What's the difference between a cheap pickup and an expensive one?

[CS70]

Sure. But if I buy an Epiphone Casino I want the guitar to sound like an Epiphone Casino. Seems reasonable, to me!

Yes, what I said. Tough I have absolutely no idea on how an Ephipone Casino should sound

[SecretSam]

I was sort of hoping for a reply along the lines of:

"If the guitar rings nicely when unplugged, but is curiously uninspiring when plugged, then has to be the pickups innit ?"

Or: weak pickups do this: [fill in undesirable trait that I never previously considered, but is obvious once you know about it]

OK, well maybe my piggy bank can remain unplundered by Mr Pickup.

For the gearoholic, a quicker fix than pickups is the effect pedal. A quick rush, with no soldering or patience required. A short-lived high, though, followed by a nasty realisation on Come-Down Tuesday that you have to play some proper notes through it, or you just sound like a tit.

[Dr Huge Longjohns]

A particularly insidious form of this craving is Berhinger-itis. Where you buy a pedal because it's ridiculously cheap and the pleasure hit gained is even shorter and less fulfilling. I have succumbed to this at least twice in the last year or two. Which clearly proves I am ill and not just very stupid.

[Music Wolf]

Sure. But if I buy an Epiphone Casino I want the guitar to sound like an Epiphone Casino. Seems reasonable, to me!

By a coincidence I have an Epiphone Casino, which I like, but I got it into my head that it could benefit from better pickups. Is this because I'm unhappy with how it sounds? Not in the least. It's because;

a) A review of the 'inspired by John Lennon Casino' (which is a more expensive guitar) commented on how it had US pickup and how this was a sensible upgrade.
b) I'd heard great things about Bareknuckle pickups and then I tried a BJ & Byrne Apollo with BK P90s and loved the sound.

The thing is that I've not tried the Inspired by JL Casino so I can't honestly say how much better it is than mine (or whether that's down to the pickups) and clearly the Apollo is nothing like a Casino and so I'm not sure how much the pickups are contributing to the sound.

So far I've not stumped up the cash for BKs as they don't offer chrome covers off the shelf plus swapping the PUs on a semi isn't so straight forward.

[Dr Huge Longjohns]

BK used my existing Casino pickups complete with covers and just rewound them for me to original 60s US Casino specs. Give them a call, they're sooo helpful. They're getting a lot more expensive now but that's what this thread is all about!

[Dr Huge Longjohns]

Sorry, meant to say, getting them on and off isn't nearly as bad as people make out. It's fiddly but if you wrap a bit of string around the pots so you can pull them back through the holes etc it's fine. There are lots of tutorials online about how to do it.

[Music Wolf]

Thanks Huge

I had heard that BK would re-wind the existing PUs, maybe even one of your previous posts, and I've also seen various tips on fitting (including another tip where you use a piece of plastic tubing pushed over the pot spindle, possibly from Andy). The thing is - I'm not unhappy with the sound (but since when has that been a reason not to change something?) and I've not used this guitar live for more than a year.

How much difference did you feel the BKs made to yours?

[Dr Huge Longjohns]

Well for me it went from sounding like a thin, cheap guitar with little character to something much more distinct and individual. Sort of regretted buying really as I think it's a case of throwing good money after bad as I replaced the tuners too. Still feels like a cheap guitar though. But like most people who buy one, The Lennon Thing was too strong a pull.

[Richie Royale]

Would it be possible to stack a number of pickups in a row on a plain piece of wood all individually wired out to a multi input interface and perform a test that way? At least it would provided some detail as to the varying outputs and performance to give some idea what they do?

[Jay Menon]

This is a thread I have read and re-read a number of times over the past few years (thanks Huge) so pardon me please for 'reviving it'...

My personal opinion is that guitar pickups are largely 1950s technology - boutique pickup manufacturers charge an arm and a leg which we guitarists are (sometimes stupidly) willing to pay, in the vain chase of tonal 'nirvana'.

Yes in the 1950s and 1960s - but nowadays I don't believe that there are significant R&D costs anymore to make Strat, Tele and Humbucker pickups (apart perhaps from the newer noise-cancelling affairs, active pickups etc which are breaking new ground, sometimes successfully).

Over the years I've put a few partscasters together (and learnt a few things in the process). When you buy a 'name' guitar you're paying a serious premium for the name. If you use good quality parts & materials and get a good guitar tech to set it up - you can put a truly world class fabulous guitar together often at 1/3 the price. It's a different matter that you could buy a Squier Classic Vibe or Yamaha Pacifica even cheaper - lovely instruments.

Then there are boutique guitar makers (basically good guitar techs themselves) who are basically just making really nicely set up partscasters / bitsacasters, putting their name on the headstocks and charging a premium (£3000 upwards). Some people even claim to source their wood responsibly - and create an impression of being like Bob Taylor or CF Martin - but in actual fact buy bodies and necks from companies like USACG and Musikraft in America.

I agree that an overwound AWG44 ceramic pick up is going to sound different from a vintage wound AWG42 AlNiCo affair. However, when comparing different companies' like-for-like products (everyone and his uncle makes a vintage wound AlNiCo 2 PAF humbucker), I truly do not believe there is an audibly detectable difference, with my eyes shut.

Add to this the fact that most 'mature' guitarists who have been playing in live bands all their lives have serious hearing loss…

Coming back to pickups, Tonerider for instance makes scatter-wound pickups that I've installed on a couple of good guitars. I've then had amazingly talented guitarist friends play them (unaware that they are playing Toneriders) and remark upon how heavenly they sound.

It's interesting to see what happens when I then reveal that the pickups are Toneriders - generally one of the two reactions below:

1. pleasantly surprised / 'converted' (or)

2. then seeking, on further reflection, to find micro-faults with the 'tone' (that one cracks me up)

I'm increasingly beginning to think that the world of guitars probably contains more voodoo / bullsh*t than almost any where else. Except perhaps Downing Street...

[Music Wolf]

Hi Jay

Good to see you back, it’s been a while. Glad to see that you’ve survived the Cumbrian winter.

Reading back through this thread I see that, back in 2013, I was contemplating what would have been my first ever pickup ‘upgrade’. In the end I didn’t swap the pickups on the Casino but I have, since then, installed a set of Bare Knuckles on my US Standard Strat and a pair of second-hand Gibson Burst Buckers on my Patrick Eggle Berlin Pro (The Gibsons were courtesy of self-build guitar addict who we’ll just call JM in order to protect his true identity ).

With the Strat I was switching from SSS to HSS and I originally only ordered the bridge Humbucker from BK. Then, probably due to a combination of having too much money and too little time, I changed my order to a pre-wired scratch plate and a full HSS set. This made it very easy to switch back and to between sets (which I’ve done a couple of times). The Humbucker vs Single coil in the bridge is obviously different but, with the outputs fairly evenly matched, there really isn’t that much difference between the single coils and I’ll bet that 90% of any difference that I do hear is down to confirmation bias. The Buckers on the Eggle have made a noticeable difference, but this could be down to a difference in output plus the fact that I also swapped out the Eggle rotary switch for a regular tone control at the same time.

I’m sticking with stock pickups from now on (upgrading tuners to the locking variety however………………..)

I suspect that our obsession with swapping parts comes from seeing this film at some point in our lives;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR3aIzfNMXM

[Drew Stephenson]

I suspect that our obsession with swapping parts comes from seeing this film at some point in our lives;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR3aIzfNMXM

I did wonder if that was what you were going to link to.

[Jay Menon]

If my guitar tech takes a few humbucker parts and put them together according to the specifications of say a Gibson 57 classic, it will sound like a Gibson 57 classic.

So why would a factory produced humbucker to the same specifications not sound the same?

And why would a pickup made by a boutique manufacturer to the same specifications sound any different - or better?

Everybody and his uncle seems to make an AlNiCo 2 underwound humbucker (and a bunch of other classic models). Do they sound grossly different from each other?

Genuine questions...

[SecretSam]

I do love a resurrected thread.

And where is Dr Huge Longjohns? I miss him.

The only contribution I can make here is experiential and based on no science at all.

I bought a surprisingly resonant strat copy with a compound radius neck for about thirty quid in a junk shop. I basically changed everything except the wood, the bridge and the pick guard on a long-term mission to make it awesome.

The change from the rather muddy original pickups to a Seymour Duncan little 59 in the bridge, and Bulldog 67s everywhere else did make a big improvement.

With hindsight, I wish I had chosen pickups with higher output (because I ended up always playing through a boost to get the sustain I was looking for). But you can actually hear the guitar now, instead of a sound like a tuned vacuum cleaner being used three rooms away.

Other major improvements included changing the gritty tuners to nice, smooth Gotohs, blocking the trem, and having a really good refret and setup. It has conductive paint in all the cavities to form a hum-reducing Faraday cage, and a lot of trick wiring for fun.

Any further tinkering will yield diminishing returns, although adding a custom neck with an ebony fretboard is slightly tempting in a mad, I-could-just-get-another-guitar-for-that-money sort of way.

Blokes, eh? We do love a project.

But back on topic: the little 59s are a bit different, but the original pickups and the Bulldogs are nominally the same. The Bulldogs do sound more articulate and you can hear the notes in a distorted chord instead of mush. When playing with lots of gain, it seems slightly easier to get harmonics out of the Bulldogs. (Not so much the SDs, but they have their own rather sophisticated sound)

[ef37a]

This thread is rather moot since a couple of weeks ago son said he was thinking of getting a "better" pickup for his copy Tele. I suggested it might not be the best use of his very limited resources since he does not gig the Tele at the moment. He is playing bass in a trio and is working hard on his classical guitar so why spend money on a dubious upgrade? Now I KNOW it was a bad idea!

I confess I had not considered the physics of pups before but now I do I can see that there is not a lot of room for much difference? Ferrite V Alnico? One is an insulator and one a conductor and it is said it makes a difference in loudspeakers?
As for scatter winding not being possible on a machine? They did it in L/MW IF coils before WW2 "Pie" wound stacks of Litz wire. So neat they had to be machine wound.

Dave.

[BigRedX]

The last time I swapped out the pickups on an instrument it was replacing the stock passive J plus 2-band pre-amp in a late 80s Washburn bass for a set of active EMGs with passive VVT controls. The new pickups and electrics cost almost half as much as I paid for the bass new and made absolutely zero difference to the sound. For years I tried to kid myself that the EMGs had made an improvement, but when I sold the bass the buyer wanted it with original pickups and pre-amp fitted, so I swapped them back and as I had suspected it still sounded exactly the same.

Even though I am a very ordinary guitar player in terms of technique, I found that I could get all the sounds I wanted out of any electric guitar with a bit of EQ and playing technique adjustment - a lot of the time choosing a different plectrum made more difference than using a different type of guitar. So I sold nearly all my guitars and kept the two I like playing the most, both of which are completely unchanged from when I bought them almost 25 years ago.

So my answer to the OP would be that the only objective difference between cheap and expensive pickups is the price. Everything else is entirely subjective and down to personal taste.

[ef37a]

"As for scatter winding not being possible on a machine? They did it in L/MW IF coils before WW2 "Pie" wound stacks of Litz wire. So neat they had to be machine wound."

Ooops! Bit of a senior moment there. "Pie" winding is for posh output transformers. IIRC those IF coils were "wave wound". And just to stir things further? There is a guy on YT who has investigated the tonal properties (or not) of the wood for solid guitars and his experiments have convinced me at least that it makes FA difference. I shall see if I can find a link.

Dave.

[Wonks]

If it’s the one I think it is, it’s a poor video, with poorly conducted tests through a fairly overdriven amp which hides any subtleties.

Generally IMO, the wood selected for electric guitar building doesn’t make too much of a difference to the sound (which is mainly pickup driven), but use the wrong piece of wood and it can kill the tone and sustain.

[GCKelloch]

Scatter-winding (layering) just reduces efficiency and possibly the lower to upper harmonic strength per each note due to how the flux lines from the strings move within less wire in the same space. I've listened to comparisons of the same wind count around the same magnets of HF insulation vs thinner poly insulation wire of the same gauge that produce those results. Tonerider makes what they claim is a severely layered A2 HB that does sound more like a SC compared to the less layered models, but a non-layered SC of the same wire type would not technically produce the same result because there would not be weaker lower harmonics, but there would be stronger upper harmonics. Thinner wire can actually make a more efficient pickup depending on the orientation to the flux lines, but the Q will be lower.

I've listened to several well-conducted solid body wood type comparisons over many years, and I can hear a slight difference with my eyes closed. Wood price has nothing to do with it. It's about how how the density and rigidity dynamically damp string vibrations-- likely, via the neck pocket. Here's a good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM7wDZENKEM