pickups???

[deibid]

i recently bought a vox tonelab & although it sounds pretty good, i feel my guitar ain't giving as good performance as i'd like...
the guitar is a les paul copy & has stock humbucker pickups, i'm wondering how much it would benefit from upgrading the pickups??

if so please can anyone recommend good pickups (on a budget) up to £100..

thx in advance

 

[flamin-gitaur]

i recently bought a vox tonelab & although it sounds pretty good, i feel my guitar ain't giving as good performance as i'd like...
the guitar is a les paul copy & has stock humbucker pickups, i'm wondering how much it would benefit from upgrading the pickups??

if so please can anyone recommend good pickups (on a budget) up to £100..

thx in advance

Although pups do have an affect on the sound of the guitar, it is only one of many things that do. Amp, speaker, effects (and quantity), cables, and the overall quality of all your gear. So there are many sources where your signal could be lacking. Before you go out and buy new pups, you could try raising and lowering the height of your pups, often times this will help significantly in their performance.

 

[ggunn]

Although pups do have an affect on the sound of the guitar, it is only one of many things that do. Amp, speaker, effects (and quantity), cables, and the overall quality of all your gear. So there are many sources where your signal could be lacking. Before you go out and buy new pups, you could try raising and lowering the height of your pups, often times this will help significantly in their performance.

Cables, not so much, other than if they make noise when you move them around. I have about 20 guitar cables of all makes and ages; when I'm ready to play I just grab one. They all sound the same.

 

[flamin-gitaur]

Cables, not so much, other than if they make noise when you move them around. I have about 20 guitar cables of all makes and ages; when I'm ready to play I just grab one. They all sound the same.

That is true for the most part, but the gage of wire used in the cable and the length of cable can make a significant difference. An inadequate cable can cause your guitar to sound thin. But like I said, it is only one of many possibilities.

 

[ibanezrocks]

That is true for the most part, but the gage of wire used in the cable and the length of cable can make a significant difference. An inadequate cable can cause your guitar to sound thin. But like I said, it is only one of many possibilities.

I don't think a cable could make your guitar sound thin. More expensive cables don't pick up on radio signals as cheaper ones can at high volumes, but no change in sound quality is noticeable. In theory I suppose if such a difference existed a cheaper cable might lose higher frequencies, the opposite of thin. However this doesn't happen and I don't think someone on a budget of 100 pounds would be happy with upgrading his cables.

As for the pickup swap they make a huge difference if you're using a decent amp and guitar. Like someone else said its more of a refining process, if your guitar and amp aren't good the pickup will make only a small difference.

What kind of music are you playing? What do you want to change about the pickups you have now? Visit the Seymour Duncan website and read some of the descriptions.

 

[flamin-gitaur]

I don't think someone on a budget of 100 pounds would be happy with upgrading his cables.

I never suggested to anybody to upgrade anything, I simply stated that a tone deficiency could be caused by a number of things other than pickups, including the cables.

 

[deibid]

What kind of music are you playing? What do you want to change about the pickups you have now? Visit the Seymour Duncan website and read some of the descriptions.[/QUOTE]

i'm wanting to cover as many styles convincingly, nirvana/crunch to clean, no buzz..

i've had a look at some of the SD's but i'm thinking of changing my guitar...

my setup goes gtar - vox tonelab - terratec phase 22 soundcard

 

[travelin travis]

In my experience, the biggest changes in your guitar sound are in this order: amp/speakers, pickups, guitar, guitar setup, cable.

 

[cephus]

I don't know about that ranking. Amp speaker is a nice step, but shitty pickups are the worst thing. While you couldn't really gig with a little teeny amp, you could borrow one. If you play through someone else's cool amp with your JCPenny pickups, you aren't gonna get a good sound.

 

[mx_mx]

what if the amp isn't teeny tiny, it's just shit (mg100)?

would better pickups make the tone any better?

 

[travelin travis]

what if the amp isn't teeny tiny, it's just shit (mg100)?

would better pickups make the tone any better?

I'd take a nice amp over nice pickups any day. Most stock pickups, even in cheap guitars are'nt absolutely horrible, although they do leave alot to be desired.

 

[travelin travis]

I don't know about that ranking. Amp speaker is a nice step, but shitty pickups are the worst thing. While you couldn't really gig with a little teeny amp, you could borrow one. If you play through someone else's cool amp with your JCPenny pickups, you aren't gonna get a good sound.

Who the hell puts JCPenny pickups in a guitar?

 

[Gorty]

what if the amp isn't teeny tiny, it's just shit (mg100)?

would better pickups make the tone any better?

Everything in the chain contributes to the tone, from the pickups to the wood the guitar is made out of, to the type of effects you use, to the type of amp and speakers you are using.

In my opinion the pickups play a definitive role in the tone that is produced!!

And I am not going to tell you again minxy what type of pickup I like!

 

[travelin travis]

what if the amp isn't teeny tiny, it's just shit (mg100)?

would better pickups make the tone any better?

if you've only got a little cash, i'd drop it on one nice pickup. don't go grabbin an ok set of three. one nice one that you've tried and love. if you've got enough to get a good amp though, i'd make the pickup second priority.

almost forgot, speakers make a HUGE difference. upgrading the speaker in an ok sounding combo amp can do wonders.

 

[travelin travis]

Everything in the chain contributes to the tone, from the pickups to the wood the guitar is made out of, to the type of effects you use, to the type of amp and speakers you are using.

In my opinion the pickups play a definitive role in the tone that is produced!!

And I am not going to tell you again minxy what type of pickup I like!

Pickups definately make a big difference in sound.........if the amp is capable of reproducing the characteristics of the pickup. all the modeling amp boxes i've tried tend to blurr the difference in sound of pickups. for god's sake i can get a death metal sound thru a pod xt with a cheapo single coil. i have'nt tried the tonelab and maybe it differs from the rest of the pack.

 

[cephus]

JCPenny doesn't make pickups. I was attempting to be funny.

regardless, I think that, for instance, squire or epi pickups can be pretty microphonic and shitty, as can alot of cheaper fender/gibson copy guitars. Physically, the way the guitar is contructed has some bearing on tone, but more on playability, no? You can take a pretty shitty guitar and put a good pickup in it and it will at least sound normal (non-cheap-shitty) even if the action is 3/4" at the 10th fret.

we're probably back to taste. I really hate wheezey, cheap, microphonic pickups and find them mostly useless to my playing. I like stock fender single coils, so I'm not some kind of EMG snob. I just had a couple shitty cheap guitars that I liked enough to drop duncans in and they were useable onstage after that. I'm not talking about sears catalog shitty. I mean like way-off brand asian guitars from pawn shops.

 

[episg]

If youve got £100, you could probably pick up some genuine Gibson BurstBuckers for that money, on eBay or something.

Good luck...... and thats not saying its impossible!

 

[ggunn]

That is true for the most part, but the gage of wire used in the cable and the length of cable can make a significant difference. An inadequate cable can cause your guitar to sound thin. But like I said, it is only one of many possibilities.

I don't think so. The amount of current carried in an instrument cable is extremely small, and the impedance at each end is very high. It would take a guitar cable of incredibly narrow gauge and/or extreme length for its impedance to figure in at all. Lack of noise when you shake the cable around and better shielding from RF are the only things that I have seen (heard) make one guitar cable better than another.

 

[flamin-gitaur]

I thought this thread was about "pickups"? Guitar cables......interesting how things are taken out of context

 

[metalj]

i recently bought a vox tonelab & although it sounds pretty good, i feel my guitar ain't giving as good performance as i'd like...
the guitar is a les paul copy & has stock humbucker pickups, i'm wondering how much it would benefit from upgrading the pickups??

if so please can anyone recommend good pickups (on a budget) up to £100..

thx in advance

And now for somthing completely different..... an opinion to the question you asked

how much it would benefit from upgrading the pickups??[/B] My opinoin is if you are only recording direct using the modleing options in your tonelab, then i dont think you will hear much of a difference in your recording. Yes there will be a small difference, but eqing could get you close to the results of switching your pickups. If you are talking about plugging into a real tube amp. Pickups will make a huge difference in your sound, they could make or break the tone you are looking for in a live amp situation.

if so please can anyone recommend good pickups (on a budget) up to £100
I would recomend semour duncan Jb's. JMO, they have a nice full sounding crunch and are pretty versatile to most kinds of music. They clean up nice with a volume knob roll back. Again this is assuming your playing through a tube amp.

IN my experience, the guitar and pickup characteristic just doest come through with a solid state amp and especially modleing type recording. I can plug in a lespaul to my DAW(digital audio workstation), and get basically the same sound as my $250 schecter. now do the same thing with a tube amp and you can really tell the difference.

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