Pickups don't matter when using high gain? Glenn Fricker is an idiot or deaf. Keith Merrow would like a word...

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I try not to slag the guys that make gear related youtube videos as I generally appreciate the effort it takes to create content. That said, the concept that pickup choice does not have a substantive impact on guitar tone is, well....Just plain silly. end of story.
 
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you guys gotta understand who glenns audience is, its a bunch of young noobs who are playing Solar's and Schecters through at most a 1x12 combo or most likely amp sims through headphones or monitors in their bedroom, not seasoned pros like us. of course pickups make a difference, for the noob though that wants to sound better through his Iconic 1x12 or DSL40 combo it makes more sense to change a speaker or buy a pedal which will make much more a difference than changing the duncan that comes with a solar for another duncan, which i agree with :dunno: hes great at making click bait titles that lure the non noobs in lol
 
thegame said:
Glans Licker
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laugh spew.gif
 
RaceU4her said:
Glenns point in the videos i watched is that pickups arent going to change your tone as much as speakers or amp will
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Which is something I can agree with. Depends a lot on the situation really. Swapping out a PAF for an high output ceramic is definitely gonna make a difference. But then again, how often do you see guitar players doing the same with pickups that are somehow similar (or not that far) spec wise, whose differences would be easily emulated by a small turn of your amp pots (differences your audience would never be able to hear anyway)?
It's part of the game I guess, there are players who can't play with X brand instrument cables cause they don't sound the way the like, so...
 
I highly suspect the DI levels were normalized on the Keith Merrow vid. No way the same gain settings on a Full Shred or Custom 5 would work on a Blackout, for example. Either the Full Shred would sound weak, scratchy, and dry or the Blackout sound sound like pure mud/fuzz with the same gain settings. Then again, that's just me suspecting. I have no concrete evidence, so at this point, it's kind of a conspiracy theory on my part.

That being said, yeah. Glenn is a jackass. However, speakers do make more of a difference in the recording than pickup swaps. That was his point, and I agree. I just think it's too radical to say pickups don't make a difference at all and yell at everyone in their audience like we're all dumbasses for swapping them out.

Keep in mind, his videos are aimed more at recording generic-y soft Metal (for YouTube vids, pretty much) than at getting live in-the-room sounds. I want to sympatize on his opinions and views based on that. I just think he presents his views in such a radical way yelling and screaming on how we're all a bunch of retards for not thinking like him.
 
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No doubt speakers can make a big difference in tone, but I also feel like you can approximate speaker swaps through EQ. At least much more than say swapping pickups. No amount of eq or filters is going to make a full shred mimic a PAF.

Basically what I’m saying is that other changes in your signal chain can have larger impacts than a pickup swap, however it’s very tough to replicate the nuance and feel of a pickup swap anyway other than swapping pickups
 
He probably called a few pickup manufacturers and asked "I'm a YouTuber, I'm famous, you should give me some pickups for free, so I can advertise them for you". The pickup makers probably said no. So, he made a video saying pickups don't matter much.
Happens more often than not.
 
Rex Rocker said:
That being said, yeah. Glenn is a jackass. However, speakers do make more of a difference in the recording than pickup swaps. That was his point, and I agree. I just think it's too radical to say pickups don't make a difference at all and yell at everyone in their audience like we're all dumbasses for swapping them out.
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Speakers defiantly make a discernable difference when recording distorted tones...Having acknowledged that, do they make MORE of a difference than a pickup swap? Maybe yes...If your going from a JB to Custom. But try going from a Gibson vintage PAF to EMG 81.
 
Meh.. I just went thru this.. I had pups that had a lot of highend... So you always had a perpetual sheen of brightness in the cymbal range that was bumming me out. To fuckin bright no mater what amp setting.
Got a different set and got the guitar sound back in it's lane.

Maybe I'm old school , but all this shit matters. Maybe not so much for a Velveta Cheese, compressed as fuck Metal Modelor sound like the shit he records..
 
angelspade said:
Speakers defiantly make a discernable difference when recording distorted tones...Having acknowledged that, do they make MORE of a difference than a pickup swap? Maybe yes...If your going from a JB to Custom. But try going from a Gibson vintage PAF to EMG 81.
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IME, yes, they do make make more of a difference than any pickup swap.

I'm not saying you're wrong with the PAF vs 81, though. That's almost the polar opposites of the humbucker range.

I'm not agreeing 100% with Glenn either. I don't think I worded it right. Even his videos showed that there was a difference, minute as it may be. Notice how with pickups, he didn't make the null test just like he did with tubes.
 
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If I have pickups that don't have defects (e.g., aren't microphonic), are clear / have clarity, and respond as expected to guitar volume and tone controls I don't see a need to change them. I can adjust my amp controls or EQ pedal to get sounds I like.

I have guitars with pickups from DiMarzio, Duncan, EMG, Bare Knuckle, and OEM pickups from EBMM, Jackson, Fender, Ibanez, D'Angelico, etc. and they all work for me; even my aliexpress knockoff with noname Chinese pickups works/sounds just fine - they're clear, respond well, and have sufficient output.

Amp and eq controls do the rest.
 
I have problems with Glenn's videos because they're always presented in the context of extremely high gain metal, which is about the least transparent as you can get.

He also seems to focus entirely on tone and not on dynamics, but how a pickup responds to playing is at least equally as important to me.
 
He is playing the youtube game very well at this point. He is getting a lot of publicity in the gear demo/discussion world.
 
Yep, speakers do make an overall greater difference to the sound than pickups and can drastically change things. Pickups, while more subtle, are still pretty important though, and Glenn just goes about things the wrong way to be obnoxious for views…. But he gets the views, so he’s going to keep acting this way. His videos at the start of his YouTube channel are pretty helpful actually for recording basics, before he started getting noticed. He did this same thing with tube selection a while back. Again SUBTLE differences but they’re still there. Kohle actually did a tube comparison that showed them pretty well, but that went to the way side over Glenn’s “they don’t make a difference!” Video.
 
There’s a whole industry revolving around the topic of pickups. So either they make a difference or all the people buying them are deaf or idiots or both
 
Bram576 said:
Yep, speakers do make an overall greater difference to the sound than pickups and can drastically change things. Pickups, while more subtle, are still pretty important though, and Glenn just goes about things the wrong way to be obnoxious for views…. But he gets the views, so he’s going to keep acting this way. His videos at the start of his YouTube channel are pretty helpful actually for recording basics, before he started getting noticed. He did this same thing with tube selection a while back. Again SUBTLE differences but they’re still there. Kohle actually did a tube comparison that showed them pretty well, but that went to the way side over Glenn’s “they don’t make a difference!” Video.
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Ugh that tube video was my first Fricker video. All it proved was that he could make any tube sound like garbage.
 
For being so radical, his tones are always so unremarkable, IMO.

Then again, I don't see how presenting pickups in the context of a recorded high-gain tone is a bad thing. That's he does. That's what he likes. He states the context. The problem comes from his whole screaming bravado and radical views with no respect for other people's experiences/opinions.

Personally, I could care less about how a Nazgul or a Black Winter sound doing chicken picking country, jazz chords, or soulful blues solos.
 
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