Informal Pickup Testing

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pipelineaudio

pipelineaudio

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Edit not sure with this forum software how I could do inline wave file links so doing dropbox for now unless someone has a better idea.

Obviously not the best controlled test, but I tried to be as consistent as possible. All guitars have the same strings. All are wired the same except the passive guitar. All have their pickups at the same distance to the strings as I am a bit anal about that one and have calipers to check and shims to get the angles the same

However, my playing is inconsistent, but there are five different pickups in this test. I do a clean, crunch, hi gain and lead gain playing here, so here we go.

Today is international BMX day so I will be at the jumps. I'll post the what pickup is what after I get back. The pickups tried are EMB 81, EMG 87, EMG 707, Duncan Blackout and a passive what looks like an F Spaced DiMarzio in a liquor distribution company prop guitar.
There are no Glenn Fricker gotchas here, A will be the same pickup thru all the tests, as will B, etc.

I suspect there will be many hand waves, goalposts dragging, etc, but this isn't exactly the most consistent test. If the differences are small enough that those could apply, then I submit they don't matter at the output of a record.

However, they did certainly "feel" different to play to me, though again, could be confirmation bias

A Clean
A Crunch
A Hi gain
A Lead

B Clean
B Crunch
B High Gain
B Lead

C Clean
C Crunch
C Hi Gain
C Lead

D Clean
D Crunch
D Hi Gain
D Lead

E Clean
E Crunch
E Hi Gain
E Lead
 
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Only listened to the high gain ones, and only briefly, but it was on some decent studio monitors. A, D, & E sound very very similar to me. Maybe if I load them into my DAW, loop 'em, and flip back and forth quickly I'll notice more differences but right now nothing is easily noticeable to me. B & C sound very similar, but B has a little more clarity/grind. I may revise later, but right now I'm guessing A, D, & E are the EMGs, B is the blackout, and C is the passive. Reasoning is that I expect the EMGs to sound similar, the passive to be darkest, and the Blackout to be a hotter clearer version of a passive.
 
While I was recording these, especially on the cleans, I would play a guitar and then think "WOW!!! This one is totally dull compared to the last one I recorded!" And then go back in the ABX software and couldn't tell which was which. Seems like some guitars acoustically were a lot brighter, or I had the string closer to my ears because of the guitar shape or something, but it didn't seem to follow at all on playback
 
pipelineaudio said:
While I was recording these, especially on the cleans, I would play a guitar and then think "WOW!!! This one is totally dull compared to the last one I recorded!" And then go back in the ABX software and couldn't tell which was which. Seems like some guitars acoustically were a lot brighter, or I had the string closer to my ears because of the guitar shape or something, but it didn't seem to follow at all on playback
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A cool in-person version of the test would be to have one person on each guitar, and a giant AB switch they all go into. Then you could switch back and forth live.
 
Did some closer listening. Also one track was half a LUFS quieter, so I normalized that to avoid "louder is better". To compare, I popped A, D, and E into an AB tester in my DAW then flipped between them in the "blind" setting. Very hard to tell at first. After checking the spectral analysis of each track though I had some priors and it seemed like I could pick out differences better since I was looking for stuff. I was also able to consistently identify them blind. Track A is plinkier and thinner in the high end, E is the darkest, and D is the best balanced with possibly some more meat and articulation.
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If everything was played back to back, mixed up, and I didn't know how many or which pickups were involved (to truly blind things), I doubt I could tell them apart.
 
I wonder if the quieter one was the passive one. The exact same signal path was used for each.

This is another confounding factor. Should I actually gain match the pickups like Glenn Fricker did? That brings its own confounding factors. Its tricky to truly do an apples to apples test. I could normalize the output, but other factors like noise would be improperly represented.

This is the software we use to do ABX testing at a lot of the engineering forums: https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx
 
That's interesting that you could identify some of them consistently. Were you able to say identify for instance A in the high gain and then be able to know based on that which was A in the lead gain?
 
pipelineaudio said:
I wonder if the quieter one was the passive one. The exact same signal path was used for each.
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I meant out of A, D, & E. I didn't check all 5's levels. But could be, though my guess is it was an EMG.
pipelineaudio said:
This is another confounding factor. Should I actually gain match the pickups like Glenn Fricker did? That brings its own confounding factors. Its tricky to truly do an apples to apples test. I could normalize the output, but other factors like noise would be improperly represented.
Click to expand...
I'd say not into the front of the amp, at least to start. Recording output though I think should be matched. If we're being thorough though, would probably want several sets of matched and not matched for different methods of matching.
pipelineaudio said:
This is the software we use to do ABX testing at a lot of the engineering forums: https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx
Click to expand...
I'll have a look, thanks!
pipelineaudio said:
That's interesting that you could identify some of them consistently. Were you able to say identify for instance A in the high gain and then be able to know based on that which was A in the lead gain?
Click to expand...
I only listened to high gain, and I only scrutinized A, D, E since they sounded near identical. And this was in a group. Given three that I knew were A, D, and E I could repeatably label them after having the blind tester mix them up. If you just handed me a file and said "which one is this?" I don't know if I could tell you.
 
I’ll take a listen when I get home although I’m not a magnet aficionado
@DanTravis62
 
Seems like the big talkers always run from threads like these...I'll put the results up tonight if I have time after the usual monday night nuttiness
 
Ok, prepare for MASSIVE confirmation bias and everyone saying "I KNEW THAT ELEVENTY!!!!!"

This should prove the biggest parts of the shit talk wrong, as, if it were so obvious, it would show up here, but since the golden ears didn't participate they'll all be able to keep pretending their auditory prowess

A passive liquor company prop guitar for a promo
B EMG 707
C EMG 87
D EMG 81
E Duncan Blackout
 
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