When Glenn Fricker says the guitar & pickups don't matter..

GJgo

Well-known member
Shit storm alert!!! Like probably a lot of other guys, I'm a gear whore & brand snob and statements like this get my hackles up.

So in the past I've done a few different close mic high gain pickup shootouts where I certainly thought I heard a difference. Lately as part of the "Only Recorded Tone Matters" debate proliferating everywhere, Fricker (among other claims) has posted a convincing blind test video with a follow up reveal that shows how when close mic recording high gain metal tones, the guitar and pickups literally don't matter. Within the confines of their testing I certainly heard his point. I will say this- before you start bitching, go watch the ENTIRE videos. He tends to calm down & get real towards the ends.

That said, I did have some concerns that dynamics were being washed out by their use of digital models of amps and/or digital models of speaker cabs so I wanted to do my own blind test using a full analog setup and see if it holds water. Here we have two guitars with different wood, different scale lengths, and completely different (and common) pickups- one active & one passive. The strings however are both new & the same kind. "In the room" I can swear they sound & feel different! We're running it into my Mark IIC++ (same settings for both) then out to a 4x12 loaded with 1999 G12T-75s in an isolation box. There's a SM57 panned hard right & and E609 panned hard left. Only one track was recorded, with just a hint of delay between them for width. The riffs are from one of my band TIGHTEN's songs.

The test I did below is blind with a reveal at the end. Rhythm first, lead second. Can you hear any difference that couldn't be washed away with a slight turn of a knob? I'll post my thoughts after I hear what some of you have to say.

 
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I own a whole buttload of guitars and they all have their very different purposes with different pickups. Active v passive, alder vs mahogany, rosewood vs Ebony. I’m sure Fricker would tell me I’m certifiably insane but I’ve never used his money to buy gear so I hope he’ll understand :LOL:

I enjoy frickers content because I like to watch him raise his blood pressure. It gets repetitive pretty quickly but it’s fun in the right dose. He’s just an old man who has figured out he can make money by yelling at the sky :cheers:

Meant to add, yes there is a clear difference to my ears between your recordings. Some people don’t have the ear for it nor do they care, just a matter of attention to detail. Could you take the difference away with a knob, maybe. I don’t think it would go away completely. Just my $.02.
 
Meant to add, yes there is a clear difference to my ears between your recordings. Some people don’t have the ear for it nor do they care, just a matter of attention to detail. Could you take the difference away with a knob, maybe. I don’t think it would go away completely. Just my $.02.


there is a difference, but being eq'd to fit in a mix would make it even closer and not enough to change our enjoyment of the song i wouldnt think, not like two different speakers like say a greenback and T75 might do
 
there is a difference, but being eq'd to fit in a mix would make it even closer and not enough to change our enjoyment of the song i wouldnt think, not like two different speakers like say a greenback and T75 might do

I don’t disagree with you but when I’m recording something I almost never think of the listener (I’m not a pro, just a honbyist). I only ever think of how it sounds to me. And living/breathing a piece of music you tend to notice every little thing. From the creators perspective I think it matters, from a listeners perspective I would say you’re absolutely correct.
 
Not at home with studio monitors to check this out currently… but in his video there were differences on studio monitors, granted it was subtle. Pickups make probably the least amount of difference in a signal chain. For me it’s not so much the actual tone difference but the output and dynamics. On actives I can legit hit pinch harmonics a lot easier lol. And there’s a difference in dynamics… actives are more compressed. You hear this on single notes and leads specifically, not really elsewhere: I always feel like I use more multiband compression mixing when there’s passive vs active pickups on leads. There’s always another variable people never talk about with the height of the pickup making a huge difference too.

The dude is kind of a Jack ass and is overly obnoxious just for views, but he is right that the most drastic tone changes happen switching speaker to speaker. One thing I will say about Glenn (and many of us) is he typically tries to go for the same guitar sound over and over again, no matter what equipment is being used and I’m not particularly a fan of his mixes.

Also t75s suck. They just suck lol.
 
1. Glenn Fricker is wrong even when he's right, because of the clickbait of the title.

Yes, a speaker change effects things most, but pickups have a massive difference in the response of the guitar, and thats what changes how you play, and by extension, the tone.

It's misleading and shitty to pretend that pickups ToTaLlY dOnT mAtTeR, but honestly, if pickup prices go down because of it, all the better for me.

I hope it catches on with the idiot zoomers so I can find vintage bill Lawrences for cheap.

2. @Bram576 T75s don't suck, they just aren't ideal for most basic bitch modern metal tones - they aren't going to do the mids on mids on mids tone. They aren't FOR that.
 
I have a range of electric guitars, different price points, pickups - active and passive, brands, country of manufacture, materials, solidbody, semi-hollow, hollow, etc.

I purchased them for various reasons.

In the end, they're part of the signal chain, some guitars work "better" for me than others in different contexts. All of my guitars are factory stock, all I need to do is adjust settings in my signal chain.

I don't use my Rics, Fender Jags / Strats, or D'Angelico jazzbox with my hi-gain amps, for example. I don't use my Jacksons, BC Rich or Ibanez solidbodies with clean solid state jazz amps either. Because there are different guitars for different uses.

Even my cheapest guitars needed at most a setup and intonation and a new set of strings, I can't remember the last time I need to adjust a trust rod, cut the nut or replace hardware etc., on any new guitar.

If different pickups, hardware, etc. are needed, maybe you bought the wrong guitar? Don't care, it's your money, your tone, your playing and your ears. I spend my gear money on things important to me.
 
if its the same fricker video i watched i think his point was there are better ways to spend money than pickups if you really want to change your tone, mainly changing speakers which i agree with. Glenn is loud and obnoxious but like you said if you actually watch his videos he gives mostly solid advice
It depends on what you want to change about your tone. Also sometimes it is as much the kind of feel the pickup has as that can change how you play.

I think there is a major conceptual problem in how this whole silly argument is approached. With a single sm57 on the same cab in the same spot and using the same amp, yes you can mitigate a lot of differences that are very significant to the player in the room (or even in the control room listening mostly to a miked live signal).

That is kind of besides the point unless you are Glenn Fricker and this one shitty tone is all you care about or need. I probably don’t reach for an EMG equipped guitar to do the same thing that I reach for a Les Paul with PAFs to do. You could, especially if you’re really boosting shit, but part of the enjoyment of different instruments and different gear to me is in their individual characteristics and playing to their strengths, not trying to see if I can muddle everything down to the same common denominator.
 
There’s plenty of beautifully recorded ZEN amps clips that prove otherwise. It’s not that the guitar/pickups don’t make a difference in recordings, it’s that GF is incapable of capturing the differences. Considering how dismissive he is about everything, I doubt he’ll ever reach that level of sonic excellence.
 
Of course pickups matter. They can make a massive difference in the feel and response of the guitar.

Changing speakers might technically make more overall difference than changing pickups in a mix, but they affect an entirely different part of the sound, so it's almost a moot point. If you have shitty, muddy pickups that sound like you always have the Tone knob on 0, and you only change your speakers to something brighter, you're still going to have a shitty muddy sound with no definition, it's just going to be a shitty, muddy sound with a lot more treble frequencies present at the end of the chain.
 
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There’s plenty of beautifully recorded ZEN amps clips that prove otherwise. It’s not that the guitar/pickups don’t make a difference in recordings, it’s that GF is incapable of capturing the differences. Considering how dismissive he is about everything, I doubt he’ll ever reach that level of sonic excellence.

Watching GF's video's makes it fairly obvious that he is honestly just a very unskilled guitar player.

Maybe he just claims that pickups don't matter, or "aren't important" or whatever it is he says, because he's simply incapable of perceiving how they impact the sound because he's just that poor of a player.
 
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Glenn's gonna Glenn...I don't really watch his vids to be educated or influenced....just as entertainment. Sometimes I learn something..and sometimes I don't even make it through his entire video.

I have 5 guitars..all with he same body wood and 3 with the same bridge pickup..some variance in the neck and fingerboard woods...they all sound different. IMHO pickups do make a difference...that's why 4 of the 5 guitars have BKPs in them.

As far GJgo's vid..guitar 2 had a bit more body/low mid to it..at least through my monitors..that's what I heard.
 
Watching GF's video's makes it fairly obvious that he is honestly just a very unskilled guitar player.

Maybe he just claims that pickups don't matter, or "aren't important," or whatever it is he says, because he's simply incapable of perceiving how they impact the sound because he's just that poor of a player.
Yes, that’s certainly half of it. The other half is that he’s not even a fraction as good of a recording engineer as he thinks he is. So even if he’s recording a highly skilled player, what comes out of his studio lacks realism, nuance, detail, etc. While not terrible, his productions/tones/mixes/what have you just don’t sound pro or world class for a plethora of reasons.
 
Yes, that’s certainly half of it. The other half is that he’s not even a fraction as good of a recording engineer as he thinks he is. So even if he’s recording a highly skilled player, what comes out of his studio lacks realism, nuance, detail, etc. While not terrible, his productions/tones/mixes/what have you just don’t sound pro or world class for a plethora of reasons.
Yeah, he’s been trying to sound like Andy Sneap for 20 years, still doesn’t hold a candle.
 
Like everything, it all goes back to context. Once everything is processed, compressed, limited, and frequencies boosted and shelved, then watered down with FX and mastered, then yes we know the studio can work magic. The reality is that there are for more recreational players than pros, most of which don't gig, let alone spend time in the studio. Going back to "in room" audible nuances and the feel and interaction are obvious. So simply, all of Glenn's claims are in the context of the studio and genre of music that he dabbles in.
 
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