
Pickup wizard and innovator Seth Lover, as captured by the author.
Guitarists are always changing pickups. So, what are we searching for?
Everyone knows that tone is in the pickups, right? At least that’s what the prevailing thought seems to be. There must be something to that idea because guitarists are spending a huge amount of cash changing pickups like dirty underwear. Almost daily we hear about a new pickup maker who has “cracked the code” by utilizing materials and techniques that somehow companies with million-dollar R&D budgets missed. I’ve worked with and rely upon a large number of pickup brands, and I truly love a lot of what they produce, but I’ve also learned that it’s easy to get lost in the hype.
For decades, things were different than what we see today. There were almost zero aftermarket choices—you basically played your guitar with whatever pickups it left the factory with. There were exceptions, but musicians, for the most part, didn’t screw around with hot-rodding their pickups. Maybe Les Paul did, but guitarists like Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Roy Buchanan, and even SRV just played what they had. If they could have accessed the smorgasbord of choices we have now, would the music have sounded better?
The shift in the way guitarists thought about pickups started in the mid 1960s, when players began to perceive a loss of quality in new guitars. Taking a page out of the violinist’s book, artists at the vanguard of musical style began developing a preference for older instruments, in this case those made in the 1950s. (This was counterintuitive to the average player, as the emphasis in the “space age” was always on newer equals better.) And then, just as now, it was discovered that pickups had something to do with that change of course.
The fact of the matter is that for both humbuckers and single-coil pickups, there was no single shift in quality. Instead, there were a myriad of small changes. As with any manufacturing concern, guitar companies were somewhat at the mercy of the vendors who supplied the raw materials. The magnets, wire, and steel that were used in these classic pickups all fluctuated depending upon availability. This fact is what also drives a lot of the hype around today’s aftermarket pickups. We can look back at the multiple changes in magnet composition and wire specification (just to name the two most obvious) to gain clues about how there is no single best-sounding pickup to emulate.
“Guitarists like Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Roy Buchanan, and even SRV just played what they had. If they could have accessed the smorgasbord of choices we have now, would the music have sounded better?”
Winding techniques are often referenced as the elixir that makes the difference, but once again, there is a bit of myth involved here, too. Most of the blue-chip pickups were wound on automatic machinery built for precision and repeatability, with the emphasis on creating the same result from part to part. Proper wire tensioning was important to maintain, and impedance and inductance were monitored constantly, confirmed to me by none other than Seth Lover himself. The concept of “scatter” winding is seemingly contradictory to this idea. Hand-winding inconsistencies are neither perfectly repeatable or advisable for a factory brand, but it would be the case for smaller shops who could not afford expensive winding machines. Even so, there are instances of Monday morning/Friday afternoon mistakes in the realm of pickup manufacturing. This isn’t to say that a scatter-wound pickup can’t sound great, but winding by hand is practically impossible to do with 100 percent repeatability, which calls into question its value as a selling point.
From where I sit, I acknowledge that certain pickups sound better to my ears than others. The real test is if the supplier can deliver consistency I can count on. The same goes for the big guitar companies. When I was designing for production, there was no latitude for pickups that didn’t meet specification or failed. In today’s market, most guitar makers want to put their best foot forward, despite the knowledge that the customer may swap pickups for their current favorite.
I’m not suggesting that pickups don’t make a difference or that a good pickup/guitar matchup won’t result in an improvement—of course they do. Just because one pickup sounds great in one guitar doesn’t mean it will in another. That’s why I spend a lot of time testing. I’ve heard enough to know that the right combination of guitar and pickup, mated with just the right amplifier, can make magic. Just be prepared to spend a lot of time getting there.
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The final day is here! Enter Stompboxtober Day 31 for your last chance to win today’s pedal from Keeley and finish the month strong!
Keeley Octa Psi Transfigurating Fuzz Pedal with Polyphonic Pitch Shifting
Meet the OCTA PSI Transfigurating Fuzz – The Ultimate Combination of Pitch-Shifter, Octave Generator, and Tri-Voiced Analog Fuzz! Key features include: Instant Effect Order Switching, Flexible Output Configuration, Momentary or Latching Octave/Pitch, and more! Each pitch shift mode includes an up, down, and dual setting, resulting in 24 different modes.
Does the guitar’s design encourage sonic exploration more than sight reading?
A popular song between 1910 and 1920 would usually sell millions of copies of sheet music annually. The world population was roughly 25 percent of what it is today, so imagine those sales would be four or five times larger in an alternate-reality 2024. My father is 88, but even with his generation, friends and family would routinely gather around a piano and play and sing their way through a stack of songbooks. (This still happens at my dad’s house every time I’m there.)
Back in their day, recordings of music were a way to promote sheet music. Labels released recordings only after sheet-music sales slowed down on a particular song. That means that until recently, a large section of society not only knew how to read music well, but they did it often—not as often as we stare at our phones, but it was a primary part of home entertainment. By today’s standards, written music feels like a dead language. Music is probably the most common language on Earth, yet I bet it has the highest illiteracy rate.
Developed specifically for Tyler Bryant, the Black Magick Reverb TB is the high-power version of Supro's flagship 1x12 combo amplifier.
At the heart of this all-tube amp is a matched pair of military-grade Sovtek 5881 power tubes configured to deliver 35-Watts of pure Class A power. In addition to the upgraded power section, the Black Magick Reverb TB also features a “bright cap” modification on Channel 1, providing extra sparkle and added versatility when blended with the original Black Magick preamp on Channel 2.
The two complementary channels are summed in parallel and fed into a 2-band EQ followed by tube-driven spring reverb and tremolo effects plus a master volume to tame the output as needed. This unique, signature variant of the Black Magick Reverb is dressed in elegant Black Scandia tolex and comes loaded with a custom-built Supro BD12 speaker made by Celestion.
Price: $1,699.
Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine is one of the loudest guitarists around. And he puts his volume to work creating mythical tones that have captured so many of our imaginations, including our special shoegaze correspondent, guitarist and pedal-maestro Andy Pitcher, who is our guest today.
My Bloody Valentine has a short discography made up of just a few albums and EPs that span decades. Meticulous as he seems to be, Shields creates texture out of his layers of tracks and loops and fuzz throughout, creating a music that needs to be felt as much as it needs to be heard.
We go to the ultimate source as Billy Corgan leaves us a message about how it felt to hear those sounds in the pre-internet days, when rather than pull up a YouTube clip, your imagination would have to guide you toward a tone.
But not everyone is an MBV fan, so this conversation is part superfan hype and part debate. We can all agree Kevin Shields is a guitarists you should know, but we can’t all agree what to do with that information.