine that!). Getting louder makes those frequencies at the extremes of our audible range more detectable. Thus, it "sounds" different. We also change our perception of sound based on what we see. There is so much psychological influence on what we think we hear. For example, when you are told that playing a vinyl record backwards reveals a secret message. You're told what the message is and, because you were told it's there, you "hear" it because your brain is trying to find patterns in randomness that match what you were expecting. What differences there might be are so inconsequential since the audience has a minuscule chance of noticing the difference after you've filtered it through your OD, EQ pedal, preamp, amp EQ, FX, speakers, and microphone. The takeaway is, that pickups have the least influence on the sound of the guitar. People who disagree are just trying to cope with the cognitive dissonance of spending money they didn't need to. If you include an EQ (Such as the BOSS GE-7 EQ) prior to everything else in you signal chain, you can easily fake the sound of any pickup. Pickups just aren't the best investment when trying to achieve a particular tone. Also, your opinion is not valid data. It is not testable. It is your subjective perception and nobody can refute your subjective perceptions because subjective means only you can know your own perceptions. That's a poor foundation for an argument. Finally, the Strandberg and the Ibanez sound exactly the same. The whole point of the pickup myth is designed to make you believe that you need as many different pickups as you can get because they sell more product that way. The same goes for tone wood. It's all just an effort to invent reasons for people to buy shit they don't need.
Thing is, with the exception of Filtertrons and Fishman Fluences, nearly every humbucker on the market is a subtle variation on the same basic PAF design we've been using for going on 70 years. Of course they sound similar, they're litterally the same design! You can swap out magnets and you can change the number of winds, but these are two of the subtlest changes you can make in pickup design -and the 'humbucking' phase cancelation also cancels out a lot of this nuance. As long as it doesn't sound like mud, you might want to look at the rest of your rig before swapping them out. Now us single coil players get a lot more variety to play around with. Compare a Tele bridge to a strat to a P-90 to a Charlie Christian to a gold foil to a lipstick tube, I bet you'll hear the difference at any gain level. And even within those categories you get a lot more nuance from changes in winding and magnets without that pesky phase cancelation.
He isnt lying though. He is just saying that the difference isnt as big as people think withing the same types of pickups. Same goes for tonewood, which guitar companies seriously try to push down the buyer, which is simply not the case. A guitars body is way to small and not thick enough to have that big of a difference (it is a part of the tone, just not that much, less than 1% overall). I have found 2 studies, one uses real guitars and one uses big blocks of wood, guess which one actually made the bigger difference...yeah, the latter one, the first example is and I quote "the difference is so small that it can be cosidered negligable". Thats Glenns point, is it really worth investing thousands in tonewoods when its almost negligable. Of course, Glenns next point is - "if its so noticeable and everyone knows it, then can you recognize them in a mix?" Its been years for some things, nobody has done it succesfully. His whole point is to stop worrying and play the damn guitar, pickups wont make you better and it wont necesaraly yield the results you were hoping for after investing HUNDREDS of dollars. People get way too stuck up in his internet persona and cant understand what the guy is actually saying.
Buddy, I think you think you got him on something here, but you really didn't. Glenn never made the statement that "pickups don't matter at all." What he did say was that pickups matter so much less in the signal chain than we guitarist like to think. SPEAKERS, MIC, AND MIC POSITION matter exponentially more than the pickups or the guitars tonewood (whatever that is). Mostly what you hear in difference is output. Yes, a guitar with higher output pickups will hit the front of the amp harder than one with less output resulting in more "gain."But, there's a knob on most amps/pedals that can compensate for that. At the end of the day, his claim is, if you're going to go tone chasing, you're better off starting with the speaker and working your way back rather than changing a million pickups while keeping a cheap line 6 speaker in your cab and expecting the results to change significantly.
I didn't say he said they don't matter, he said they make close to no difference as I said in my steel manning section. Your comment misrepresents what I say in the video. Nice try.
Watching this video reminded me of that TH-camr who posted the "10 Overrated Guitarists" video and how he tried to explain how Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, etc. were overrated players. I think his channel has also stalled around 5k subs. Lol.
I despise those channels. It's just making bold, controversial statements in an attempt to drum up clicks. It's just pure clickbait. I refuse to click on any of those videos after I watched a couple.
Great video and great playing! Listening back to what Glenn actually stressed in his video many times is that there IS a slightly noticeable difference, but then he asks whether those differences are really worth investing hundreds of dollars for new pickups when you can actually „correct“ the differences with basic EQ moves. Also, let‘s be honest, most tonal differences completely disappear when swapping out the IR anyhow. But again, very well done video and fantastic playing! 🤘
well said. i was gonna say this too but seems many stated this already. Semi annoyed CLICK BAIT is why i clicked this video, glenn already says this......id rather save my money.
Fuck EQ moves, you get "your over sound" by using your tools, less tools = less time, less money. My peers don't sound like me and I don't sound like them., Not only is it the fingers, my vibrato...but it is the WHOLE package. GLENNN is pandering to the poor as bedroom player/producer who up until recently could barely play guitar and has never produced real talent who has made a real following. When using clean tones there is a huge difference is tones and that gap closes has you add more OD or Distortion. If you compare pickups on clean amp channels you can obviously hear the difference.
I took that away from Fricke's video, but I met more than one person who named the video as a proof for how pickups all sound the same. And that's no accident, Glenn presents his conclusion that there is some difference as if there was no difference. Obviously, Spectre is not a gear channel for the shopping musician, it's a production channel for audio engineers working with high gain metal. So his perspective that any difference which you can erase on the rack is irrelevant is on point with what his channel is about. Not buying a second guitar and instead learning EQ is the appropriate way for a studio to save money.
@@BlommaBaumbart i agree, honestly i have a ton of respect for Glenn, this dude......not so much. seemed like he was at times just pooping on him. kinda low key hoping glenn does a response video lol i wonder what glenn will say, people are probably like GLEEEEEEEEEEEEEENN!!!
It never stops to amaze me how clowns like Glen aim their videos at deaf noobs who most frequently do not have a guitar) HB hype does no longer pay off, does it) It never crossed Glen's mind that people might have more than one guitar and more than one pickup. Having different tonal and playing capabilities is probably why that happens, at least normally. No? Why does not Glen shoot a few of his compressors to tell the difference? Would he be able to tell which one was used in the mix? The truth is, nobody gives a flying f about this, no quick buck to be made this way
Fist clip-these guitars don't sound sooooo different to give a fuck. Full mix---THESE ARE DIFFERENT MUSIC PIECES:. The third one - I CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE IN LEAD TONES. I have my personal issues with Glens statements, but your examples show, that Glen is right
Glenn gets misquoted a LOT. I would be yelling and angry too, lol. He mentions a LOT that he knows his playing isn't GREAT and that he spends lots of time practicing. Watching t.v.....practicing. Probably sitting on the "throne"...practicing. He is "practicing what he preaches". The pickup thing...man so many words put in his mouth, it is a good thing it IS that big. He never says there is no difference. In fact he mentions there IS subtle differences and if your ears are THAT good then good for you spend that $. Most people aren't recording professional music, most aren't going to do professional level editing. He is simply trying to save money for the majority of people. Is it worth $100s to get that subtle difference to a bedroom player? Is spending $100s going to make you sound better? No, no its not. THATS all he is saying. Thank you for being cool a d approaching this with respect. Good on ya.
I think you might have actually proved Glenn's point in this video, and even if you have to adjust your Amp to get the tone to match even closer it still stands that you absolutely didn't need different pickups to get that tone
I struggle to see what this video is for? It proved everything Glenn says, then he attacks him. Bad video imo it just popped up but I won’t be watching more.
@@travisspaulding2222 and you just proved the point yet again. If all you have to do is tweak the EQ on your amp a little, why put money into a new set of pickups?
@@travisspaulding2222 Anyone who actually watched Glenn's video heard him CLEARLY say that there is a difference between output levels, and a tiny change in tone...his point was it can easily be adjusted with minimal effort in post, and is negligible in a full mix, particularly in high gain metal rhythm.
@@chuckelator Because when I play live, I don't want to have to tweak knobs just to get the "same" tone. In the studio, tweak away, but in a live setting it isn't practical. I use certain guitar for certain songs in my set list based on tuning and how the piclups come across. For example, I love DiMarzio Evos, but I recently switched my Evo bridge with a Super Distortion because I wanted the extra output, and the Evo was significantly thinner sounding than the V8s I have in my other Ibanez guitars. I was finding myself having to tweak knobs on stage and when you're playing a 45 minute set, Grabbing a guitar, making sure it's in tune, and then having to make sure it sounds correct is a big waste of time, not to mention, I have to make finer adjustments in the beginning of a song because once everyone is playing (ie in the mix) it usually needs an additional adjustment. The solution? A $90 pickup, and it sits pretty well along with my other guitars. Not exact, but not a noticeable difference, so I grab the guitar, check the tuning, and I'm ready to go, and my singer can stop working on his tight 2 on stage waiting for me to be ready to go.
As a person who owns several USA Jackson RR1’s with several types of pickups. They all sound pretty similar. The most notable is the EMG’s when it comes to gain.
After watching this I still agree with Glenn. Is it a noticeable difference? Sure. Is it a significant difference? Not really? Is it worth spending $300 on a new set of pickups because it's going to make you sound "better." I would wager no. Which is the entire point Glenn was trying to make. I'll always say, the best pickups are the ones that are in your guitar. The pickups that came with my $77 DiY kit guitar sound phenomenal, all I'm sayin.
@@murrayguitarpickups9545 the point is what the difference is after a mix. it is important to remember the people who listen to your music won’t always be other musicians who appreciate these tonal differences. it’s not going to sound like how it does physically being in the room with the amp. it is also important to note that when songs go through production, a lot of the low end is going to be cut out. however it’s obvious a p90 is going to be different from a jm pickup, and a jm pickup is going to be different from a single coil. and of course a stacked humbucker will be different from a traditional humbucker. most humbuckers have the same construction and different materials which make slight differences. this would probably only make sense in live settings where your amp isn’t mic’d, like in house shows. but if your amp is mic’d your kind of back in the same dilemma where your tone really only comes from what mic is being used, mic placement and your speakers and amp tone.
I had to A/B the two guitars several times before I picked up any differences..if I was playing one guitar, unplugged and plugged in the other I really doubt I wouldve noticed a difference..and I definitely wouldve adjusted the input gain on the interface for the other guitar. Glenn was specifically talking about high gain metal rhythm tones, and his thing has always been to dissuade people from getting caught up in gear and to focus on playing. I think he's just trying to really say to people its not gonna make a real difference in your metal mixes if you shell out the $300+ for a new set of pups in your guitar.
Definitely not true. Some pickups are muddy as shit and it’s obvious, like most Ibanez branded stock pickups. Fusion Edge come to mind, as well as Power Sound. They’ll make an awesome riff sound terrible.
I definitely agree that we need to, as artist, write the best we can. especially with what we got. But I will also say that there is so much that can go into sound. there has been times where I could play a riff on one of my guitars, not feel it, and pick up another one of my guitars and it just sounds and feel better. Pickups definitely matter, especially when you're chasing a specific sound. a lipstick pick up will sound 100% different than a fishman fluence. regardless of gain. all that said, I wish you happy jamming Matt! keep rocking brother.
@@DravenZordI just record with what I have. A $200 Pawn shop Jackson an $80 Jr kit. And a Tascam. New strings/heads and tuned up- mic'ed-up. It works. I've updated my gear since my last post. Regardless, plug it to the Marshall and just play.
@@THE-RED-LETTER-PROJECT that’s awesome though man! I definitely wasn’t trying to debate. As long as you’re enjoying what you’re playing, I think that’s all that matters.
I'm with Glenn. Regarding any high gain music, full sized humbuckers will make very little noticeable difference between the different high quality ones out there. If we're talking other humbucker designs like filtertron, firebird pickups, strat-sized humbuckers etc then that's a different story and they'll sound radically different due their smaller magnetic field or output level. I'll even add PAF low output humbuckers to that list. The IRs or how you mic your amp will make a much much bigger difference in the mix when it comes to heavy music. Stop falling for the marketing of manufacturers.
I'm of the belief that most metal guitars (or at least what Glenn is talking about) are using active pickups which, yeah, the difference in sound is negligible. This is one of those pointless "quantify art" so we can train an AI to replace us all.......were barking up the wrong tree
One of the things that sounds different with mini humbuckers or (even narrower) strat-single-coil-sized humbuckers is that it puts a comb or notch filter in a different place. The spacing between humbucker coils listens to the string at two different points and that creates a comb filter that starts at fairly high frequencies. For low frequencies, it doesn't matter much because if the string is going up and down over one coil, it'll be going up and down almost as much over the other, and theyll add constructively. But vibrations that are going up over one coil when they're going down over the other tend to cancel out, so high harmonics can interfere with themselves and cancel out, killing frequencies whose characteristic string length (the amount of string between two statioinary nodes) is the same as the coil spacing, or a multiple of it. That comb filter is different for each string, depending on the frequency represented by that size piece of the string. The closer the coils are to each other, the shorter the pieces of each string that matters. For most strings, only one or two teeth of the comb filter matter, because it starts at high frequencies, so it mostly acts like notch filter. That notch filter will be at a higher frequency for narrower humbuckers like minis or especially strat single-coil-width side-by-side humbuckers. (It doesn't apply to stacked "noiseless" humbuckers, where both coils are under the same point on the string. A lot of people talk about the difference between single-coils and normal humbuckers, but I've never seen any good comparisons with the sounds of narrower humbuckers. I've also never seen anyone mention that all normal-sized humbuckers have a notch in the frequency response, at a different frequency for each string, but both expensive and cheap humbuckers have the same notches in the same places, because they have the same coil spacing. That's one of the reasons cheap and expensive humbuckers tend to sound pretty similar. Their overall frequency response curves may be a bit different (and likely EQable to reduce differences) but those characteristic notches in the frequency response are the same.
This is the first video I’ve ever disliked, such a narcissist and quite frankly the comparison you did was lack luster at best. The question should not be “does guitar A and B sound different at all?” albeit “can I make guitar A and B sound similar?”
If I recall correctly, he indeed stated that he matched the levels. He had to, because otherwise the input signal would clip when using an active pickup and he recorded a passive pickup before! Also it’s a psychological fact, that the louder tone sounds better/different. He also didn’t play around witch active tone control ( which you can’t do on a passive). I don’t know whether you watched his video or you only read the title. I think he’s way more honest than you. When you go into physics and look how a pickup is made, it should be clear that there is very little room for difference. They are copper coils fetching a disturbance in a magnetic field and putting this out 1:1, like a microphone does with airpressure. But a microphone has a coil plus a membrane and there can be differences. In a pickup you can alter the copper convolutions, but this would only make them hotter or colder. There is nothing more about pickups.
If you have to use reference monitors to hear the difference the vast majority of your audience will never notice the difference. Most people listen to music with standard headphones. Differences in tone from pick up to pick up. Sure, in a full mix in the car or on your earpods you aren't gonna notice.
Why doesn't Glenn ask a pickup winder? I've made pickups that sound hugely different from one another.....stay tuned I'm making a set of pickups to prove this point
Thanks for watching, that I totally agree on! Any one who's overcharging for their product needs to be called out. I've got a video coming out next week showing a super slimy $700 price increase from Strandberg coming out next week. Rock on!
Mayhem pickups are pricy too, but they are worth it. I have china made and American made pickups. American made pickups sound so much better than their doppelgangers from over yonder. Also, there is a commitment to quality and care, not to mention but I will, the pride and reputation that goes into it. Seymour Duncan is a great American pickup company. In the 80's all the way till today, they are still the go to company by the pros in the music industry. It really is preference. I took a chance and got me some Mayhems for one of my guitars and what a difference over the stock Jackson pickups. It became a whole new guitar.
@commonsensehill372 make sure that you're not confusing the fresh strings with better sounding pickups. Adjusting the pickup height is also important.
7:27 "as if he manipulated" your assuming he manipulated the gain. Dont make an accusation with out any proof. Thats DISHONEST of you to knowingly call him dishonest with out any proof he did what you are claiming...yea i dont need to watch anymore of this weirdos video.
He actually did not say pickups don’t effect tone. You are completely misrepresenting his position. He said that pickups don’t have a “massive” effect on tone and that many of them (in their respective types such as active or hum buckers) sound so similar that a small eq change can compensate for the differences in a mix. And he literally said there’s a very noticeable difference between active, single coil and hum buckers. He also spoke about the difference in output levels and the reason he adjusted the gain was to compensate so you can better hear the actual difference in tone without the gain and volume increase. In other words he intentionally removed variables that make it harder to hear the actual eq curves. Anyways his point was that if you don’t have a lot of cash to spend on gear it would be better spent other places. When you accuse Glen of saying there are no subtle differences you are lying. I know that if you actually paid attention to his video you would know this. So either you didn’t or you are being intentionally dishonest.
My video proves with evidence that pickups make a large difference in tone and articulation. He claims it makes close to not difference. He's wrong and he's lying.
@@aminorerror interesting because you literally say that the difference is “subtle” in your video. Should I give you a time stamp? 17:29 who’s lying? 18:08 and again who’s lying? 18:29 and again😂😂😂😂”…almost imperceivable”-you
I think you may have misunderstood Glenn's videos and his conclusions. I'm not sure that he ever stated that there is no difference between pickups. Instead, that pickups don't make that much of a difference, so if your pickups work properly, there's no reason to spend $200 on a new set, when a different speaker in your cabinet will completely change your tone for similar or less money. And if we're talking about recording (which we are), direct recordings are very common in 2023. With a direct recording, you can alter the sound of your pickups for free with an EQ. You can also adjust the settings on the amp to change the tone, or if you're like me, put 3 EQ's after the speaker in the DAW because I'm trying to match a guitar tone from a local band's recording from 2007. Pickups make a difference, absolutely, but they don't make the kind of difference that justifies modifying your guitar. I mostly change pickups for aesthetic reasons, but output is also a factor. In your examples, when you said there was a big or noticeable difference between guitars, I didn't hear that big of a difference. The first example with the Strandberg and Ibanez, I had to go back and click between them because other than the palm mutes, they sounded the same. I'm listening on my PreSonus monitors. And then again at the end of the video when you went back and forth between the two clips, I couldn't really hear any noticeable difference, and this is on soloed guitars. I did hear a difference in your clips with the full mix, but is that not something that you can change for free by turning some knobs? Because as I stated above, and was Glenn's real point, it's not worth the cost to swap pickups. Spending hundreds of dollars for a small or even unnoticeable difference when you're probably going to mangle the sound of the guitar afterwards is something only guitar players would do. I believe that is the real takeaway. Like, do what you want, it's your money, and a lot of things on a guitar will make a difference, though it might only be 0.1% of a difference. He repeats that his goal is to save you money, and telling you to go and spend your hard earned money on pickups and solder them into your guitar (which a lot of people don't know how to do, me included) will not save people money and help them towards getting the tone they want. A long winded response on my part, but a response nonetheless. You made a solid video and a compelling argument. You made your case that pickups make a difference, but to my knowledge, it was never stated that pickups don't make any difference.
You think there is noticeable tone difference in the “minds” between two very different guitars. I don’t agree. Look closely at the EQ curve, at which frequencies are vastly differing. Also try this… take you A/B guitar tracks pan one hard right, the other hard left, and through a good set of monitor speakers invert the polarity of one side. Show me that simple test, and we can talk!
THIS! You can't pander to some and dismiss the others, without the players would there even be something to mix? or something to listen to? As someone who's both a guitar player and a producer I learn from both sides of the coin and take stuff from each. When it comes to guitar stuff I tend to listen to guitar players and when it comes to production I listen to producers.
I think you may have glossed over the point he made in like 6 different videos and said probably 2 dozen times about this subject: It’s not worth it to pay big bucks for tonewood guitars made by luthiers who were jerked off by the Dhali Lama or $400 pickups blessed by Satan himself, in a metal context, because a $200 Ibanez can sound like a $1800 ESP in a full metal mix context, if you match the input levels to the amp. You have to do the same input level matching when comparing software plugins to hardware, or different hardware clones to each other… And the guitar comparison really needs you to play the same riff in a full mix to really find if the extra $1600 was worth the difference you think you heard.
I forgot to mention… props to you for actually trying to do your own comparison instead of just sitting on your ass and bitching! I actually quite enjoyed this video!… But it’s spelled Spectre, not Specter… goddamn Canadians!
As someone who is not an active fan of Glenn, I actually walked away from this video being more on Glenn’s side. I completely agree that a guitar and pickup combination affects the musician’s performance, but I think you’ve just inadvertently proved Glenn’s point from a high gain perspective. From your point of view, to hear the difference, I need studio monitors or headphones, which most casual listeners don’t have. Most people do listen on sweetened headphones, Bluetooth speakers, and phone speakers. However, I have Stratocasters and single coils guitars that have always sounded like a bee hives in my Mesa. For humbuckers, though, I’ve only ever noticed a difference in gain makeup like you suggested. Honestly, the differences are aren’t that big and leans even more into Glenn’s point.
This is clickbait also!! I have changed out pups in my strat and when I played it at my normal unchanged settings the difference certainly was not worth the price! It is exactly what Glenn was talking about- the people that argue about Tonewood and Pups and this and that I always find out they are in the business of selling you their guitars!
There is a huge difference between the part of the guitar that creates the signal and tonewood lmao Also I've played guitars I thought were ugly but loved how the pickups sounded. A good set of pickups that suit your sound and play style make a big difference
I love your guitar playing, but that guitar tone/pickup/tonewood is just bad. Comparing 7 string to 8 string? Comparing different solos on different guitars? One with floyd, next one with fixed bridge? That's legit pickup comparison? C'mon man, you are better than that. I'd suggest sticking to what you do best, which is plying guitar, not talking about physics.
Glenn can be heard in a few videos around the time he made that one saying something about starter pickups (like Duncan Designed vs real Duncans) along the lines of 'dude, take off the training wheels and get the real thing' or something similar. My take on bad pickups is they're like bad instruments. You know how 'it's not the instrument, it's the player' is frequently said, along with 'a better guitar won't make you sound better'? It's bunk if there's not a baseline of quality. My first bass had a bowed to shit neck, and I instantly played better when I wasn't fighting to press strings that were a half inch off the frets toward the upper frets just to keep them from buzzing. I replaced all the hardware on a parts bass because the pots literally broke when turned, and the rest was of similar quality. Those parts weren't worth calling proper, but the wood and frets were (surprisingly) fine for an instrument. If your pickups don't meet the baseline of quality, it's not worth talking about them and you should go get something decent. But, once you're past the starter parts, the difference gets muddy. A $1000 guitar vs $2,500 is far less noticeably different in quality, it's usually a fancier wood or something. Same for pickups, but at a different price point. From there, he said there's some difference in pickups, but it's *not enough to make a difference worth your money*. For 99% of us with middle class jobs with limits on what we can afford, chasing tone in the guitar isn't as important as other things. If pickup A can sound like pickup B by dialing a knob or using a pedal/EQ, then pickup B isn't worth owning since you can just get pickup A. If you can also dial a knob or use a pedal/EQ to make pickup B sound like pickup A, then it really doesn't matter which you own because you can make what you have sound like the other. At that point, owning both guitars should be because you like their appearances, need a backup guitar, or something other than "the tone fits this use case". The other guitar can do the same tone just fine. And to cap it off with his usual disclaimer, that only applies to high-gain metal tones because he does a metal show. The cleans are much more pronounced and more worth considering if that's important to what you're making.
Lol, how to create Clickbait for your own channel to prove your own point by disapproving your own point, and proving what you’re trying to disprove! Very well done!
I appreciate you actually bothering to record AB takes, most people don't. Kudos! I agree that pickup output levels change between pickups, and I think Glenn talks about this too. I swapped a standard Fender humbucker for like a 17k output humbucker and there was certainly a difference in articulation and gain staging, although could I have also gotten something similar by messing with the settings on the tube screamer block? I tried it with a different guitar and I could. So that's 2 hours of OT down the drain.... That said, even in this comparison I didn't notice any sizeable actual tone shift. I'm sat here with my headphones on listening very intently and can barely pick up (hah) a difference in tone. I'm not getting any of the "very ____" descriptions you are speaking of and thought all the guitars sounded great (even the Ibanez haha). While Glenn is definitely trying to rile people up for views, one thing I agree with him on is that moving your microphone a few cms is a more noticeable difference than changing pickups, and when I'm looking at the 3 EQ blocks and Dual IRs I'm running on my helix it's fairly clear that changing pickups should be the last thing on my mind, and this video kind of cemented that for me (which I know wasn't your intention but still you put in a lot of effort so I could listen for myself, so thanks for that!).
Yes. The great thing about making pickups sound different with EQ is that it not only saves you money, it saves you time when you want to switch it back. It's ridiculous to have a bunch of different solid-body electric guitars with different pickups in them, when most of the differences are in their frequency response curves. That's what EQ is for. Guitar world is weird because we're used to non-flat frequency response from speakers, speaker cabinets, microphones, guitar pickups, etc., and we tend to just swap speakers or pickups or amp mics or whole guitars with no real idea what we're doing. We end up with oddball frequency distributions we describe with undefined words like "woody" without knowing what they actually are. And we tend to buy too much gear because we don't understand how to use what we've already got.
@@murrayguitarpickups9545 That would seem to argue for using pickups whose frequency response peak is at a fairly high frequency, because you can shave that off more easily. I have what seem to be pretty decent EQs for free (as free plugins) in my DAW, and even in my not-very-expensive multieffects floor box. My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the peak frequency of pickups varies depending on the typical (passive) tone control circuit settings. (It's an inductor embedded in an RC (resistor-capacitor) network, and Everything Affects Everything Else.) To me that seems to argue for maxing the knobs and going straight into something (a direct box, active EQ or multieffects box) that will buffer the input, so that the peak doesn't shift around screwily, and then mess with it with EQ post- amplification or digitization. That's what I try to do, but I've never really scientifically established that it's what I'm actually doing. :-/ As I understand it, different pickups have different Q (resonant peak width) factors, so some have basically a plateau before the steep (2nd-order low pass) fall off at high frequencies, and others have a distinct bump there. Seems to me you should want to have more of a plateau, not a peak, and the resonant frequency fairly high. Then you can use a parametric EQ to put in a bump where you want it, and shave off high frequencies above that. Conventional humbuckers mess that up because they have a notch filtering effect (due to samping the string at two separated points) with the notch at different frequencies for different strings. (Actually a comb filtering effect, but starting at a high freqency so that the first tooth of the comb is the one that matters most, and the second tooth is way out on the steeply decreasing frequency response curve.)
@@paulw.3967 pickups have a set amount of power available, you can direct that power into the highs or the lows but you have to compromise. Pushing the high frequencies will rob power from the mids and lows so its a balancing act. I'm not sure about all that wiring circuitry stuff that not my field of expertise. From experience I've found it best to start with the tone you want and only adjust EQ to fit the track into a mix.
@@murrayguitarpickups9545 These days I'd think that raw power would not be too much of a problem... just use some kind of a boost stage (hardware or software) if necessary. (Within reason.) Even if you have to buy an active EQ pedal, it at least will work with all of your guitars. I understand messing with pickups and sticking with what works, because pickups are basically voodoo... and I've done that especially with humbuckers, but it bugs me. We usually don't know what it actually is about what we're actually hearing that we like, so we don't really know what we can do with it. (So Leave It The Fuck Alone can be a reasonable strategy.) A humbucker has notches in the high frequency response, but they're different for each string depending on the relationship of the coil spacing to the open string pitch, and you can't fake or fix that with a global EQ. One reason I tend to prefer single coils or stacked noiseless is that I have SOME ability to relate what I'm hearing to a frequency response curve, and have some idea what I can do with it.
I mean … i see 2 things here is there a HUGE difference no … is there a difference yes ! And for a bedroom young guitar player that doesn’t have a lot of money … i think Glenn is trying to say you dont need 300$ pickups to sound 100 times better . And like ryan bruce once said in the modern days … a pickup is just a eq curve in form of a magnet. So saying you get a decent pickup not a cheap harley benton 100$ guitar pickup. And then throw a eq in front of the amp you might be able to achieve the same or pretty close. The point at the end of the day is what sound great and feels right for the player!
There is a large methodological difference here. Normalized vs non-normalized dry tracks will push the amp differently. The question as to whether this is an amp related variable which can and should be controlled for vs this being a guitar or pickup related variable which should remain variable depends on perspective. When mixing I almost never receive dry guitar tracks, but I do usually have dry bass guitar. My practice is to normalize the dry bass track pre-sim so that my results will be more consistent. So, I would also rather see a normalized pickup comparison. Choice of peak, RMS, or LUFS doesn't matter as long as it's consistent. From a players perspective, the idea of normalizing in post could seem unnatural because a player typically sets the amp gain to suit the input level. It's certainly a valid perspective. The popularity of modern amp sims and the ease of gain adjustment in post might shift the way players think about gain staging and amps in coming years.
While I appreciate a good faith, mostly well made rebuttal. I will say that in your tests i really only found the first test of yours useful, as in the other clips you played a different piece for each guitar. It's kind of hard to tell which differences in tone fall under articulation and range of frequency and which ones are more inherent to the gear when entirely different things are being played for each instrument. Simple as Glens playing is, at least he played the same simple thing and at least attempted to keep the same force, angle of attack, and articulation. This is doubly important if you're going to imply a narrative behind what you're criticizing. Like that Glen has lost his way as creator, is out of his depth, and should get back to making more recording specific content. Not only that, but even in that first test, while there are slightly different colors, there are slightly different tone colors in Glen's vid as well. He even admits as much. He only claims that if you're instrument stays in tune and feels good to play, then things like the amp/amp sim and speaker/IR are more important things to check if you're trying to match a certain tone or are trying to create a solid base for your own sound.
I think part of what people miss in these shootouts, and debates; is that different guitars, with different pickups, sound different through multiple amps/rigs. I’ll use an example. I’m a reseller, and recently acquired three Jackson Rhoads guitars. A RRX24 with stock Jackson pickups, an RRX24 with Duncan Blackouts, and a Rhoads PRO with Duncan Distortions. Playing through my 5150-3, on the red channel, there was very minute differences between the two RRX24s, however the Rhoads Pro with the Duncan Distortions was noticeably different. Way less output, completely different voicing, and very surprising overall. Clean channel? All three were noticeably different. Plugging into my little Spark 40 practice amp, with a digital preset? They all sounded the same. As does my Les Pauls, American Ultra Strat, and other instruments. I’m not a tube or amp snob. I think lots of applications can sound great. But….. much like the speakers and amp colors your sound; so does the guitar and it’s pickups thru different amps. I bet, a ton of people who have multiple amps and guitars, likely have particular pairings, when they’re going for certain sounds. It may sometimes be subtle, but the differences are there.
Minor differences are not justifying 1000 usd price differences. Glenns idea that you can get killer tone with affordable guitar and some knowledge still stands.
I never said that wasn't the case. The main purpose of my channel is guitar reviews and finding affordable guitars that are actually well made and sound good...thus why I'm hammering how good the Schecter was.
@@Minty.Fresh.Tunes. As long as it work properly and stays in tune you can pretty much plug in a paddle into neural dsp Gojira (or other gretat amp sim) and get HQ results. I want to point out that I'm talking olnly about hi gain guitar sound for riffing, texturing and solo. After EQ-ing you'll get tone that inside the mix want make much of a difference if you used more expensive guitar and/or pick ups
@@aminorerror Still, there was no need to misconstrue what he said. I went and watched Glenn's video, and he says several times that there are subtle differences. It seems to me that his overall point was that there are no major differences between pickups used in a high gain setting that are worth breaking the bank over when EQ and speaker selection (or IR, in the case of most home studios) make a much bigger difference in the tone you end up with.
I take Glenn with a grain of salt, but he has a major point when he states that pseudo-science/religion is prevalent (it is), and that the difference doesn't matter anywhere near as much in a actual mix. My opinion is based on people's inability to define these things if they aren't in the physical presence of the instrument. Yes, we can tell the difference between a Strat, Tele, and Les Paul, and 335/hollow body. But can you tell when it's on a recording of someone that you've never heard? Specific details of their instruments should be immediately recognizable, right? If people could recognize specific tone woods and pickups associated with certain performers, then why do they (as well as I ) constantly ask people about their gear? Their settings? He has also made it plain that he's speaking in terms of metal mixes, specifically, as you have addressed. He also rightly points out that the audience doesn't care, and that you should focus on practice.
It's not pseudo science, pickup making has tonnes of well established research just start googling, speak to a winder like myself, they can vary in tone wildly! Its simply a fact its not up for debate and Glenn is a moron!
@@aminorerror He could be just wrong. What would be his motive to lie? How does it make any sense that he would lie about this, rather than just be wrong, or have a different opinion? People who are quick to call other liars, are doing it because they themselves are quick to lie.
You have mostly just backed up what Glenn said, and called him a liar. He said there were differences, but output lever was the biggest difference. Then the said If you want a bigger difference change the speaker or mic placement. His emphasis was to invest your money into the things that will make the biggest difference.
In the interest of being fair, though, you're WAY overselling the differences you're getting with these pickups, especially that (way too short) A/B comparison with the 7 strings. In fact, I'd go so far as to say your comparisons are A) all too short B) not using the same material for comparison... you're comparing different kicks and songs on different places on the neck that are known to have different tonality for the same notes.
Glenn doesn't play for a long time on any of the guitars in his video, and you don't seem to have a problem with that. I do use the same material in my 2 Active v Passive clips.
@A MINOR ERROR make no mistake. I have a LOT of problems with Glenn, not the least of which are the fact that he's an awful guitar player and that he's never recorded anything other than scrub bands. Now, if i missed the fact that you go more in depth in videos other than this one, that's my bad for sure!
The only somewhat significant difference I’m hearing is output level. In a practical sense, when will you ever be recording without gain-matching/eqing etc? Everything sounds similar enough that it would be easy to tone-match with some minor eq tweaks, and it’s a lot cheaper to do that than chase tone by spending hundreds of dollars you don’t need to on replacing pickups.
@@Mr.Goldbar In this case it’s more about monitoring your input gain level on your preamps (since we’re talking digital amps) to equalize the strength of signal hitting the front of the amp. You do see how by doing some minor settings/eq tweaks you can basically negate any perceived difference in sound a pickup has, right?
@@Kwert I see, but I'd like to avoid having to do that as much as possible. I go kinda backwards. If twisting knobs makes a difference and I don't like twisting knobs, I'd wanna get something that will make me sound like I'm twisting knobs
Sorry partner, you've done more to prove Glenn's point than to disprove it. I've been playing guitar for 30+ years and have different guitars with different types of pickups. I even have a solid body with FilterTrons, which are considered the weakest pickups out there. The only deciding factor is the output of the pickups. I heard your sample and there's not much difference (I have studio monitors and headphones). Sorry, but got to side with Glenn on this one.
When I first started making pickups the EQ was all messed up. If you're right about pickup EQ they should have all sounded fine and only varied in output. Anyone making these claims needs to make a pickup themselves!! Or just ask a pickup maker instead of a youtuber who is a novice guitarist
@@murrayguitarpickups9545 First of all, I'm not a novice guitar and neither is Glenn, who just needed to get back into practicing. Second, I have a friend who wound a set of pickups for me. That guy did a good job of making them, however there no tone shift. If anything,, I had to seriously turn down the gain knob just to calm the guitar down. If you still think that I full of it and there is an EQ shift with the pickups, then do a science test. Show us in a video how that happens. Glenn has done that, I have done that with my various guitars, and if we're wrong prove it. And the last I checked, pickups are rated by voltage and resistance.
@@joerojas5448 I dont want to give anything away but I'm working with a youtuber to prove this I'm winding 2 bridge pickups with extremely different EQs just to show the tone shift.......stay tuned
@@joerojas5448 by the sounds of it your friend made an overwound pickup for you, typically that will push the mids, so unless you were going from a very weak pickup the EQ wouldn't have noticeably shifted because all high output humbuckers have a noticeable mid push, so comparing one mid pushed pickup to another isn't going to show any really obvious differences. I'm making a very low resistance bright pickup and a high resistance dark pickup
@@murrayguitarpickups9545 Yes, those particular pickups were Overwound. However I did the same test with a guitar that has FilterTrons type pickups with Alnico 2 pickups. The mids pushed forward when I turned the gain up. Also other youtubers have to adjust the tones of amps they were reviewing with the same exact guitar. I also have different types of amps with different speakers. Some amps were brighter with the same eq settings. I will see if you can prove me wrong and Glenn. I will be open to it, but you need to go about it in a scientific way to win this argument with me.
I think you missed the point Glenn makes, he says in pretty much all his videos "don't worry about gear, just focus on making good music". I can barely hear a difference (on studio monitors and my Audio Technica headphones, even using Sound ID Reference to make them as flat as possible) that will matter in a full mix after mixing and mastering. The only thing that is really obvious is, that the Schecter sounds a bit clearer, I guess it has a better intonation allover the neck. In my experience (and I changed a pickups a lot of times) it makes only a subtle difference, main difference is how hot they are. If you really want to change the tone of your guitar you are better off using a EQ pedal and spare yourself the hassle of chaning pickups.
Yawn. So subtle are the differences that most consumers of the final product won't notice. I think you went to a lot of trouble just to agree with Glen.
I like that Doom font. I'm a huge Quake player so of course I had to mention that. I'm a personal friend of Glenn's--we've met and hung out in real life. I have no issue with how you presented yourself here and Glenn wouldn't either. (Subscribed!) Also, you're a fucking ridiculous guitar player. Well played in these examples. What Glenn is trying to do is get musicians to stop going down the rabbit hole of new pickups, new tubes (unless micophonic) and focus more on what will change their tones significantly more: speakers and microphone type/microphone position on a speaker. At the end of the day, a pack of IRs for for a Greenback speaker will yield night and day differences when compared to a V30. These drastic sound differences matter much more (and are more fun to experiment with) than the slight increases/decreases in pickup amplitube or compression. I enjoyed your video and your presentation, no bad blood here 👍🏻 I think these conversations in general are exceptionally important to have and I think you are both right. But most importantly, we always have to remember... we are a bunch of absolute nerds arguing over the last 3% of something.... those that don't know the difference don't care... they just want a good song to enjoy. 🤘🏻
Hey that's really cool you know him personally! Old school DOOM And Quake are freaking awesome, I went down the rabbit hole with DOOM during COVID times lol Appreciate your thoughts and thanks for the kind words!
@chernobyl studios. GLENN IS A FRAUD. GLENN STARTED THIS VERY CLEVER MARKETING SCAM ABOUT 2 MONTHS AGO. GLENN SELLS IMPULSE RESPONSES? Agreed? So is it not strange that all of a sudden, tonewood and pickups do not matter????? Only the speaker has an effect on tone?? And woah, hold your horses, Speaker Impulses are the ONE F-ING thing that Glenn sells. Glenn is a fraud. Glenn is a schill. And Glenn refuses to debate me on that. And his attacks On Christianity are atrocious. And his "act like a mad 13 year old who just learned the F-word" rants are ridiculous.
I agree with you that subtle differences are a big deal both in players and engineers. So much to the point where we call subtle differences "huge" because that difference matters a lot towards our sonic goal. I've watched my guitarists go through guitars, pickups and amps until they were finally happy. So those little differences to some are major differences to us. On the other hand, Glenn acknowledged the small differences. His point was that the speaker makes a big difference. My take is, first the broad strokes, then the details. I don't think Glenn had his conclusion and his thumbnail before he did the tests. If he had found the differences HE perceived as major either in tone woods or pickups, he would have been just as happy to share those findings. In your tests I have to say, though I heard shifts in tones, the song, the key and all that was different from one to the next, so that is more challenging to make your point. Great guitar playing man!
It feels like you're falling for the click bait and not the general message of his videos. He never said there is no difference in pickups, but rather if you're completely unhappy with your tone, there are smarter and more efficient places to start to get a bigger improvement. In his view it's speakers, cabs/IR, amps, microphones, etc. Start somewhere else first, where you get more bang for your buck. The other point is that the differences are often so subtle a slight turn of a knob can account for those variations, so instead of dropping $250 on new pickups, move your knob and get back to writing music. Your arguments are very weak. Pickups don't make a huge tonal difference = there are no bad sounding guitars? That's a huge leap for literally no reason. Of course guitars can sound bad; intonation, bad nut, bad bridge, warped neck, bad frets, poorly installed/functioning electronics, etc., etc., Showing how pickups are not massive tonal shifters and that the differences are subtle = different scales are basically the same and you'd be a sucker to think otherwise? What? lol. Since when do scales cost hundreds of dollars? One is information (scales) and the other is advocating for purchasing products based on realistic results. Then your major gripe about 'no respect for the subtlety' is like watching a video about pancakes and getting upset that they don't talk about waffles. The whole point is that extremely subtle differences in pickups are the least of your worries if you're a high gain/metal DIY engineer or guitarist. He's talking to people who get wrapped up into thinking that they need to buy a new product to make their sound significantly improved. He's just advocating for rational purchasing and consumer information. If you're someone who wants to spend money for very little impact RELATIVE TO OTHER THINGS YOU COULD SPEND MONEY ON, by all means buy 100 different pickups and get into the weeds. That's totally sick and wouldn't run counter to anything he talks about. In that scenario, you're aware that the differences are minimal compared to other things and you don't mind. That type of person isn't the target audience of his video. The clickbait & insults that he's a liar and bad guitar player are super wack. I'm not defending him as a person or musician, he might even be a bad engineer for all I know but none of those attacks negate his points or arguments; which are more thought out and better supported than anything displayed in this video.
I only called him a liar because as clearly demonstrated from my clips, pickups do make a big difference. Gish-golloping about the importance of speakers has nothing to do with the video I'm referencing and I never said those things don't matter. The point here is he clearly came up with the concept for his video and worked backwards. I used old content that was made before his video to prove that I didn't have an axe to grind when I made it. They sound different....because they sound different. I didn't come to a conclusion and work backward, I worked my ass off making a bunch of recordings and drew the conclusions from there. That's why he's a liar and dishonest.
If the only thing that makes guitars sound significantly different is the output volume, then what's the point of buying expensive pickups? Just turn a knob on your modeler or audio interface, or bring them higher or lower.
So you popped up but your first problem is actually you not watching his videos I think. Your first example is passive vs active pick ups, which have different outputs (active more than passive) which he’s talked about, that’s output not tone. Then another example you use two guitars with different angles of pickups (changing the magnet placement under the strings) If you are mad at what Glenn didn’t say, wait until you watch Jim Lil. I’ve worked in the guitar industry for a decade, he’s right overall. I think you’ve missed what he is saying though. Single coil, humbucker, P90, active, passive those are really the inky differences. Anything else can be EQd. His point about not spending £300 upgrading your guitar pickups but buying better other things if you have high output humbuckers, is right. Glenn is not a guitarist also that was a cheap shot and I think you know it to start with I’m not in to back and forth but then click bait title which you ask ak owl edge and then a direct attack on him towards the end? Cheap man, cheap.
1. I don't think Glenn was "manipulating" the audio to match the gain levels and I'm not sure what exactly was ur point... 'Cos it's normal to adjust ur gain level before hitting the interface (or amp) to reach a desired level. There's basically two ways of doing it, either a) u record all pickups with zero (additional) gain and then balance everything afterwards in DAW to the same level for proper comparison OR b) u match the gain of each pickup individually before recording to the same level for proper comparison. Either way, shouldn't the active pickups still be "winning" since they reach the levels with less added gain, whereas the passives need to be boosted more? 2. I did hear a difference in the first Strandberg vs Ibanez shootout! The main tone was basically the same, but the Strandberg was bity'er and the Ibanez was darker. Killer tones though! 🤘 3. With the Schecter/Strandberg/Ibanez/EVH combo I could hear no difference! It didn't help that each had different piece of music played... Also this is the first time I've heard that Ibanez called shitty! 😱 Granted, this is apparently an older version of the guitar, but they still sell that with a slightly different name, but similar specs and I've only heard praise for it and its pickups! 4. Reaper 6 a cheap guitar?! 12:45 According to the webs it costs about a 1000 bucks!! 😱💸 That's more than ALL my guitars combined! 💀 5. These are good 13:14 and 14:49 = No noticeable difference! 6. Like others have already commented, Glenn DID say there are subtle differences! It's just that they don't matter much in the big picture. 7. Also some already commented, but the guitar parts in ur vid are SUPER LOUD compared to the speaking parts. 8. Great playing though 🔥 And I dig the Doom font 👊
He did say that once you crank up the gain, pickups make little difference if any, not that they DON'T make any difference. Glenn advocates that it is wiser to spend money on the things that DO make a big difference on a high gain metal tone, like the amplifier and speakers. Because for the 100ish bucks that could cost you a pickup, you could buy a V30 or Creamback speaker that truly will make a noticeable difference in your tone or maybe for even cheaper if you use a DI, you can just buy an IR that will still give you more for your money than a pickup change. Also, seriously? you used a Strandberg Boden 8 string, scale 26.25" to compare it with a 7 string, 25.5" scale Ibanez RG, on scale and string gauge that instantly makes that tone comparison invalid, and then you played different riffs on different guitars which also doesn't offer a fair comparison.
Glenn uses guitars of varying scale lengths in his video, and the strings won't make the mids change the way they do in my video. The thing that will is the pickups. Thanks for watching.
If I were to say that if there are massive differences between the sound of an pickups they would be categorized between cheap and high quality pickups. I would agree with Glenn if he were to say for an example you just bought EMGs that you decided that you didn’t like, switching to Fishmans isn’t going to make a massive difference.
@@rich-lf1bm Weird, didn't know that agreeing/disagreeing with someone automatically makes you a "fanboy". Guess I missed that world meeting? -anyway feel free to call *me* a fanboy too so the guy who made this video can heart react to you again.
@@jann_rygh Literally the first 2 minutes about gain and tone. Glen says pickups don't make any difference when you have a high gain amp and he literally says the exact same thing but worded differently
Glen said subtle difference not no difference. I don't think pickups make a massive shift in sound because I play the stock low output pickups on my PRS SE and they're killer. Volume is flatter than my fishmans but that's it when I listen back to back
You've completely missed the point here. You're feeding these pickups into an audio interface and then distorting them beyond recognition. The only difference that remains is output volume from the pickup, but that is so easily and trivially matched with modern digital hardware, and THAT is why pickups don't matter. "Hot output pickups" used to be a thing because people were plugging directly into an amp, and you can't boost or cut the signal hitting them amp without adding a pedal in front. This is trivial in a digital setup, rendering "hot output" a useless feature in a modern setup, because every audio interface has a gain knob. - but it's also easy enough to add a clean boost/cut in front of a physical amp. A 20 dollar clean boost can do that for you. "You shouldn't be adjusting the gain before it hits the amp". Yes, you absolutely, positively SHOULD be doing that, and that's the whole point. One little trivial adjustment renders all other pickup factors irrelevant. The rest of the video falls on its face after this point. I appreciate the effort, but this is a "whoosh" moment :)
This is what I keep seeing from people disagreeing with Glen. This is due to output as you yourself said it. Glenn issue is about tone, if the output is different logic dictates there is a change in output, but not tone.
Congrats - You have done what Glenn always asks people to do - create an experiment and record it. Couple of things though - Glenn has never said it makes NO difference - his schtick is aimed at aspiring (poor) musicians to make the changes that will have the greatest bang per buck for high-gain metal. It just happens that a lot of that happens to occur with the bits that actually move the air and make the sound we hear. (Also reference Jim Lil) Glenn's shown bigger differences in sound when moving a mic a few inches than from a pickup change. It is notable that you mention that most people are watching this video while "on the throne" on their smartphone and that we should use proper headphones. That's exactly Glenn's point - most people could not tell what guitar/pickups are being used when they are listening to music via the methods most commonly used. YT compression, different audio encoding and bit rate sampling etc. As an aside - different headphones will make any differences less/more obvious depending on the response/brand/tuning - also contributing to certain things being less important to the sound. Add to that - zero visual references and very few could identify these differences that you point out. I don't think anyone has gotten 100% on one of Glenn's tests of what is played when, when there is no visual reference on a track. Joe Perry (Aerosmith) is famous for his Les Pauls - yet he's been quoted recently saying that a lot of what he has recorded has been using a Strat. You could probably count on zero fingers how many people have looked at a video clip/listened to a song and said - "That's not his LP, that's a Strat!"
Here's the thing, if Glenn REALLY only cares about helping musicians get the most tone for the least amount of money...it doesn't make any sense to use any real mics or cabs. A $150 Neural plugin will sound a billion times better than anything you can get for legit 20x that in the 'real' world. And the point here too is I didn't even mean to make an experiment to disprove Glenn, I could just use material from my other videos that was never clickbait. And those videos didn't do well because I wasn't pumping out video after video of clickbait, stacking the deck to try and make it look like there's some truth here that nobody want to admit. Honestly, that's all Jim Lill is doing too and everyone is falling for it hard.
@@aminorerror Hi Rob. I don't disagree with you re: plugins as a way to sound good and save $. But would you agree that changing IR's might have a bigger influence in the final sound/mix than changing your pickups? Or listening to your mix on a cheap set of earbuds vs a set of high quality open-back headphones/monitors rather than change guitars? Re: real mics/cabs - if that's what an artist wants to use on a recording for whatever reasons, and they are not happy with the tone - would a pickup change work better than maybe changing the speaker cabinet/speaker (if available) or moving the mic/changing the mic/adding a mic and blending them? Or JHS pedals tweaking the settings on a Bad Monkey to make it sound like a Klon? Zac Wylde or John 5 making a Hello Kitty Uke/guitar sound awesome? Just saying - there are many low(er) cost/no cost ways to make things sound good to most people on the devices they actually listen to music to without resorting to changing pickups.
My lesson from Glens video is that people's thing to much about stuff and not the art. In my experience good song is good no meter if the recording isn't the best or its played form guitar pro. The point is "If you have correctly steeped instrument, with pickups that aren't microphonic you are 80% of the way to good tone." End if you come to studio with guitar i mittened. You will make a good sounding recording, may not the best but still usable. The rule of the live is that te 20% of work cost (money/time). And of you a someone who have one amp and guitar and play in a small band. Changing a pickup won't make your tone any batter in noticeable way. Especially if you play thru bad cab, or combo speaker. The order of operation should be good speakers -> good amp -> pickups that complement your tone (if that be necessary). That is a basset way to allocate money in gear, by starting with things that will change my sound the most and going.
All do respect. I agree with Glen - the change between pickups is so minuscule and barely even noticeable ( if at all) with high gain. Low gain and clean is where even the listener can hear the difference in pickups. Agree with you about sound engineering & layering guitars and how the subtle tonal differences add up in layering
@@aminorerror yes definitely bro. Hey, and thank you for putting together the video stating your take on it. Also note, I’m coming at from a player and a listener , not a sound engineer or music producer - so I respect your take on it as a valid point of view different from Glen’s. Cheers
I think you made Glenn’s point a little better while trying to prove him wrong. Bro we all listen to music in our cars, and they headphones at work, or whatever the case. You even say in this video, you need to have the reference speakers so you can hear it better. Also, saying things like “woody” and whatnot. What does wood sound like? In the context of a full mix, the tone is pretty much the same as I hear it through my iPhone speakers, one of the ways I often hear music. Glenn also points out that there may be some very subtle differences in all guitars and pickups, but never as much of a tone shift as changing what actually produces the sound, being the speaker. But, could you identify any of his guitars/pickups in the blind testing he does? Did you get it 100% right every time because you could hear the woody tone? I doubt it.
@@aminorerror I get what you’re saying, and I’m going to sub. But I still think this proved Glenn to be right. In the mix, with multiple tracks, through my normal forms of consuming music I don’t hear a major difference. Or even much of a notable difference. Still gonna sun tho, and hope to more content like this in the future as I too have made the swap from physical to digital amps.
@@aminorerror Sorry, that wasn't actually clear. If "woody with a push in the mids" is redundant, because "woody" just MEANS "with a push in the mids", that suggests that EQ will do what you want, without needing to swap pickups. (Which is my default position, even though I know it's wrong sometimes.) That's the kind of difference you can get with an equalizer, and switch whenever you feel like it.
God I looked but I couldn't find it. I think it was in one of his tutorials on how to get a good rhythm guitar tone that sits in the mix. I explain it in my own series of videos on how I produce my tone on up if you're interested. Sorry I couldn't find his OG video! th-cam.com/video/U-wGQy7Aljo/w-d-xo.html
@@benburnett8109 his theory is for recording. Which is normal to match gain in post. His theory still stands in high gain difference between pickup is does not make much difference. It's not make it or break it situation.
@@iDealMedley Drink the Fricker Koolaid. I don't care. But wait a couple of months.....Glenn will reverse course and change his mind. Like he did with amp sims, Drum samples, Line 6, Recording without mics, Impulse responese versus mic on a real speaker......the list goes on and on. GLENN IS A SCHILL. GLENN IS A LIAR. GLENN WILLL LIE ABOUT GEAR TO GET CLICKS, and Glenn is a man that hates Christians. IF you want to listen to a guy who has never been paid to engineer or produce, and has ZERO credits. Then you go ahead. Best wishes and understand that you are following a "person" who has changed his mind more times than MY Mom has changed boyfriends. Just saying.
It’s just like lining up 4 different high gain amps and on “tape” you’ll be hard pressed to tell which is which. One of those amps may be a $1000 Asian import while another is a 4K domestic. The big difference in the amps, pickups etc is in how they feel to play, not so much how they end up sounding. Changing speakers, mic placement, external EQ will all have much larger effects in what you hear vs. the pickups. I personally like the versatility in medium to low output humbuckers because I can always boost them into meltdown and modern amps also have way more gain than necessary but I can’t dial high output humbuckers back to get a decent open jangle or ring to them. They tend to be very sterile sounding on volume roll off.
I’m going to defend Glenn Fricker. I think the big picture is that he is trying to encourage kids to create music instead of stressing about having the flavor of the month pickups/gear. With EQ, compression etc, a usable high gain tone is possible with practically any decent quality pickup. They haven’t made profound advances in the design of guitar pickups for many decades now. You can take a Fluence or a SD59 and make a killer high gain tone out of either. Not that pickups all sound exactly the same, but that the end result for high gain tone CAN be extremely similar and good regardless of pickup. I do believe that was the moral of his video.
Glenn's point was simply, as long as your pickups aren't noisy, they're good enough. Yes, different pickups have different outputs but, once you dial in the EQ, push the gain/distortion, hit the compression, run a high pass filter, and throw it in a mix, it doesn't fucking matter. It just gets boiled down to the end result. Now, do I like certain types of pickups more than other types, sure? Because, I can rely on the quality and the output to achieve the sound I want. Are they the only way I can achieve that sound? No. As a matter of fact, I have experienced some cheap pickups that sounded amazing but, that still only matters to the player because, once it boils down in the mix, it doesn't matter. I want to say it was Keith Richards (?) who said, "Give me 15 minutes and I can make any guitar sound the same."
My opinion about Glens DI tracks alterd pre recorded being dishonst is wrong somewhat because it's good practice to get your DI signal to clip on Palm mutes then to dial it down so it no longer clips. In essence doing this we should all have signals around the same level anyway. Thats the way I have always set up my DI signal to record maybe I'm wrong but that was my common sense way of doing it.
I think our eyes can and do play tricks on us. There is very little difference in your very first example. None that is really significant, if any even at all. Certainly none that makes it to a mix, and to your own point, certainly none that makes it to the average consumer, sitting on their toilet with their smartphone. Your other clips are very, very hard to accurately judge when different riffs are played in each of them. There is zero actual measurement or scientific methodology in your process. And frankly, even then, they all still sound basically the same. One of my best friends growing up had a terrible Squier guitar, you know the kind that come in the $125 bundles. He plugged it into a Bugera tube amp and the thing sounded incredible. I plug in, with my (still budget but not THAT) guitar, and it sounded basically the same. In my opinion, if you buy an expensive guitar for its pickups or "sound" you're probably an idiot. You buy an expensive guitar so you can play on a comfortable, nice instrument with good build quality. You are not buying a sound. The amp and effects will do 95% of the heavy lifting for you. There are some minor differences in pickups, but it's not nearly as important as people want to make it seem, seemingly yourself included.
You can't just compare your own clips,you edit your videos...including sound...i am willing to bet that you have probably forgotten half the editing to the overall sounds on your videos....if you are going to debunk,do it in one video using examples taken ...in one video and not just taking sounds from previous videos...a poor attempt.
I don't know if the differences were any more stark than in Glenn's videos. But I think it is highly possible that when people get used to guitars they have an easier time noticing the differences between them. The owner knows the sound better than anyone
Not enough of a difference to me to warrant a laughable disapproval. Maybe this guy has exceptional to the point of eerie hearing. Was that a cricket chirping in the basement next door?
Your experiment avoids some important matters. In order for your experiment to prove differences in pickups, you have to use the same guitar. Glen may have made the same mistake. The conversation is about pickup swapping for better tone. If you don't swap pickups in the same guitar, you have literally proven zero. If I put super distortions in a Les Paul, it will not sound the same as super distortions in a telecaster. So if I just swap the super distortions in the telecaster for some JBs, then compare the two guitars they will sound even more different. This doesn't address the pickups. You have proven nothing more than guitars don't sound exactly alike, with different pickups. Has anyone ever made an argument suggesting all electric guitars sound alike? Has Glen made this argument? If he stated all solid body guitars sound the same, he would obviously be wrong. If he stated, swapping out the pickups won't make an audible difference in a mix, he might be right and the only way to prove it either way is with the same guitar and swapping pickups multiple times, in a mix and have the listener pick out when the pickups were swapped. There's not enough actual science being practiced with respect to all of these discussions. What I see is a particular conclusion desired and an experiment designed to achieve such outcomes. That is in no way the proper method of making a solid case, with experiments that can be duplicated and always point to the same conclusion excluding all other explanations.
I can 100% hear a difference between Seymour Duncans under high gain, Dimarzios under high gain, and EMGs under high gain. If you can't, that's ok. I can't play professional basketball, and that's ok.
Glenn did say at very high gain. He played the digital sounds which were different then the close sounding amp sounds. He said the amp gain overshadows the pickup tones. Can’t see the issue here.
I think you might be confusing difference and "difference". Is there an audible and/or otherwise measurable difference in the output signal between different pickups? For sure. I don't think that anyone has ever claimed anything else, Glenn included. Does that difference make a difference in a live setting? For sure not. You could swap out the guitarist's strat for a Les Paul, his Fender tweed for a JCM and his Tubescreamer for a RAT and no-one in the audience would notice or give a damn. Does it make a difference on a record? Weeeeeell, maybe. Is that difference something that a little bit of gain matching an EQ can overcome? Definitely.
Thank you to everyone for watching and engaging with my latest video! Being as there's over 800 comments currently (and a lot of them are just the same thing over and over again) I figured I'd leave some responses here in a pinned post.
1. The title and thumbnail's language was too strong and that was a legit criticism. I was have a bit of fun and being cheeky and pushed the envelop too far. After some thought I've decided to change it to language more in line with the tone of the video. While I still feel the same way and I do believe he's being dishonest and misleading deliberately, I obviously wasn't in the room and can't prove what happened. He could just be a bad engineer who dialed a crappy guitar tone....incompetency is a possibility too!
2. If you can't hear the differences in the clips then we have nothing to talk about; it's a non-starter. I can hear them, and you say you can't.....so we're done here.
3. If you can hear the changes but think they're small enough to fall in line with Glenn's original point, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. I obviously disagree...that's literally the whole point of the video. I think the examples and rational given here speaks for itself and if you actually watch the video with an open mind, you'll get what I'm saying. At the end of the day you can come to whatever conclusion you want.
4. My 'steel manning' section accurately represents Glenn's opinion...that's why it's called a steel man. "The amp colors the tone so completely that you BASICALLY can't hear any difference" is the same as saying 'there's subtle differences but they're tiny'. I just didn't say it the way you wanted me to say it, it's an argument about semantics and it's silly.
That just about does it I think! Thanks again to everyone who's watched and engaged with the video...the positive, the negative and the incomprehensible, I'm thankful for it all. To the 600+ new subs, HELLO! I post new videos every Monday at 9am EST and have new original music and other great videos on the way for the spring and summer and think you'll really dig em. Rock on!
You still dont get it, I’m not surprised though. Cant expect much from tonewood believer
Glenn Fricker is a smug, arrogant bastard who is wrong about a lot of things. More people need to call him out on his BS.
Because YOU can hear the differences between the pickups doesn't amount to a pinch of shit. It's us that matter, the consumer, the amateur recording guitar player. I'm thinking you proved Glenn correct and got a little upset.
@@jesseyasaitis9036 Stay tuned you'll soon see what a huge difference pickups can make.......or you could buy some of mine and see for yourself
@@wareloski2137 He provided evidence for tonewood you can just look at the frequency response graph😅
About half way through it became very clear you missed the point. Glen has been very clear with how and why he makes his experiments. Don't have to agree with everything but calling him dishonest is misleading. How a guitar plays matters more to a player than an engineer. He said he was only testing how it sounds so that was clear. He spent a few minutes comparing levels matched and unmatched so that was also very clear. To this day he recognizes the differences between pickups, but the point is he wouldn't spend money upgrading pickups because of how limited of a difference they make... boy does it feel weird to justify Glen
They're definitely not experiments, they're demonstrations. Let's not get confused here.
I cant give anything away but I'm going to prove to you how extreme I can EQ a pickup.....stay tuned!
Ok.... You say pickups make only a SMALL DIFFERENCE.... Well, that's cool, they're a SMALL PRICE.... I put in a Duncan DISTORTION for 100$ basically....
I am SORRY but if you aren't willing to spend 100 for a small improvement maybe you should rethink even playing and recording!!!!
This is an argument with no true conclusion because I think the people arguing are in such different listening environments.
A guy sitting at his DAW with headphones strapped on or even listening thru studio monitors is simply going to hear differently than a guy sitting in an open room using a Marshall halfstack. There are too many variables to harness to do a true experiment that everyone can share.
@@GeorgeBonez , I DID THE EXPERIMENT!!!!
And BEHOLD my results....
Drop by my page... Actions speak louder than words, my end is COVERED 666%....
I barely heard a difference that mattered in your A/B clips. He didn’t do it for cheap clips. He’s saying focus on songwriting and being prepared. He’s also talking about saving young players money. He never said there was NO difference. His point was the differences with different pickups, especially when recording hi-gain metal, are small. I agree with Glenn. To me, your video proved Glenn’s point. His core audience are home recording musicians like yourself and even if he level matched or did other tricks, THIS proves that the home musician can dial in a great tone without expensive pickups.
EXACTLY! How or why are everyone missing this point, especially since he reiterates it every time someone says"hey...i do hear a difference" Glen right you wrong on this one;)
I was thinking the same thing. If anything, this video proves Glenn's point even more. I mean, the guy if the video even admits that the reason he's able to hear the subtle differences is because he's been playing and recording professionally for 15 years. For most guitarists, if you were to do a blind test, nobody would be able to hear any noticeable differences between similar pickups, different tonewoods and amp tubes. Glenn's entire point is to stop worrying too much about what guitar wood to buy, which pickups to get,etc... Stop being a tone snob, and just practice your instrument.
Glenn is a great sound engineer but a very amateur guitarist. His advice is great for beginners but its like saying to a young athlete to focus on training instead of wasting money on expensive running shoes, ok good advice but at a professional level you absolutely need quality footwear, it would laughable to turn up for a 100 metre sprint in a pair of converse all stars!
Glen is not a guitarist. Twenty years into guitar the dude does not even know why pinch harmonics are easier on one guitar and he's struggling with the other) The man's myth busting videos are a joke. And he does not hear the tonal the difference even if there is one. If Glen really wants to save my money tell what the diffs are and how to use them. Unsubbed from that clown.
@@murrayguitarpickups9545 This post brought to you by Seymour Duncan. Sound great by spending money!
Seriously, Glenn's argument was and is don't spend money where you don't have to. If you've bought new speakers, and you've bought new amps, and you've bought new software, and you've tried all the settings, then...maybe pickups will give you the tonal change you need. But it's so slight that it won't matter.
Also, back-to-back gold medalist marathon runner in the Olympics (Abebe Bikila) ran barefoot, so metaphor point debunked too?
Maybe I'm deaf or something, but I'm listening with high quality headphones and I think the differences are quite subtle. Yes there is A difference, but Glenn never said there wasn't. It's just subtle enough that for a lot, if not most, musicians it wouldn't warrant spending a lot of money on pickups and would be better spend on things that do make substantial differences to your sound.
If pickups all sound similar then why did my first attempts at making them sound bad?
@murrayguitarpickups9545 Either because you’re listening to the in room sound, or you fucked up and made them microphonic.
Glenn’s point was not there being zero difference but rather if $200 is worth turning the gain knob or bumping the EQ a bit. He also acknowledged the output difference. Glenn is trying to save guitar players time and money. And TBH dude? I just didn’t hear 3 figures of difference in any of your tones man and I’ve been playing metal for 25 years. I know some dudes get a kick out of customizing and that’s cool. If subtle differences get your rocks off great. You can sit there and say “your ears aren’t as good as mine” but also to Glenn’s point are you going to say that to the vast majority of people who will listen to your track who don’t hear the “subtle” difference in mids? They won’t care man. It’s great the 5 guitar players who have superior ears will he’s those nuances and if that’s your goal? Awesome. But to an average listener? They ain’t gonna care man.
@bloomtikbloom9593 interestingly enough I wonder if you would have had he not shown you what he was playing as he played it. Our eyes fool us into hearing what we think we will hear. A lot of Glenn’s tests were blind or purposefully misleading. If I tell you “this pickup will be brighter than that one” our minds will tell us it’s true a lot of the time. Either way I listened on my monitors and didn’t hear a night and day difference.
So $300 for better pickups = small gain in tone quality. More money for better recording equipment here and there = small gains in tone quality too. Add them all up through the chain and perhaps there is a big difference in tone quality.
Huge differences mate, time to clean your ears.. That's half the problem with a lot of Glen's opinionated fans, EVERYONE hears things differently.
Also for someone who professionally records or at least is at the same talent level as an engineer can make almost anything sound "good". So that can be misleading as well. Ola does a good job of showing that. Most players are bedroom players. It's a hobby for most and there's a big difference between standing in front of a stack and hearing it on a professionally recorded video. Maybe because I grew up learning and playing by ear but as someone who has multiple guitars with the same pickups but different woods/weights I can tell you I definitely notice the difference. I guess maybe it's just something that comes with time. Granted I've been playing for going on 16 years off and on.
Also some pickups have very distinct tones.. The Invader Neck p/u comes to mind as being one of those. This feels like one of those bandwagons people jump on like Tone Snobs, Tube vs Whatever.. People just like to dig their heels in and gatekeep for some reason.
This felt like a flat-earth believer trying to convince me how the earth is flat by showing me evidence that supports it is indeed round.
I wind pickups and its not up for debate, they can be too dark or too bright. Don't believe me? Make your own and you'll hear it!
When you say that we
need expensive speakers to hear the subtle differences between humbuckers, you're saying exactly what Glenn said, but in other words.
However, he went further and argued that they are not worth the extra money and that there are others faster and cheaper ways to improve your tone.
I spent £35 on a p90 humbucker and an x2n clone. They replaced ibanez v7 and V8s.
It was probably the fastest and cheapest tone fix ever.
Sorry, it's all sounded more or less the same, there is subtle differences, but not a game changer. The pick-ups won't make your performance stand out more that what a little EQ would have done.
I think that's kinda the point with all this there is a difference none of them sound bad each of them will do just fine its whatever your ear likes best ultimately they will all work and none sound bad but they do sound different and it's whatever sounds best to you
@Martin Tremblay - Completely agree with you.
They'd have all sounded more similar if there was any effort to match levels and overall EQ ahead of the distortion. Yes, you can hear differences, but it's not at all clear that you should change pickups to get the tone you prefer. And that's one of the reasons Glenn says you should record a clean tone so that it can be reamped---even if you use the same amp or amp sim, you can get different tones by changing the EQ going into it.
And therein lies the problem, most people just don't have good ears. I've been playing for over 40 years, I have tinnitus and I can still easily hear the differences, I'm also an ear player and can learn songs faster than most, even if you use tabs {i've NEVER used tabs, couldn't be bothered}.... I see shitloads of guitarists banging on in these video's about "can you put up tabs", or "what tuning are you using", if you can't work that out by ear in a couple of seconds then you have no right commenting on tone, your ears just aren't that good....
@Bloom Tik Bloom 100% correct...
Not a fan of Glenn but as an engineer I agree with him. Fundamentally what is wrong with the design of experiments you content creators make is that it is all based on your perception not in any measurable way.
Neuroscientists like Dr. Dan Levitin have already demonstrated that human perception can most definitely be measured, particularly when it comes to audio and music. The problem is no one on TH-cam is qualified to do it.
Agreed. There is no scientific method going on here, and he outright lies that Glenn Fricker said that there are no subtle differences. I went and watched his video. He says it as clear as day.
@@jsullivan2112 the point is it isn’t your perception that needs to be measured it is the audio output like using a frequency response analyzer. My point is all these test are based on a preconceived notion a person has and placebo. I don’t know Levitan but non STEM sciences I find rather flaky.
@@bluwng Pickup A. needs to be measured to see if there’s more energy around high mid range frequencies than pickup B, yes.
Perception of whether someone can hear that?
Absolutely not. It’s no different than how a hearing test is performed; volume sensitivity at defined frequencies: Can a person hear 1khz at 50db? Or does it have to be turned up to 53db?
None of us hear all frequencies at the same amplitude. So someone could hear differences in a pickup someone else doesn’t.
It can definitely be measured.
You can also do double-blind testing to draw a consensus between listeners across various demographics the same as audio engineers do when developing the latest lossy audio compression formats, to see if the average listener can tell, or care. We can see if people can identify pickups or styles, without a bias of their own or one being created for them (Glen’s vintage guitar trick).
There’s definitely measurable science behind it.
Like I said, the problem is no one is doing this shit but either pretending they are (like Glen Fricker) or saying it can’t be done.
There's nothing non-STEM about psychoacoustics. You can do very good experiments about what kinds of differences people do or don't actually notice, and what kinds of preferences they actually have when they listen to things without knowing whether the sounds come from an expensive guitar or a cheap one.
Unfortunately doing double-blind experiments with large groups of people (to get statistical significance) is a real pain in the ass, so less of it gets done than simple measurements of things like the resonant frequencies of bodies and necks, which people might or might not notice, and might or might not have a preference about if they do notice.
By the way, Dan Levitin isn't just a music perception guy. He also wrote the book A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking with Statistics and the Scientific Method. I suspect he knows what he's doing.
Pickups matter if you play clean. Glenn always clarifies that his channel is all about Metal and distorted guitar tones, where the distortion becomes the guitar's tone. But even clean, you gotta remember, except for EMGS, Lace, and Fluence, they are all just magnets and wire wrapped around a bobbin. There's no sonic magic attached to name brands. Whatever differences a pick up might make, are easily compensated with tone controls or EQ. Its not a question of whether pickups differ in sound, it's a matter of whether it's worth extra money when you could just turn a knob and save a hundred bucks.
Go listen to his newest test. Sure there’s a difference but you couldn’t tell it in a mix, and it’s in the range of just being eq’d to change it. Pickups are simply a waste of money after a certain point. My Pacifica 112j has a terribly muddy pickup in the room, but when mic’d it’s ever so slightly different from my Kramer with a Duncan JB. Now, if I buy a set of 40 dollar Wilkinson pickups, I can get an almost identical sound to the Duncan JB. If you absolutely want to swap pickups, just don’t be dumb, don’t go for name brands.
I think a lot of the point is that guitarists get obsessed with the wrong things. Pickups (let alone body wood and other nonsense like that) don't count for shit with high-gain sounds compared to your mic/cab/amp, yet guitarists fixate on them far more. Even the output of your pickups can effectively be changed by just tweaking your gain knob slightly, or if you want a slightly different EQ curve.. use an EQ pedal, it's a hell of a lot less money and effort than changing your pickups. Honestly, the only reason I'd change out my pickups these days is if they were excessively noisy or I was changing them to an entirely different type.
It’s people that want to feel accomplished by purchasing rather than practicing. To put it simply, guitarists are genuinely just stupid, they want the short term gratification that comes from new stuff, rather than the long term gratification that comes with practice.
"Sizeable difference"? No it isn't. What's more, is that people who understand how electronics work know there is very little difference between one pickup and another. First off, a pickup is just the most basic of inducers. It's a thin copper wire coiled around metal poles with a magnet spanned across them. It's not very complex. You can make these in your basement. The more windings you add, the more output you get. The feature of humbuckers are the two coils running in opposite phase that cancels out noise while adding output. Also, the location of the pickup affects the tone more more than the pickup itself because it changes how close they are to the vibration nodes of the strings.
The thing about our ears is that louder audio sounds different despite being the same source because of the way our ears are more sensitive to frequencies that occupy the vocal range (Imagine that!). Getting louder makes those frequencies at the extremes of our audible range more detectable. Thus, it "sounds" different. We also change our perception of sound based on what we see. There is so much psychological influence on what we think we hear. For example, when you are told that playing a vinyl record backwards reveals a secret message. You're told what the message is and, because you were told it's there, you "hear" it because your brain is trying to find patterns in randomness that match what you were expecting.
What differences there might be are so inconsequential since the audience has a minuscule chance of noticing the difference after you've filtered it through your OD, EQ pedal, preamp, amp EQ, FX, speakers, and microphone. The takeaway is, that pickups have the least influence on the sound of the guitar. People who disagree are just trying to cope with the cognitive dissonance of spending money they didn't need to. If you include an EQ (Such as the BOSS GE-7 EQ) prior to everything else in you signal chain, you can easily fake the sound of any pickup. Pickups just aren't the best investment when trying to achieve a particular tone.
Also, your opinion is not valid data. It is not testable. It is your subjective perception and nobody can refute your subjective perceptions because subjective means only you can know your own perceptions. That's a poor foundation for an argument.
Finally, the Strandberg and the Ibanez sound exactly the same. The whole point of the pickup myth is designed to make you believe that you need as many different pickups as you can get because they sell more product that way. The same goes for tone wood. It's all just an effort to invent reasons for people to buy shit they don't need.
Thing is, with the exception of Filtertrons and Fishman Fluences, nearly every humbucker on the market is a subtle variation on the same basic PAF design we've been using for going on 70 years. Of course they sound similar, they're litterally the same design! You can swap out magnets and you can change the number of winds, but these are two of the subtlest changes you can make in pickup design -and the 'humbucking' phase cancelation also cancels out a lot of this nuance. As long as it doesn't sound like mud, you might want to look at the rest of your rig before swapping them out.
Now us single coil players get a lot more variety to play around with. Compare a Tele bridge to a strat to a P-90 to a Charlie Christian to a gold foil to a lipstick tube, I bet you'll hear the difference at any gain level. And even within those categories you get a lot more nuance from changes in winding and magnets without that pesky phase cancelation.
He isnt lying though. He is just saying that the difference isnt as big as people think withing the same types of pickups. Same goes for tonewood, which guitar companies seriously try to push down the buyer, which is simply not the case. A guitars body is way to small and not thick enough to have that big of a difference (it is a part of the tone, just not that much, less than 1% overall). I have found 2 studies, one uses real guitars and one uses big blocks of wood, guess which one actually made the bigger difference...yeah, the latter one, the first example is and I quote "the difference is so small that it can be cosidered negligable". Thats Glenns point, is it really worth investing thousands in tonewoods when its almost negligable.
Of course, Glenns next point is - "if its so noticeable and everyone knows it, then can you recognize them in a mix?"
Its been years for some things, nobody has done it succesfully. His whole point is to stop worrying and play the damn guitar, pickups wont make you better and it wont necesaraly yield the results you were hoping for after investing HUNDREDS of dollars.
People get way too stuck up in his internet persona and cant understand what the guy is actually saying.
Buddy, I think you think you got him on something here, but you really didn't. Glenn never made the statement that "pickups don't matter at all." What he did say was that pickups matter so much less in the signal chain than we guitarist like to think. SPEAKERS, MIC, AND MIC POSITION matter exponentially more than the pickups or the guitars tonewood (whatever that is). Mostly what you hear in difference is output. Yes, a guitar with higher output pickups will hit the front of the amp harder than one with less output resulting in more "gain."But, there's a knob on most amps/pedals that can compensate for that.
At the end of the day, his claim is, if you're going to go tone chasing, you're better off starting with the speaker and working your way back rather than changing a million pickups while keeping a cheap line 6 speaker in your cab and expecting the results to change significantly.
Ignorance is bliss I guess lol. No one wants to be told that their $350 pickup set barely makes a difference, even if it's physically been proven.
I didn't say he said they don't matter, he said they make close to no difference as I said in my steel manning section. Your comment misrepresents what I say in the video. Nice try.
@@aminorerror yeap he's still is right. The difference is not significant enough to make a huge tonal difference once you put it in a mix.
@@aminorerror accept your losses dude.
Watching this video reminded me of that TH-camr who posted the "10 Overrated Guitarists" video and how he tried to explain how Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, etc. were overrated players. I think his channel has also stalled around 5k subs. Lol.
Ah shit Bruce! I'm doomed. I'll quit now.
I despise those channels. It's just making bold, controversial statements in an attempt to drum up clicks. It's just pure clickbait. I refuse to click on any of those videos after I watched a couple.
Great video and great playing! Listening back to what Glenn actually stressed in his video many times is that there IS a slightly noticeable difference, but then he asks whether those differences are really worth investing hundreds of dollars for new pickups when you can actually „correct“ the differences with basic EQ moves. Also, let‘s be honest, most tonal differences completely disappear when swapping out the IR anyhow. But again, very well done video and fantastic playing! 🤘
well said. i was gonna say this too but seems many stated this already. Semi annoyed CLICK BAIT is why i clicked this video, glenn already says this......id rather save my money.
Fuck EQ moves, you get "your over sound" by using your tools, less tools = less time, less money. My peers don't sound like me and I don't sound like them., Not only is it the fingers, my vibrato...but it is the WHOLE package. GLENNN is pandering to the poor as bedroom player/producer who up until recently could barely play guitar and has never produced real talent who has made a real following.
When using clean tones there is a huge difference is tones and that gap closes has you add more OD or Distortion. If you compare pickups on clean amp channels you can obviously hear the difference.
I took that away from Fricke's video, but I met more than one person who named the video as a proof for how pickups all sound the same. And that's no accident, Glenn presents his conclusion that there is some difference as if there was no difference.
Obviously, Spectre is not a gear channel for the shopping musician, it's a production channel for audio engineers working with high gain metal. So his perspective that any difference which you can erase on the rack is irrelevant is on point with what his channel is about. Not buying a second guitar and instead learning EQ is the appropriate way for a studio to save money.
@@BlommaBaumbart i agree, honestly i have a ton of respect for Glenn, this dude......not so much. seemed like he was at times just pooping on him. kinda low key hoping glenn does a response video lol i wonder what glenn will say, people are probably like GLEEEEEEEEEEEEEENN!!!
It never stops to amaze me how clowns like Glen aim their videos at deaf noobs who most frequently do not have a guitar) HB hype does no longer pay off, does it) It never crossed Glen's mind that people might have more than one guitar and more than one pickup. Having different tonal and playing capabilities is probably why that happens, at least normally. No? Why does not Glen shoot a few of his compressors to tell the difference? Would he be able to tell which one was used in the mix? The truth is, nobody gives a flying f about this, no quick buck to be made this way
Fist clip-these guitars don't sound sooooo different to give a fuck. Full mix---THESE ARE DIFFERENT MUSIC PIECES:. The third one - I CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE IN LEAD TONES. I have my personal issues with Glens statements, but your examples show, that Glen is right
Glenn gets misquoted a LOT. I would be yelling and angry too, lol. He mentions a LOT that he knows his playing isn't GREAT and that he spends lots of time practicing. Watching t.v.....practicing. Probably sitting on the "throne"...practicing. He is "practicing what he preaches". The pickup thing...man so many words put in his mouth, it is a good thing it IS that big. He never says there is no difference. In fact he mentions there IS subtle differences and if your ears are THAT good then good for you spend that $. Most people aren't recording professional music, most aren't going to do professional level editing. He is simply trying to save money for the majority of people. Is it worth $100s to get that subtle difference to a bedroom player? Is spending $100s going to make you sound better? No, no its not. THATS all he is saying. Thank you for being cool a d approaching this with respect. Good on ya.
I think you might have actually proved Glenn's point in this video, and even if you have to adjust your Amp to get the tone to match even closer it still stands that you absolutely didn't need different pickups to get that tone
I struggle to see what this video is for? It proved everything Glenn says, then he attacks him. Bad video imo it just popped up but I won’t be watching more.
But the fact that you have to adjust the amp to get the same tone attests that pickups make a difference.
@@travisspaulding2222 and you just proved the point yet again. If all you have to do is tweak the EQ on your amp a little, why put money into a new set of pickups?
@@travisspaulding2222 Anyone who actually watched Glenn's video heard him CLEARLY say that there is a difference between output levels, and a tiny change in tone...his point was it can easily be adjusted with minimal effort in post, and is negligible in a full mix, particularly in high gain metal rhythm.
@@chuckelator Because when I play live, I don't want to have to tweak knobs just to get the "same" tone. In the studio, tweak away, but in a live setting it isn't practical. I use certain guitar for certain songs in my set list based on tuning and how the piclups come across. For example, I love DiMarzio Evos, but I recently switched my Evo bridge with a Super Distortion because I wanted the extra output, and the Evo was significantly thinner sounding than the V8s I have in my other Ibanez guitars. I was finding myself having to tweak knobs on stage and when you're playing a 45 minute set, Grabbing a guitar, making sure it's in tune, and then having to make sure it sounds correct is a big waste of time, not to mention, I have to make finer adjustments in the beginning of a song because once everyone is playing (ie in the mix) it usually needs an additional adjustment. The solution? A $90 pickup, and it sits pretty well along with my other guitars. Not exact, but not a noticeable difference, so I grab the guitar, check the tuning, and I'm ready to go, and my singer can stop working on his tight 2 on stage waiting for me to be ready to go.
As a person who owns several USA Jackson RR1’s with several types of pickups. They all sound pretty similar. The most notable is the EMG’s when it comes to gain.
In my experience, the only difference in pickups is output.
When I started making pickups it took me a while to get the EQ right....so there's definitely a difference
After watching this I still agree with Glenn. Is it a noticeable difference? Sure. Is it a significant difference? Not really? Is it worth spending $300 on a new set of pickups because it's going to make you sound "better." I would wager no. Which is the entire point Glenn was trying to make. I'll always say, the best pickups are the ones that are in your guitar. The pickups that came with my $77 DiY kit guitar sound phenomenal, all I'm sayin.
I'd just recommend you try a high quality pickup I think you'd be shocked at the improvement.
@@murrayguitarpickups9545 the point is what the difference is after a mix. it is important to remember the people who listen to your music won’t always be other musicians who appreciate these tonal differences. it’s not going to sound like how it does physically being in the room with the amp. it is also
important to note that when songs go through production, a lot of the low end is going to be cut out. however it’s obvious a p90 is going to be different from a jm pickup, and a jm pickup is going to be different from a single coil. and of course a stacked humbucker will be different from a traditional humbucker. most humbuckers have the same construction and different materials which make slight differences. this would probably only make sense in live settings where your amp isn’t mic’d, like in house shows. but if your amp is mic’d your kind of back in the same dilemma where your tone really only comes from what mic is being used, mic placement and your speakers and amp tone.
@murrayguitarpickups9545 “If you just allow the placebo effect to take over, you can tell the difference.” Ok bud lmao
I had to A/B the two guitars several times before I picked up any differences..if I was playing one guitar, unplugged and plugged in the other I really doubt I wouldve noticed a difference..and I definitely wouldve adjusted the input gain on the interface for the other guitar. Glenn was specifically talking about high gain metal rhythm tones, and his thing has always been to dissuade people from getting caught up in gear and to focus on playing. I think he's just trying to really say to people its not gonna make a real difference in your metal mixes if you shell out the $300+ for a new set of pups in your guitar.
We all should spend more time writing songs/riffs. An awesome riff sounds good no matter what pickup it's being played on.
Definitely not true. Some pickups are muddy as shit and it’s obvious, like most Ibanez branded stock pickups. Fusion Edge come to mind, as well as Power Sound. They’ll make an awesome riff sound terrible.
I definitely agree that we need to, as artist, write the best we can. especially with what we got. But I will also say that there is so much that can go into sound. there has been times where I could play a riff on one of my guitars, not feel it, and pick up another one of my guitars and it just sounds and feel better. Pickups definitely matter, especially when you're chasing a specific sound. a lipstick pick up will sound 100% different than a fishman fluence. regardless of gain. all that said, I wish you happy jamming Matt! keep rocking brother.
@@DravenZordI just record with what I have. A $200 Pawn shop Jackson an $80 Jr kit. And a Tascam. New strings/heads and tuned up- mic'ed-up. It works. I've updated my gear since my last post. Regardless, plug it to the Marshall and just play.
@@THE-RED-LETTER-PROJECT that’s awesome though man! I definitely wasn’t trying to debate. As long as you’re enjoying what you’re playing, I think that’s all that matters.
You should have heard some of my first pickups.....debate over! They were too muddy or too ice picky
I'm with Glenn. Regarding any high gain music, full sized humbuckers will make very little noticeable difference between the different high quality ones out there. If we're talking other humbucker designs like filtertron, firebird pickups, strat-sized humbuckers etc then that's a different story and they'll sound radically different due their smaller magnetic field or output level. I'll even add PAF low output humbuckers to that list. The IRs or how you mic your amp will make a much much bigger difference in the mix when it comes to heavy music. Stop falling for the marketing of manufacturers.
I'm of the belief that most metal guitars (or at least what Glenn is talking about) are using active pickups which, yeah, the difference in sound is negligible. This is one of those pointless "quantify art" so we can train an AI to replace us all.......were barking up the wrong tree
@@Jasonmakesvideo Most metal guitars have passive pickups
I think this says more about metal than pickups.....metal guys don't care for good tone, there i said it😂
One of the things that sounds different with mini humbuckers or (even narrower) strat-single-coil-sized humbuckers is that it puts a comb or notch filter in a different place.
The spacing between humbucker coils listens to the string at two different points and that creates a comb filter that starts at fairly high frequencies. For low frequencies, it doesn't matter much because if the string is going up and down over one coil, it'll be going up and down almost as much over the other, and theyll add constructively.
But vibrations that are going up over one coil when they're going down over the other tend to cancel out, so high harmonics can interfere with themselves and cancel out, killing frequencies whose characteristic string length (the amount of string between two statioinary nodes) is the same as the coil spacing, or a multiple of it.
That comb filter is different for each string, depending on the frequency represented by that size piece of the string. The closer the coils are to each other, the shorter the pieces of each string that matters. For most strings, only one or two teeth of the comb filter matter, because it starts at high frequencies, so it mostly acts like notch filter. That notch filter will be at a higher frequency for narrower humbuckers like minis or especially strat single-coil-width side-by-side humbuckers. (It doesn't apply to stacked "noiseless" humbuckers, where both coils are under the same point on the string.
A lot of people talk about the difference between single-coils and normal humbuckers, but I've never seen any good comparisons with the sounds of narrower humbuckers.
I've also never seen anyone mention that all normal-sized humbuckers have a notch in the frequency response, at a different frequency for each string, but both expensive and cheap humbuckers have the same notches in the same places, because they have the same coil spacing. That's one of the reasons cheap and expensive humbuckers tend to sound pretty similar. Their overall frequency response curves may be a bit different (and likely EQable to reduce differences) but those characteristic notches in the frequency response are the same.
This is the first video I’ve ever disliked, such a narcissist and quite frankly the comparison you did was lack luster at best.
The question should not be “does guitar A and B sound different at all?” albeit “can I make guitar A and B sound similar?”
If I recall correctly, he indeed stated that he matched the levels. He had to, because otherwise the input signal would clip when using an active pickup and he recorded a passive pickup before! Also it’s a psychological fact, that the louder tone sounds better/different. He also didn’t play around witch active tone control ( which you can’t do on a passive).
I don’t know whether you watched his video or you only read the title. I think he’s way more honest than you.
When you go into physics and look how a pickup is made, it should be clear that there is very little room for difference. They are copper coils fetching a disturbance in a magnetic field and putting this out 1:1, like a microphone does with airpressure. But a microphone has a coil plus a membrane and there can be differences. In a pickup you can alter the copper convolutions, but this would only make them hotter or colder. There is nothing more about pickups.
If you have to use reference monitors to hear the difference the vast majority of your audience will never notice the difference. Most people listen to music with standard headphones. Differences in tone from pick up to pick up. Sure, in a full mix in the car or on your earpods you aren't gonna notice.
Glenn: "There is almost no difference in tone between pickups"
This guy: Finds theres almost no difference in tone between pickups, fail
Why doesn't Glenn ask a pickup winder? I've made pickups that sound hugely different from one another.....stay tuned I'm making a set of pickups to prove this point
I'll admit pickups make a difference, but those companies out there charging $400 a set are out of their minds and their customers only feed the cycle
Thanks for watching, that I totally agree on! Any one who's overcharging for their product needs to be called out. I've got a video coming out next week showing a super slimy $700 price increase from Strandberg coming out next week. Rock on!
Mayhem pickups are pricy too, but they are worth it. I have china made and American made pickups. American made pickups sound so much better than their doppelgangers from over yonder. Also, there is a commitment to quality and care, not to mention but I will, the pride and reputation that goes into it. Seymour Duncan is a great American pickup company. In the 80's all the way till today, they are still the go to company by the pros in the music industry. It really is preference. I took a chance and got me some Mayhems for one of my guitars and what a difference over the stock Jackson pickups. It became a whole new guitar.
@commonsensehill372 make sure that you're not confusing the fresh strings with better sounding pickups. Adjusting the pickup height is also important.
The pickup market really charges on supply n’ demand. And demand is pretty big my man.
$400 for a set? Who's charging that much?
7:27 "as if he manipulated" your assuming he manipulated the gain. Dont make an accusation with out any proof. Thats DISHONEST of you to knowingly call him dishonest with out any proof he did what you are claiming...yea i dont need to watch anymore of this weirdos video.
He actually did not say pickups don’t effect tone. You are completely
misrepresenting his position. He said that pickups don’t have a “massive” effect on tone and that many of them (in their respective types such as active or hum buckers) sound so similar that a small eq change can compensate for the differences in a mix. And he literally said there’s a very noticeable difference between active, single coil and hum buckers. He also spoke about the difference in output levels and the reason he adjusted the gain was to compensate so you can better hear the actual difference in tone without the gain and volume increase. In other words he intentionally removed variables that make it harder to hear the actual eq curves. Anyways his point was that if you don’t have a lot of cash to spend on gear it would be better spent other places. When you accuse Glen of saying there are no subtle differences you are lying. I know that if you actually paid attention to his video you would know this. So either you didn’t or you are being intentionally dishonest.
My video proves with evidence that pickups make a large difference in tone and articulation. He claims it makes close to not difference. He's wrong and he's lying.
@@aminorerror interesting because you literally say that the difference is “subtle” in your video. Should I give you a time stamp? 17:29 who’s lying? 18:08 and again who’s lying? 18:29 and again😂😂😂😂”…almost imperceivable”-you
@@Imfreehowaboutu Nice! ... and now he's telling his mommy on you
Couldnt tell which pickups were which in the blind test. I do believe they matter somewhat
I think you may have misunderstood Glenn's videos and his conclusions. I'm not sure that he ever stated that there is no difference between pickups. Instead, that pickups don't make that much of a difference, so if your pickups work properly, there's no reason to spend $200 on a new set, when a different speaker in your cabinet will completely change your tone for similar or less money. And if we're talking about recording (which we are), direct recordings are very common in 2023. With a direct recording, you can alter the sound of your pickups for free with an EQ. You can also adjust the settings on the amp to change the tone, or if you're like me, put 3 EQ's after the speaker in the DAW because I'm trying to match a guitar tone from a local band's recording from 2007.
Pickups make a difference, absolutely, but they don't make the kind of difference that justifies modifying your guitar. I mostly change pickups for aesthetic reasons, but output is also a factor.
In your examples, when you said there was a big or noticeable difference between guitars, I didn't hear that big of a difference. The first example with the Strandberg and Ibanez, I had to go back and click between them because other than the palm mutes, they sounded the same. I'm listening on my PreSonus monitors. And then again at the end of the video when you went back and forth between the two clips, I couldn't really hear any noticeable difference, and this is on soloed guitars.
I did hear a difference in your clips with the full mix, but is that not something that you can change for free by turning some knobs? Because as I stated above, and was Glenn's real point, it's not worth the cost to swap pickups. Spending hundreds of dollars for a small or even unnoticeable difference when you're probably going to mangle the sound of the guitar afterwards is something only guitar players would do. I believe that is the real takeaway.
Like, do what you want, it's your money, and a lot of things on a guitar will make a difference, though it might only be 0.1% of a difference. He repeats that his goal is to save you money, and telling you to go and spend your hard earned money on pickups and solder them into your guitar (which a lot of people don't know how to do, me included) will not save people money and help them towards getting the tone they want.
A long winded response on my part, but a response nonetheless. You made a solid video and a compelling argument. You made your case that pickups make a difference, but to my knowledge, it was never stated that pickups don't make any difference.
You think there is noticeable tone difference in the “minds” between two very different guitars. I don’t agree. Look closely at the EQ curve, at which frequencies are vastly differing. Also try this… take you A/B guitar tracks pan one hard right, the other hard left, and through a good set of monitor speakers invert the polarity of one side. Show me that simple test, and we can talk!
Difference for the player, not so much for listener and or in the mix. There, nailed it.
THIS!
You can't pander to some and dismiss the others, without the players would there even be something to mix? or something to listen to?
As someone who's both a guitar player and a producer I learn from both sides of the coin and take stuff from each. When it comes to guitar stuff I tend to listen to guitar players and when it comes to production I listen to producers.
I think you may have glossed over the point he made in like 6 different videos and said probably 2 dozen times about this subject: It’s not worth it to pay big bucks for tonewood guitars made by luthiers who were jerked off by the Dhali Lama or $400 pickups blessed by Satan himself, in a metal context, because a $200 Ibanez can sound like a $1800 ESP in a full metal mix context, if you match the input levels to the amp. You have to do the same input level matching when comparing software plugins to hardware, or different hardware clones to each other… And the guitar comparison really needs you to play the same riff in a full mix to really find if the extra $1600 was worth the difference you think you heard.
I forgot to mention… props to you for actually trying to do your own comparison instead of just sitting on your ass and bitching! I actually quite enjoyed this video!… But it’s spelled Spectre, not Specter… goddamn Canadians!
If i remember right, he mentions that different pickups have different output. However, volume is not tone.
There's the issue of pickup height, as well as where the pickups are placed and how they are angled.
As someone who is not an active fan of Glenn, I actually walked away from this video being more on Glenn’s side.
I completely agree that a guitar and pickup combination affects the musician’s performance, but I think you’ve just inadvertently proved Glenn’s point from a high gain perspective.
From your point of view, to hear the difference, I need studio monitors or headphones, which most casual listeners don’t have. Most people do listen on sweetened headphones, Bluetooth speakers, and phone speakers.
However, I have Stratocasters and single coils guitars that have always sounded like a bee hives in my Mesa.
For humbuckers, though, I’ve only ever noticed a difference in gain makeup like you suggested. Honestly, the differences are aren’t that big and leans even more into Glenn’s point.
"Well I would say that's a sizeable difference between the two"-perhaps get your hearing checked?
Perhaps get your hearing checked ;-)
@@aminorerror or maybe keep making videos about your failed perceptions
This is clickbait also!! I have changed out pups in my strat and when I played it at my normal unchanged settings the difference certainly was not worth the price! It is exactly what Glenn was talking about- the people that argue about Tonewood and Pups and this and that I always find out they are in the business of selling you their guitars!
Yes, yes it is. And that's my point ;-)
@@aminorerror WHAT!🤣🙄
@@aminorerror that was clearly not your point.
@@aminorerror stupid
There is a huge difference between the part of the guitar that creates the signal and tonewood lmao
Also I've played guitars I thought were ugly but loved how the pickups sounded. A good set of pickups that suit your sound and play style make a big difference
The difference in chugs is near zero. Harmonics? Nobody ever wants to talk about that. Glenn was right.
I love your guitar playing, but that guitar tone/pickup/tonewood is just bad. Comparing 7 string to 8 string? Comparing different solos on different guitars? One with floyd, next one with fixed bridge? That's legit pickup comparison? C'mon man, you are better than that.
I'd suggest sticking to what you do best, which is plying guitar, not talking about physics.
None of those issues matter in Glenn's video, why would it matter for mine?
@@aminorerror Because he was trying to prove, that I does NOT matter, which only confirms his opinion.
Nothing personal but I’m going with Glen on this. I think he was saying the big money pickups don’t make any difference or worth the money.
Glenn can be heard in a few videos around the time he made that one saying something about starter pickups (like Duncan Designed vs real Duncans) along the lines of 'dude, take off the training wheels and get the real thing' or something similar.
My take on bad pickups is they're like bad instruments. You know how 'it's not the instrument, it's the player' is frequently said, along with 'a better guitar won't make you sound better'? It's bunk if there's not a baseline of quality. My first bass had a bowed to shit neck, and I instantly played better when I wasn't fighting to press strings that were a half inch off the frets toward the upper frets just to keep them from buzzing. I replaced all the hardware on a parts bass because the pots literally broke when turned, and the rest was of similar quality. Those parts weren't worth calling proper, but the wood and frets were (surprisingly) fine for an instrument. If your pickups don't meet the baseline of quality, it's not worth talking about them and you should go get something decent. But, once you're past the starter parts, the difference gets muddy. A $1000 guitar vs $2,500 is far less noticeably different in quality, it's usually a fancier wood or something. Same for pickups, but at a different price point.
From there, he said there's some difference in pickups, but it's *not enough to make a difference worth your money*. For 99% of us with middle class jobs with limits on what we can afford, chasing tone in the guitar isn't as important as other things. If pickup A can sound like pickup B by dialing a knob or using a pedal/EQ, then pickup B isn't worth owning since you can just get pickup A. If you can also dial a knob or use a pedal/EQ to make pickup B sound like pickup A, then it really doesn't matter which you own because you can make what you have sound like the other. At that point, owning both guitars should be because you like their appearances, need a backup guitar, or something other than "the tone fits this use case". The other guitar can do the same tone just fine.
And to cap it off with his usual disclaimer, that only applies to high-gain metal tones because he does a metal show. The cleans are much more pronounced and more worth considering if that's important to what you're making.
Lol, how to create Clickbait for your own channel to prove your own point by disapproving your own point, and proving what you’re trying to disprove! Very well done!
I know right?! It's great when you have a problem with my clickbait but not his. Classic internet logic.
I appreciate you actually bothering to record AB takes, most people don't. Kudos!
I agree that pickup output levels change between pickups, and I think Glenn talks about this too. I swapped a standard Fender humbucker for like a 17k output humbucker and there was certainly a difference in articulation and gain staging, although could I have also gotten something similar by messing with the settings on the tube screamer block? I tried it with a different guitar and I could. So that's 2 hours of OT down the drain....
That said, even in this comparison I didn't notice any sizeable actual tone shift. I'm sat here with my headphones on listening very intently and can barely pick up (hah) a difference in tone. I'm not getting any of the "very ____" descriptions you are speaking of and thought all the guitars sounded great (even the Ibanez haha).
While Glenn is definitely trying to rile people up for views, one thing I agree with him on is that moving your microphone a few cms is a more noticeable difference than changing pickups, and when I'm looking at the 3 EQ blocks and Dual IRs I'm running on my helix it's fairly clear that changing pickups should be the last thing on my mind, and this video kind of cemented that for me (which I know wasn't your intention but still you put in a lot of effort so I could listen for myself, so thanks for that!).
Yes. The great thing about making pickups sound different with EQ is that it not only saves you money, it saves you time when you want to switch it back. It's ridiculous to have a bunch of different solid-body electric guitars with different pickups in them, when most of the differences are in their frequency response curves. That's what EQ is for.
Guitar world is weird because we're used to non-flat frequency response from speakers, speaker cabinets, microphones, guitar pickups, etc., and we tend to just swap speakers or pickups or amp mics or whole guitars with no real idea what we're doing. We end up with oddball frequency distributions we describe with undefined words like "woody" without knowing what they actually are. And we tend to buy too much gear because we don't understand how to use what we've already got.
But you can't add frequencies that the pickup isn't producing to begin with!....and a good EQ pedal is as much or more than a set of pups!
@@murrayguitarpickups9545 That would seem to argue for using pickups whose frequency response peak is at a fairly high frequency, because you can shave that off more easily.
I have what seem to be pretty decent EQs for free (as free plugins) in my DAW, and even in my not-very-expensive multieffects floor box.
My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the peak frequency of pickups varies depending on the typical (passive) tone control circuit settings. (It's an inductor embedded in an RC (resistor-capacitor) network, and Everything Affects Everything Else.)
To me that seems to argue for maxing the knobs and going straight into something (a direct box, active EQ or multieffects box) that will buffer the input, so that the peak doesn't shift around screwily, and then mess with it with EQ post- amplification or digitization.
That's what I try to do, but I've never really scientifically established that it's what I'm actually doing. :-/
As I understand it, different pickups have different Q (resonant peak width) factors, so some have basically a plateau before the steep (2nd-order low pass) fall off at high frequencies, and others have a distinct bump there.
Seems to me you should want to have more of a plateau, not a peak, and the resonant frequency fairly high. Then you can use a parametric EQ to put in a bump where you want it, and shave off high frequencies above that.
Conventional humbuckers mess that up because they have a notch filtering effect (due to samping the string at two separated points) with the notch at different frequencies for different strings. (Actually a comb filtering effect, but starting at a high freqency so that the first tooth of the comb is the one that matters most, and the second tooth is way out on the steeply decreasing frequency response curve.)
@@paulw.3967 pickups have a set amount of power available, you can direct that power into the highs or the lows but you have to compromise. Pushing the high frequencies will rob power from the mids and lows so its a balancing act. I'm not sure about all that wiring circuitry stuff that not my field of expertise. From experience I've found it best to start with the tone you want and only adjust EQ to fit the track into a mix.
@@murrayguitarpickups9545 These days I'd think that raw power would not be too much of a problem... just use some kind of a boost stage (hardware or software) if necessary. (Within reason.) Even if you have to buy an active EQ pedal, it at least will work with all of your guitars.
I understand messing with pickups and sticking with what works, because pickups are basically voodoo... and I've done that especially with humbuckers, but it bugs me. We usually don't know what it actually is about what we're actually hearing that we like, so we don't really know what we can do with it. (So Leave It The Fuck Alone can be a reasonable strategy.) A humbucker has notches in the high frequency response, but they're different for each string depending on the relationship of the coil spacing to the open string pitch, and you can't fake or fix that with a global EQ.
One reason I tend to prefer single coils or stacked noiseless is that I have SOME ability to relate what I'm hearing to a frequency response curve, and have some idea what I can do with it.
I mean … i see 2 things here is there a HUGE difference no … is there a difference yes ! And for a bedroom young guitar player that doesn’t have a lot of money … i think Glenn is trying to say you dont need 300$ pickups to sound 100 times better . And like ryan bruce once said in the modern days … a pickup is just a eq curve in form of a magnet. So saying you get a decent pickup not a cheap harley benton 100$ guitar pickup. And then throw a eq in front of the amp you might be able to achieve the same or pretty close. The point at the end of the day is what sound great and feels right for the player!
There is a large methodological difference here. Normalized vs non-normalized dry tracks will push the amp differently. The question as to whether this is an amp related variable which can and should be controlled for vs this being a guitar or pickup related variable which should remain variable depends on perspective.
When mixing I almost never receive dry guitar tracks, but I do usually have dry bass guitar. My practice is to normalize the dry bass track pre-sim so that my results will be more consistent. So, I would also rather see a normalized pickup comparison. Choice of peak, RMS, or LUFS doesn't matter as long as it's consistent.
From a players perspective, the idea of normalizing in post could seem unnatural because a player typically sets the amp gain to suit the input level. It's certainly a valid perspective. The popularity of modern amp sims and the ease of gain adjustment in post might shift the way players think about gain staging and amps in coming years.
While I appreciate a good faith, mostly well made rebuttal. I will say that in your tests i really only found the first test of yours useful, as in the other clips you played a different piece for each guitar. It's kind of hard to tell which differences in tone fall under articulation and range of frequency and which ones are more inherent to the gear when entirely different things are being played for each instrument.
Simple as Glens playing is, at least he played the same simple thing and at least attempted to keep the same force, angle of attack, and articulation. This is doubly important if you're going to imply a narrative behind what you're criticizing. Like that Glen has lost his way as creator, is out of his depth, and should get back to making more recording specific content.
Not only that, but even in that first test, while there are slightly different colors, there are slightly different tone colors in Glen's vid as well. He even admits as much. He only claims that if you're instrument stays in tune and feels good to play, then things like the amp/amp sim and speaker/IR are more important things to check if you're trying to match a certain tone or are trying to create a solid base for your own sound.
I think part of what people miss in these shootouts, and debates; is that different guitars, with different pickups, sound different through multiple amps/rigs.
I’ll use an example.
I’m a reseller, and recently acquired three Jackson Rhoads guitars. A RRX24 with stock Jackson pickups, an RRX24 with Duncan Blackouts, and a Rhoads PRO with Duncan Distortions.
Playing through my 5150-3, on the red channel, there was very minute differences between the two RRX24s, however the Rhoads Pro with the Duncan Distortions was noticeably different. Way less output, completely different voicing, and very surprising overall.
Clean channel? All three were noticeably different.
Plugging into my little Spark 40 practice amp, with a digital preset? They all sounded the same. As does my Les Pauls, American Ultra Strat, and other instruments.
I’m not a tube or amp snob. I think lots of applications can sound great. But….. much like the speakers and amp colors your sound; so does the guitar and it’s pickups thru different amps.
I bet, a ton of people who have multiple amps and guitars, likely have particular pairings, when they’re going for certain sounds.
It may sometimes be subtle, but the differences are there.
Minor differences are not justifying 1000 usd price differences. Glenns idea that you can get killer tone with affordable guitar and some knowledge still stands.
I never said that wasn't the case. The main purpose of my channel is guitar reviews and finding affordable guitars that are actually well made and sound good...thus why I'm hammering how good the Schecter was.
Pickups don't cost 1000 dollars jack
Getting the slightly better sounding versions of all the equipment in your chain adds up those small benefits to create a bigger difference.
@@Minty.Fresh.Tunes. As long as it work properly and stays in tune you can pretty much plug in a paddle into neural dsp Gojira (or other gretat amp sim) and get HQ results. I want to point out that I'm talking olnly about hi gain guitar sound for riffing, texturing and solo. After EQ-ing you'll get tone that inside the mix want make much of a difference if you used more expensive guitar and/or pick ups
@@aminorerror Still, there was no need to misconstrue what he said. I went and watched Glenn's video, and he says several times that there are subtle differences. It seems to me that his overall point was that there are no major differences between pickups used in a high gain setting that are worth breaking the bank over when EQ and speaker selection (or IR, in the case of most home studios) make a much bigger difference in the tone you end up with.
I take Glenn with a grain of salt, but he has a major point when he states that pseudo-science/religion is prevalent (it is), and that the difference doesn't matter anywhere near as much in a actual mix.
My opinion is based on people's inability to define these things if they aren't in the physical presence of the instrument.
Yes, we can tell the difference between a Strat, Tele, and Les Paul, and 335/hollow body. But can you tell when it's on a recording of someone that you've never heard? Specific details of their instruments should be immediately recognizable, right?
If people could recognize specific tone woods and pickups associated with certain performers, then why do they (as well as I ) constantly ask people about their gear? Their settings?
He has also made it plain that he's speaking in terms of metal mixes, specifically, as you have addressed.
He also rightly points out that the audience doesn't care, and that you should focus on practice.
It's not pseudo science, pickup making has tonnes of well established research just start googling, speak to a winder like myself, they can vary in tone wildly! Its simply a fact its not up for debate and Glenn is a moron!
Calling someone dishonest based merely on a suspicion, is itself dishonest.
Not when all of the examples prove he's wrong about the core concept behind his video. Thanks for watching.
@@aminorerror He could be just wrong. What would be his motive to lie? How does it make any sense that he would lie about this, rather than just be wrong, or have a different opinion? People who are quick to call other liars, are doing it because they themselves are quick to lie.
You have mostly just backed up what Glenn said, and called him a liar. He said there were differences, but output lever was the biggest difference. Then the said If you want a bigger difference change the speaker or mic placement. His emphasis was to invest your money into the things that will make the biggest difference.
In the interest of being fair, though, you're WAY overselling the differences you're getting with these pickups, especially that (way too short) A/B comparison with the 7 strings.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say your comparisons are
A) all too short
B) not using the same material for comparison... you're comparing different kicks and songs on different places on the neck that are known to have different tonality for the same notes.
Glenn doesn't play for a long time on any of the guitars in his video, and you don't seem to have a problem with that. I do use the same material in my 2 Active v Passive clips.
@A MINOR ERROR make no mistake. I have a LOT of problems with Glenn, not the least of which are the fact that he's an awful guitar player and that he's never recorded anything other than scrub bands.
Now, if i missed the fact that you go more in depth in videos other than this one, that's my bad for sure!
The only somewhat significant difference I’m hearing is output level. In a practical sense, when will you ever be recording without gain-matching/eqing etc? Everything sounds similar enough that it would be easy to tone-match with some minor eq tweaks, and it’s a lot cheaper to do that than chase tone by spending hundreds of dollars you don’t need to on replacing pickups.
I sometimes do EQ but never gain match. I'm a set it and forget it guy when it comes to amps and I'd rather pay more to be able to do that :)
@@Mr.Goldbar In this case it’s more about monitoring your input gain level on your preamps (since we’re talking digital amps) to equalize the strength of signal hitting the front of the amp.
You do see how by doing some minor settings/eq tweaks you can basically negate any perceived difference in sound a pickup has, right?
@@Kwert I see, but I'd like to avoid having to do that as much as possible.
I go kinda backwards. If twisting knobs makes a difference and I don't like twisting knobs, I'd wanna get something that will make me sound like I'm twisting knobs
@@Mr.Goldbar you swap pickup to match gain? Ok bud 😂
@@Kwert EQ in post can't add frequencies that aren't there to begin with
Seriously, I don't hear a difference. Try listening without watching
Sorry partner, you've done more to prove Glenn's point than to disprove it. I've been playing guitar for 30+ years and have different guitars with different types of pickups. I even have a solid body with FilterTrons, which are considered the weakest pickups out there. The only deciding factor is the output of the pickups. I heard your sample and there's not much difference (I have studio monitors and headphones). Sorry, but got to side with Glenn on this one.
When I first started making pickups the EQ was all messed up. If you're right about pickup EQ they should have all sounded fine and only varied in output. Anyone making these claims needs to make a pickup themselves!! Or just ask a pickup maker instead of a youtuber who is a novice guitarist
@@murrayguitarpickups9545 First of all, I'm not a novice guitar and neither is Glenn, who just needed to get back into practicing. Second, I have a friend who wound a set of pickups for me. That guy did a good job of making them, however there no tone shift. If anything,, I had to seriously turn down the gain knob just to calm the guitar down.
If you still think that I full of it and there is an EQ shift with the pickups, then do a science test. Show us in a video how that happens. Glenn has done that, I have done that with my various guitars, and if we're wrong prove it.
And the last I checked, pickups are rated by voltage and resistance.
@@joerojas5448 I dont want to give anything away but I'm working with a youtuber to prove this I'm winding 2 bridge pickups with extremely different EQs just to show the tone shift.......stay tuned
@@joerojas5448 by the sounds of it your friend made an overwound pickup for you, typically that will push the mids, so unless you were going from a very weak pickup the EQ wouldn't have noticeably shifted because all high output humbuckers have a noticeable mid push, so comparing one mid pushed pickup to another isn't going to show any really obvious differences. I'm making a very low resistance bright pickup and a high resistance dark pickup
@@murrayguitarpickups9545 Yes, those particular pickups were Overwound. However I did the same test with a guitar that has FilterTrons type pickups with Alnico 2 pickups. The mids pushed forward when I turned the gain up. Also other youtubers have to adjust the tones of amps they were reviewing with the same exact guitar. I also have different types of amps with different speakers. Some amps were brighter with the same eq settings. I will see if you can prove me wrong and Glenn. I will be open to it, but you need to go about it in a scientific way to win this argument with me.
I think you missed the point Glenn makes, he says in pretty much all his videos "don't worry about gear, just focus on making good music".
I can barely hear a difference (on studio monitors and my Audio Technica headphones, even using Sound ID Reference to make them as flat as possible) that will matter in a full mix after mixing and mastering. The only thing that is really obvious is, that the Schecter sounds a bit clearer, I guess it has a better intonation allover the neck.
In my experience (and I changed a pickups a lot of times) it makes only a subtle difference, main difference is how hot they are. If you really want to change the tone of your guitar you are better off using a EQ pedal and spare yourself the hassle of chaning pickups.
swing and a miss.
Yawn. So subtle are the differences that most consumers of the final product won't notice. I think you went to a lot of trouble just to agree with Glen.
I like that Doom font. I'm a huge Quake player so of course I had to mention that. I'm a personal friend of Glenn's--we've met and hung out in real life. I have no issue with how you presented yourself here and Glenn wouldn't either. (Subscribed!) Also, you're a fucking ridiculous guitar player. Well played in these examples.
What Glenn is trying to do is get musicians to stop going down the rabbit hole of new pickups, new tubes (unless micophonic) and focus more on what will change their tones significantly more: speakers and microphone type/microphone position on a speaker.
At the end of the day, a pack of IRs for for a Greenback speaker will yield night and day differences when compared to a V30. These drastic sound differences matter much more (and are more fun to experiment with) than the slight increases/decreases in pickup amplitube or compression.
I enjoyed your video and your presentation, no bad blood here 👍🏻 I think these conversations in general are exceptionally important to have and I think you are both right. But most importantly, we always have to remember... we are a bunch of absolute nerds arguing over the last 3% of something.... those that don't know the difference don't care... they just want a good song to enjoy. 🤘🏻
Hey that's really cool you know him personally! Old school DOOM And Quake are freaking awesome, I went down the rabbit hole with DOOM during COVID times lol Appreciate your thoughts and thanks for the kind words!
@chernobyl studios. GLENN IS A FRAUD. GLENN STARTED THIS VERY CLEVER MARKETING SCAM ABOUT 2 MONTHS AGO. GLENN SELLS IMPULSE RESPONSES? Agreed? So is it not strange that all of a sudden, tonewood and pickups do not matter????? Only the speaker has an effect on tone?? And woah, hold your horses, Speaker Impulses are the ONE F-ING thing that Glenn sells. Glenn is a fraud. Glenn is a schill. And Glenn refuses to debate me on that. And his attacks On Christianity are atrocious. And his "act like a mad 13 year old who just learned the F-word" rants are ridiculous.
I agree with you that subtle differences are a big deal both in players and engineers. So much to the point where we call subtle differences "huge" because that difference matters a lot towards our sonic goal. I've watched my guitarists go through guitars, pickups and amps until they were finally happy. So those little differences to some are major differences to us. On the other hand, Glenn acknowledged the small differences. His point was that the speaker makes a big difference. My take is, first the broad strokes, then the details. I don't think Glenn had his conclusion and his thumbnail before he did the tests. If he had found the differences HE perceived as major either in tone woods or pickups, he would have been just as happy to share those findings. In your tests I have to say, though I heard shifts in tones, the song, the key and all that was different from one to the next, so that is more challenging to make your point. Great guitar playing man!
It feels like you're falling for the click bait and not the general message of his videos. He never said there is no difference in pickups, but rather if you're completely unhappy with your tone, there are smarter and more efficient places to start to get a bigger improvement. In his view it's speakers, cabs/IR, amps, microphones, etc. Start somewhere else first, where you get more bang for your buck. The other point is that the differences are often so subtle a slight turn of a knob can account for those variations, so instead of dropping $250 on new pickups, move your knob and get back to writing music.
Your arguments are very weak. Pickups don't make a huge tonal difference = there are no bad sounding guitars? That's a huge leap for literally no reason. Of course guitars can sound bad; intonation, bad nut, bad bridge, warped neck, bad frets, poorly installed/functioning electronics, etc., etc., Showing how pickups are not massive tonal shifters and that the differences are subtle = different scales are basically the same and you'd be a sucker to think otherwise? What? lol. Since when do scales cost hundreds of dollars? One is information (scales) and the other is advocating for purchasing products based on realistic results. Then your major gripe about 'no respect for the subtlety' is like watching a video about pancakes and getting upset that they don't talk about waffles. The whole point is that extremely subtle differences in pickups are the least of your worries if you're a high gain/metal DIY engineer or guitarist.
He's talking to people who get wrapped up into thinking that they need to buy a new product to make their sound significantly improved. He's just advocating for rational purchasing and consumer information. If you're someone who wants to spend money for very little impact RELATIVE TO OTHER THINGS YOU COULD SPEND MONEY ON, by all means buy 100 different pickups and get into the weeds. That's totally sick and wouldn't run counter to anything he talks about. In that scenario, you're aware that the differences are minimal compared to other things and you don't mind. That type of person isn't the target audience of his video.
The clickbait & insults that he's a liar and bad guitar player are super wack. I'm not defending him as a person or musician, he might even be a bad engineer for all I know but none of those attacks negate his points or arguments; which are more thought out and better supported than anything displayed in this video.
I only called him a liar because as clearly demonstrated from my clips, pickups do make a big difference. Gish-golloping about the importance of speakers has nothing to do with the video I'm referencing and I never said those things don't matter. The point here is he clearly came up with the concept for his video and worked backwards. I used old content that was made before his video to prove that I didn't have an axe to grind when I made it. They sound different....because they sound different. I didn't come to a conclusion and work backward, I worked my ass off making a bunch of recordings and drew the conclusions from there. That's why he's a liar and dishonest.
Sure it’s much more efficient to spend a couple of thousand bucks on mics, amps or cabs than 100-200 on a pickup that might fix the issue.
If the only thing that makes guitars sound significantly different is the output volume, then what's the point of buying expensive pickups? Just turn a knob on your modeler or audio interface, or bring them higher or lower.
So you popped up but your first problem is actually you not watching his videos I think. Your first example is passive vs active pick ups, which have different outputs (active more than passive) which he’s talked about, that’s output not tone. Then another example you use two guitars with different angles of pickups (changing the magnet placement under the strings)
If you are mad at what Glenn didn’t say, wait until you watch Jim Lil.
I’ve worked in the guitar industry for a decade, he’s right overall. I think you’ve missed what he is saying though.
Single coil, humbucker, P90, active, passive those are really the inky differences. Anything else can be EQd. His point about not spending £300 upgrading your guitar pickups but buying better other things if you have high output humbuckers, is right.
Glenn is not a guitarist also that was a cheap shot and I think you know it to start with I’m not in to back and forth but then click bait title which you ask ak owl edge and then a direct attack on him towards the end? Cheap man, cheap.
1. I don't think Glenn was "manipulating" the audio to match the gain levels and I'm not sure what exactly was ur point... 'Cos it's normal to adjust ur gain level before hitting the interface (or amp) to reach a desired level. There's basically two ways of doing it, either a) u record all pickups with zero (additional) gain and then balance everything afterwards in DAW to the same level for proper comparison OR b) u match the gain of each pickup individually before recording to the same level for proper comparison. Either way, shouldn't the active pickups still be "winning" since they reach the levels with less added gain, whereas the passives need to be boosted more?
2. I did hear a difference in the first Strandberg vs Ibanez shootout! The main tone was basically the same, but the Strandberg was bity'er and the Ibanez was darker. Killer tones though! 🤘
3. With the Schecter/Strandberg/Ibanez/EVH combo I could hear no difference! It didn't help that each had different piece of music played... Also this is the first time I've heard that Ibanez called shitty! 😱 Granted, this is apparently an older version of the guitar, but they still sell that with a slightly different name, but similar specs and I've only heard praise for it and its pickups!
4. Reaper 6 a cheap guitar?! 12:45 According to the webs it costs about a 1000 bucks!! 😱💸 That's more than ALL my guitars combined! 💀
5. These are good 13:14 and 14:49 = No noticeable difference!
6. Like others have already commented, Glenn DID say there are subtle differences! It's just that they don't matter much in the big picture.
7. Also some already commented, but the guitar parts in ur vid are SUPER LOUD compared to the speaking parts.
8. Great playing though 🔥 And I dig the Doom font 👊
He did say that once you crank up the gain, pickups make little difference if any, not that they DON'T make any difference. Glenn advocates that it is wiser to spend money on the things that DO make a big difference on a high gain metal tone, like the amplifier and speakers. Because for the 100ish bucks that could cost you a pickup, you could buy a V30 or Creamback speaker that truly will make a noticeable difference in your tone or maybe for even cheaper if you use a DI, you can just buy an IR that will still give you more for your money than a pickup change. Also, seriously? you used a Strandberg Boden 8 string, scale 26.25" to compare it with a 7 string, 25.5" scale Ibanez RG, on scale and string gauge that instantly makes that tone comparison invalid, and then you played different riffs on different guitars which also doesn't offer a fair comparison.
Glenn uses guitars of varying scale lengths in his video, and the strings won't make the mids change the way they do in my video. The thing that will is the pickups. Thanks for watching.
Did you even watch his videos?
If I were to say that if there are massive differences between the sound of an pickups they would be categorized between cheap and high quality pickups. I would agree with Glenn if he were to say for an example you just bought EMGs that you decided that you didn’t like, switching to Fishmans isn’t going to make a massive difference.
You literally just proved his point in the first 2 minutes of this video
Fanbois
@@rich-lf1bm Weird, didn't know that agreeing/disagreeing with someone automatically makes you a "fanboy". Guess I missed that world meeting?
-anyway feel free to call *me* a fanboy too so the guy who made this video can heart react to you again.
@sigma: how? where? I missed it :/
@@jann_rygh Literally the first 2 minutes about gain and tone. Glen says pickups don't make any difference when you have a high gain amp and he literally says the exact same thing but worded differently
Glen said subtle difference not no difference.
I don't think pickups make a massive shift in sound because I play the stock low output pickups on my PRS SE and they're killer. Volume is flatter than my fishmans but that's it when I listen back to back
You've completely missed the point here. You're feeding these pickups into an audio interface and then distorting them beyond recognition. The only difference that remains is output volume from the pickup, but that is so easily and trivially matched with modern digital hardware, and THAT is why pickups don't matter.
"Hot output pickups" used to be a thing because people were plugging directly into an amp, and you can't boost or cut the signal hitting them amp without adding a pedal in front. This is trivial in a digital setup, rendering "hot output" a useless feature in a modern setup, because every audio interface has a gain knob. - but it's also easy enough to add a clean boost/cut in front of a physical amp. A 20 dollar clean boost can do that for you.
"You shouldn't be adjusting the gain before it hits the amp". Yes, you absolutely, positively SHOULD be doing that, and that's the whole point. One little trivial adjustment renders all other pickup factors irrelevant. The rest of the video falls on its face after this point.
I appreciate the effort, but this is a "whoosh" moment :)
My saturation levels are less than Glenn's.
This is what I keep seeing from people disagreeing with Glen. This is due to output as you yourself said it. Glenn issue is about tone, if the output is different logic dictates there is a change in output, but not tone.
Regardless of what point you’re trying to make, taking a dig at someone’s playing is a shitty route to take.
Not when he's constantly taking shots at other people's playing. Thanks for watching!
Take any electric guitar and play it through a HM2 with all controlled maxed. they all sound the same.
Congrats - You have done what Glenn always asks people to do - create an experiment and record it.
Couple of things though - Glenn has never said it makes NO difference - his schtick is aimed at aspiring (poor) musicians to make the changes that will have the greatest bang per buck for high-gain metal.
It just happens that a lot of that happens to occur with the bits that actually move the air and make the sound we hear. (Also reference Jim Lil)
Glenn's shown bigger differences in sound when moving a mic a few inches than from a pickup change.
It is notable that you mention that most people are watching this video while "on the throne" on their smartphone and that we should use proper headphones.
That's exactly Glenn's point - most people could not tell what guitar/pickups are being used when they are listening to music via the methods most commonly used.
YT compression, different audio encoding and bit rate sampling etc.
As an aside - different headphones will make any differences less/more obvious depending on the response/brand/tuning - also contributing to certain things being less important to the sound.
Add to that - zero visual references and very few could identify these differences that you point out.
I don't think anyone has gotten 100% on one of Glenn's tests of what is played when, when there is no visual reference on a track.
Joe Perry (Aerosmith) is famous for his Les Pauls - yet he's been quoted recently saying that a lot of what he has recorded has been using a Strat. You could probably count on zero fingers how many people have looked at a video clip/listened to a song and said - "That's not his LP, that's a Strat!"
Here's the thing, if Glenn REALLY only cares about helping musicians get the most tone for the least amount of money...it doesn't make any sense to use any real mics or cabs. A $150 Neural plugin will sound a billion times better than anything you can get for legit 20x that in the 'real' world. And the point here too is I didn't even mean to make an experiment to disprove Glenn, I could just use material from my other videos that was never clickbait. And those videos didn't do well because I wasn't pumping out video after video of clickbait, stacking the deck to try and make it look like there's some truth here that nobody want to admit. Honestly, that's all Jim Lill is doing too and everyone is falling for it hard.
@@aminorerror Hi Rob. I don't disagree with you re: plugins as a way to sound good and save $. But would you agree that changing IR's might have a bigger influence in the final sound/mix than changing your pickups?
Or listening to your mix on a cheap set of earbuds vs a set of high quality open-back headphones/monitors rather than change guitars?
Re: real mics/cabs - if that's what an artist wants to use on a recording for whatever reasons, and they are not happy with the tone - would a pickup change work better than maybe changing the speaker cabinet/speaker (if available) or moving the mic/changing the mic/adding a mic and blending them?
Or JHS pedals tweaking the settings on a Bad Monkey to make it sound like a Klon?
Zac Wylde or John 5 making a Hello Kitty Uke/guitar sound awesome?
Just saying - there are many low(er) cost/no cost ways to make things sound good to most people on the devices they actually listen to music to without resorting to changing pickups.
@@frankiechan9651 And nothing sold more Les Pauls than Jimmy Page’s tele! 🎸🤘🏽
My lesson from Glens video is that people's thing to much about stuff and not the art. In my experience good song is good no meter if the recording isn't the best or its played form guitar pro. The point is "If you have correctly steeped instrument, with pickups that aren't microphonic you are 80% of the way to good tone." End if you come to studio with guitar i mittened. You will make a good sounding recording, may not the best but still usable. The rule of the live is that te 20% of work cost (money/time). And of you a someone who have one amp and guitar and play in a small band. Changing a pickup won't make your tone any batter in noticeable way. Especially if you play thru bad cab, or combo speaker. The order of operation should be good speakers -> good amp -> pickups that complement your tone (if that be necessary). That is a basset way to allocate money in gear, by starting with things that will change my sound the most and going.
@@martyshwaartz971best comment
All do respect.
I agree with Glen - the change between pickups is so minuscule and barely even noticeable ( if at all) with high gain.
Low gain and clean is where even the listener can hear the difference in pickups.
Agree with you about sound engineering & layering guitars and how the subtle tonal differences add up in layering
All good, we can def agree to disagree! Thanks for watching.
@@aminorerror yes definitely bro.
Hey, and thank you for putting together the video stating your take on it.
Also note, I’m coming at from a player and a listener , not a sound engineer or music producer - so I respect your take on it as a valid point of view different from Glen’s.
Cheers
I think you made Glenn’s point a little better while trying to prove him wrong. Bro we all listen to music in our cars, and they headphones at work, or whatever the case. You even say in this video, you need to have the reference speakers so you can hear it better. Also, saying things like “woody” and whatnot. What does wood sound like? In the context of a full mix, the tone is pretty much the same as I hear it through my iPhone speakers, one of the ways I often hear music. Glenn also points out that there may be some very subtle differences in all guitars and pickups, but never as much of a tone shift as changing what actually produces the sound, being the speaker. But, could you identify any of his guitars/pickups in the blind testing he does? Did you get it 100% right every time because you could hear the woody tone? I doubt it.
I said woody with a push in the mids....so that's what I meant by woody.
@@aminorerror I get what you’re saying, and I’m going to sub. But I still think this proved Glenn to be right. In the mix, with multiple tracks, through my normal forms of consuming music I don’t hear a major difference. Or even much of a notable difference. Still gonna sun tho, and hope to more content like this in the future as I too have made the swap from physical to digital amps.
Appreciate the sub, obviously I disagree but that's cool! Appreciate your feedback.
@@aminorerror Sorry, that wasn't actually clear. If "woody with a push in the mids" is redundant, because "woody" just MEANS "with a push in the mids", that suggests that EQ will do what you want, without needing to swap pickups. (Which is my default position, even though I know it's wrong sometimes.)
That's the kind of difference you can get with an equalizer, and switch whenever you feel like it.
Could you put up a link to that compression video of Glenn's you mention at the start?
God I looked but I couldn't find it. I think it was in one of his tutorials on how to get a good rhythm guitar tone that sits in the mix. I explain it in my own series of videos on how I produce my tone on up if you're interested. Sorry I couldn't find his OG video!
th-cam.com/video/U-wGQy7Aljo/w-d-xo.html
@@aminorerror No worries, thanks for the links to your own vids that explain the technique.
You did a great job proving Glenn's points.
He also did say, output does make a difference but not in tone but in gain. Once you match the gain the difference become less noticable
which 100% DISPROVES his theory.
@@benburnett8109 his theory is for recording. Which is normal to match gain in post. His theory still stands in high gain difference between pickup is does not make much difference. It's not make it or break it situation.
@@iDealMedley Drink the Fricker Koolaid. I don't care. But wait a couple of months.....Glenn will reverse course and change his mind. Like he did with amp sims, Drum samples, Line 6, Recording without mics, Impulse responese versus mic on a real speaker......the list goes on and on. GLENN IS A SCHILL. GLENN IS A LIAR. GLENN WILLL LIE ABOUT GEAR TO GET CLICKS, and Glenn is a man that hates Christians. IF you want to listen to a guy who has never been paid to engineer or produce, and has ZERO credits. Then you go ahead. Best wishes and understand that you are following a "person" who has changed his mind more times than MY Mom has changed boyfriends. Just saying.
It’s just like lining up 4 different high gain amps and on “tape” you’ll be hard pressed to tell which is which. One of those amps may be a $1000 Asian import while another is a 4K domestic. The big difference in the amps, pickups etc is in how they feel to play, not so much how they end up sounding. Changing speakers, mic placement, external EQ will all have much larger effects in what you hear vs. the pickups. I personally like the versatility in medium to low output humbuckers because I can always boost them into meltdown and modern amps also have way more gain than necessary but I can’t dial high output humbuckers back to get a decent open jangle or ring to them. They tend to be very sterile sounding on volume roll off.
I'm with Glen. Pickups barely matter in Metal in the mix.
I’m going to defend Glenn Fricker. I think the big picture is that he is trying to encourage kids to create music instead of stressing about having the flavor of the month pickups/gear. With EQ, compression etc, a usable high gain tone is possible with practically any decent quality pickup. They haven’t made profound advances in the design of guitar pickups for many decades now. You can take a Fluence or a SD59 and make a killer high gain tone out of either. Not that pickups all sound exactly the same, but that the end result for high gain tone CAN be extremely similar and good regardless of pickup. I do believe that was the moral of his video.
Glenn's point was simply, as long as your pickups aren't noisy, they're good enough. Yes, different pickups have different outputs but, once you dial in the EQ, push the gain/distortion, hit the compression, run a high pass filter, and throw it in a mix, it doesn't fucking matter. It just gets boiled down to the end result.
Now, do I like certain types of pickups more than other types, sure? Because, I can rely on the quality and the output to achieve the sound I want. Are they the only way I can achieve that sound? No. As a matter of fact, I have experienced some cheap pickups that sounded amazing but, that still only matters to the player because, once it boils down in the mix, it doesn't matter.
I want to say it was Keith Richards (?) who said, "Give me 15 minutes and I can make any guitar sound the same."
My opinion about Glens DI tracks alterd pre recorded being dishonst is wrong somewhat because it's good practice to get your DI signal to clip on Palm mutes then to dial it down so it no longer clips. In essence doing this we should all have signals around the same level anyway. Thats the way I have always set up my DI signal to record maybe I'm wrong but that was my common sense way of doing it.
I think our eyes can and do play tricks on us. There is very little difference in your very first example. None that is really significant, if any even at all. Certainly none that makes it to a mix, and to your own point, certainly none that makes it to the average consumer, sitting on their toilet with their smartphone.
Your other clips are very, very hard to accurately judge when different riffs are played in each of them. There is zero actual measurement or scientific methodology in your process. And frankly, even then, they all still sound basically the same.
One of my best friends growing up had a terrible Squier guitar, you know the kind that come in the $125 bundles. He plugged it into a Bugera tube amp and the thing sounded incredible. I plug in, with my (still budget but not THAT) guitar, and it sounded basically the same. In my opinion, if you buy an expensive guitar for its pickups or "sound" you're probably an idiot. You buy an expensive guitar so you can play on a comfortable, nice instrument with good build quality. You are not buying a sound.
The amp and effects will do 95% of the heavy lifting for you. There are some minor differences in pickups, but it's not nearly as important as people want to make it seem, seemingly yourself included.
You can't just compare your own clips,you edit your videos...including sound...i am willing to bet that you have probably forgotten half the editing to the overall sounds on your videos....if you are going to debunk,do it in one video using examples taken ...in one video and not just taking sounds from previous videos...a poor attempt.
How am I supposed to tell the difference between pickups when every A/B track is different?
The concept is still the same: if they don't make a difference none of that matters. Thanks for watching.
I don't know if the differences were any more stark than in Glenn's videos. But I think it is highly possible that when people get used to guitars they have an easier time noticing the differences between them. The owner knows the sound better than anyone
Not enough of a difference to me to warrant a laughable disapproval. Maybe this guy has exceptional to the point of eerie hearing. Was that a cricket chirping in the basement next door?
Your experiment avoids some important matters. In order for your experiment to prove differences in pickups, you have to use the same guitar. Glen may have made the same mistake. The conversation is about pickup swapping for better tone. If you don't swap pickups in the same guitar, you have literally proven zero. If I put super distortions in a Les Paul, it will not sound the same as super distortions in a telecaster. So if I just swap the super distortions in the telecaster for some JBs, then compare the two guitars they will sound even more different. This doesn't address the pickups. You have proven nothing more than guitars don't sound exactly alike, with different pickups. Has anyone ever made an argument suggesting all electric guitars sound alike? Has Glen made this argument? If he stated all solid body guitars sound the same, he would obviously be wrong. If he stated, swapping out the pickups won't make an audible difference in a mix, he might be right and the only way to prove it either way is with the same guitar and swapping pickups multiple times, in a mix and have the listener pick out when the pickups were swapped. There's not enough actual science being practiced with respect to all of these discussions. What I see is a particular conclusion desired and an experiment designed to achieve such outcomes. That is in no way the proper method of making a solid case, with experiments that can be duplicated and always point to the same conclusion excluding all other explanations.
I can 100% hear a difference between Seymour Duncans under high gain, Dimarzios under high gain, and EMGs under high gain. If you can't, that's ok. I can't play professional basketball, and that's ok.
Glenn did say at very high gain. He played the digital sounds which were different then the close sounding amp sounds. He said the amp gain overshadows the pickup tones. Can’t see the issue here.
The issue is I'm using a high gain amp and there is a difference.
I think you might be confusing difference and "difference". Is there an audible and/or otherwise measurable difference in the output signal between different pickups? For sure. I don't think that anyone has ever claimed anything else, Glenn included. Does that difference make a difference in a live setting? For sure not. You could swap out the guitarist's strat for a Les Paul, his Fender tweed for a JCM and his Tubescreamer for a RAT and no-one in the audience would notice or give a damn. Does it make a difference on a record? Weeeeeell, maybe. Is that difference something that a little bit of gain matching an EQ can overcome? Definitely.
You literally described the rigs from SRV and the guy from Obituary. I think the audience would noticed the difference between them.
EQ cant add frequencies that aren't being produced in the first place
I could definitely hear a gain/ volume shift, but not an actual tone change