You’d be surprised. I don’t have cites for any of this, but I bet WordMan will concur. Some makers get actual 50+ yo PAFs, take them apart and analyze everything about them - magnet strength, winding pattern, wire type and guage and coating, everything. Then they try to replicate that. I even read somewhere that some makers use the actual winding machines that the pickup makers used at that time. They degauss the magnets to aged levels. They even age the pickup covers to look old and discolored. Really, the whole nine yards. It’s crazy.
Does any of this matter to the sound? Some of it must, but damned if I know how much.
So, a pickup with weaker magnets sounds better than one with strong ones??
I read about a “blind” hearing test.
Test Group A was 4 or 5 experienced guitarists. Whitey was a new Stratocaster with pickups, pots, and capacitors from a newly discovered 54 Strat they discovered in the factory. Sunny was a new Stratocaster with Fender’s new “Vintage” pickups, pots, and capacitors specially developed to duplicate every nuance of sound from the original 54’s. The group was given a 45 minutes or so to play and evaluate the guitars. They all agreed the sunburst guitar sounded very good, but just wasn’t quite as good as the white one.
Test Group B was exactly the same, except they were told Sunny had the 54 electronics and Whitey had the “Vintage” gear. They all said the sunburst guitar sounded definitely better but the white one was very close.
The electronics in both guitars came from the same lot.
I have no idea what to do with that story. I mean - can humans be spun into having biases? Yeah. But can pickups genuinely sound different? Yep - in fact, I’ve played a '54 Strat - I did a thread about it, I think - and they were definitely a work in progress and sounded obviously different from “typical Strats” today.
Again - most of what you read about fossilized Mastodon ivory and scatterwound pickups is crap. BUT - there are some rules of thumb and truths about some of this stuff. PAFs do have a distinctive sound; it just so happens that I think it can be recreated with guitars / pickups made these days, so I don’t have Holy Grail obsession with the originals. But 99.99% of the folks arguing about PAF knock-offs have never played a real, old LP so it is just noise on the internet…
That’s exactly right. I find pickups very interesting and have had online conversations with several internationally renowned boutique pickup makers on the subject. Pickup designs are actually pretty simple and there really isn’t that much variation.
Pretty much anyone can hear the difference between a cheap crappy pickup and a nicely made one - that’s not hype or wishful thinking. BUT, once you get into the subtle variations between different makers’ versions of a PAF pickup, there’s really very little difference between an affordable Seymour Duncan or DiMarzio “PAF” and the sort of boutique pickup that sells for hundreds of dollars. People will claim they can hear the difference, but blind tests always prove they can’t.
Professional classical violinists, who have much better ears than any rock guitarists, can’t pick the difference between Stradavari viols (worth millions) and modern repros (worth a few thousand). That test has been done a few times.
I hate those blind listening tests - just proves that sound is mostly in the player. But with a great instrument - part of the greatness is the sound that a listener would perceive, of course, but a huge part is the responsiveness of the instrument to the player, something that is in no way captured in a blind listening test.
If I learn something on a great guitar aided by its great responsiveness, I can’t unlearn it. If I then pick up a good-enough guitar, I will likely be able to play the same thing on it now, too. So I can sell my playing to the listener with the good enough guitar just fine. Cool; that’s why players often tour with cheaper instruments.
Leaving a guitar’s hands-on responsiveness out of a test like that makes it a non-starter.
So much about guitars is entirely in the imagination of the [del]seller[/del] player.
If I had two basically identical late 60s Strats, but had good evidence that one of them was used in the recording studio by Jimi Hendrix, would you feel the same way about them both? Or would Jimi’s one feel different in your hands? Could you actually divorce your emotional response from your feelings about that guitar as a musical instrument?
I doubt you could. I doubt I could. People have so much emotion tied up in their thoughts about, say, late 50s Gibsons that I doubt there’s many people who could honestly evaluate them as musical instruments any more. Are they really the pinnacle of that design or are they just nice old guitars that aren’t actually any better than the repros?
We both know that there are people who will swear blind under pain of death that they can hear the difference and that it’s as real as death and taxes, but we both also know that there are people who will swear blind (and literally risk the lives of their own children) that vaccines cause autism. And we both know that’s utter nonsense.
So, no. I like old electric guitars, I think they’re very cool, but I remain entirely unconvinced by any of the arguments as to their superiority over any other guitars ever. Old acoustics; sure, I can see that there might actually be an element of truth to the “old wood” theory. Old electric solidbodies? I seriously doubt it.
[QUOTE=WordMan]
Leaving a guitar’s hands-on responsiveness out of a test like that makes it a non-starter.
[/QUOTE]
Goody, I get to agree again! It’s like what I’ve said about overdriven valve amps (maybe back up this thread?). You may be able to simulate the sound with digital modelling or such, but the feel is something else. You really have to be playing, not just listening.
I am not about to do the research (I expect reading message boards going on about pickup windings and “vintage” components would just exasperate me*) but… I wonder about guitar players who spend energy worrying about these things. How much time do they spend playing** guitar compared to talking about it? If you spend more time yakking than working on your vibrato then you should just shut the fuck up.
*If anyone wants to point out any hilarious examples I’m prepared to point and laugh, I just don’t want to go looking for them.
** playing anything, good. Practicing, better. Gigging best.
Yeah; I’m good with what I’m reading. Shakester, I agree so much I put my money on it, shifting the Guitar Toy fund over to acoustics, where, as you say, a difference is discernible and hard to replicate with modern guitars.
And as for the Hendrix “mojo” story, yep - humans are stupid about stuff like that. Even in the world of great, old guitars, there are value differences based on stupid stuff. Martin style 28’s, eg a D-28 Herringbone Dreadnaught the iconic model, are famously made of rosewood. But there is also a slightly less blingy Style 21, still rosewood (Brazilian back in the day), but currently valued something line 1/2 that of 28’s. Why? Because 28 is the iconic number folks want to see. Silly.
(Why yes, my old Martin is a 21; why do you ask? ;))
Hi E-Sabs - I am pleased to report that the Creamsicle (i.e., the wonderfully orange Telemaster-type guitar that was graciously given to my son by Mr. E-Sabbath after he ended up with a couple of them), retains its place of honor: out of its case, leaning against a chair in my son’s room. You can tell it’s there because the neck sticks up through the pile of clothes and other crap on the floor ;). He plays it pretty much every day in a “pick up an unplugged electric and work out your riffage for 15 minutes when you wake up and before you go to bed” sort of way. Perfect.
What’s interesting for a 15yo kid is that he is not playing any amplified guitar right now. He plays the Creamsicle, he messes around on piano which he just started doing a couple of months ago, and he has been playing Jack White-type slide on the little beater acoustic we have that is the acoustic equivalent of the Creamsicle - out and grabbable. I have been playing slide on my old Gibson-made Kalamazoo archtop, and he asked me to show him Little Bird off the White Stripes’ second album…
Just wrote this up on the Acoustic Guitar Forum and thought I would share it here (to provide some background: Django Reinhardt was a Gypsy guitarist in the 30’s who is a legend amongst jazzers and guitar heads. He had two withered fingers on his fretting hand from a caravan fire but still played faster and better than anyone. There is a straight line from Django to Les Paul and Jeff Beck (and tons of jazz players, of course) in terms of sophistication and technique. Django was known for playing a French-made guitar designed by an Italian guy - the Selmer Maccaferri. To this day, “Gypsy jazz guitars” are their own off-the-beaten-path variety of guitar.)
Buzz at Lark St. Music has an original Selmer Maccaferri - he told me it was seven serial numbers away from Django’s main Maccaferri. He quoted me a price close to $40,000 and indicated that there was a LOT of interest - he’d only had the guitar for a week or two.
I have tried a few Gypsy guitars, but never anything “this close to Django” - i.e., an actual SM made in the same batch.
You ever played one of these?! Wow, what a different beast; fascinating. Obviously it is full-sized, but I swear, it played like a…like a…I dunno, a piccolo guitar or something. There were NO lows at all - even less than an archtop jazz guitar. Heck, there were barely any Mids! To be clear, the tone was “fully realized” - it sounded great; it was an excellent example and I could hear how a “real” Gypsy player could totally use this guitar. But it sounds more like a Soprano singing vs. a Tenor singing (archtop guitar) or a Baritone singing (flattop guitar). And not like a mandolin or other small-bodied/sized instrument - it had its own thing going.
And the neck! The neck was very big and square - it had huge shoulders that had a bit of rounding to them, but still quite prominent. Really a different feel - but once I got the hang of it, playable; I would say it was a bit better for thumb-on-back playing.
All in all, certainly easy to see why Django used this as a lead instrument - it plays fast and would cut through the mix and the higher tone profile would suit it for lead work really well.
I want one pretty bad, even though I have never even touched one, and the Dan-o fulfills my tone needs. I’m probably going to grab one of them, or a Pawn Shop Bass VI in the next couple of months. The opportunity to get a Bass VI without paying enough for a used car is too much to pass up.
And on further review of the Squier Bass VI, I’m not even considering the pawn shop one. I want single coils. If I don’t like the pickups in the Squier, a strat set is a drop in replacement, right?
Someone got a link to a Fender page with one? Googling “Squier” tends to get me into really bad internet territory. Browsing Fender.com for “Squier” nets me this page of basses with nary a Bass VI. Got anything page with actual specs, especially construction, woods, and electronics on a Squier “Bass VI”? Thanks.
Nope, not on fender pages yet, but there are threads on harmony-central.com and talkbass.com about it, with pics and a rumored release date of August, and a rumored street price of $350. I’d link to them, but I don’t think we’re supposed to link to other message boards. The only thing that makes me sad, is that it doesn’t look to be offered in the same metal flake blue as the one I’ve been lusting after at the guitar shows for 20 years, and watched it’s price go from $2k to $9k to $20k. I think I can play a black, white or sunburst one happily, though.
