Recommended Pickup for Rock Music

  • Thread starter Thread starter monkie
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I've seen way to many "direct replacement parts" from them which didn't come close to fitting to ever recommend them.

Oh, and I also do not tend to like hot pickups - they get too mushy. And yes, a good amp is more important than new pickups.




Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
Oh I completley understand hot pickups are'nt for everyone , it really depends on the style of music you are playing.

I have never personally had any fitting issues with GFS PuP's
everything I have used from guitar fetish from potentiometers to pickups have been top quality parts thus far.
however I do agree a good amp is far more inportant than new PuP's
 
Of course, if you want the stock Fender sound, stock fender pickups are the way to go.
 
Oh I completley understand hot pickups are'nt for everyone , it really depends on the style of music you are playing.

I have never personally had any fitting issues with GFS PuP's
everything I have used from guitar fetish from potentiometers to pickups have been top quality parts thus far.
however I do agree a good amp is far more inportant than new PuP's

yeah +1 on this. i've gotten a couple of decent amps recently so my amp situation is finally straightened out which is very cool and it makes a world of difference in the sounds i'm getting (nice speakers and cabs is helping too).

i've pared by guitars down to a couple and they both have hot pickups (barden hb's in a usa hamer archtop and duncans and sensor lace strat pickups in a usa g&l legacy) and i love them, but i've been seriously considering trying to get a strat or tele and throw some nice "new vintage" pickups in there like fralins or kinmans. i think the subtleties will come through a lot better now that i'm not using modeling or really crappy amps all the time.
 
sorry I disagree with light on this one..

http://store.guitarfetish.com/casetof3lilk1.html these are some of the best sounding PUP's on the marketwhich I have also pretty much tried just about every pup on the market as well, because after all it's my job.:D
I use them on strat mods on regular basis.
however if a customer insists on hotrails I don't argue with them because that is just more money in my pocket;)

incidentally-- sorry to hijack op, but how are the gfs p-90's?
 
There are so many different pickup brands and so many opinions on different ones, I don't know which one is good for my taste or liking. I've been playing guitar for a few years but don't know the technical side of it. I don't even know what a humbucker is or how shielding a guitar sounds like and for what purposes.

Are there any samples where I can listen to before deciding which to get?:)
 
Of course, if you want the stock Fender sound, stock fender pickups are the way to go.



NOT!


There are pickups that do the classic Fender sound far better than any modern Fender pickup, and far better than MOST old Fender pickups (the great ones were luck, not design). These days pickup designers understand the things much better, and so guys like Seymour Duncan, Lindy Fralin, and Jason Lollar are making pickups which much better than anything Fender does.


Light

"Coward can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Are there any samples where I can listen to before deciding which to get?:)



None which will be helpful. MP3's quite simply do not give you the subtleties that are everything in pickup choice.

Here is one helpful thing. Seymour Duncan has a 28 day return policy on their pickups. The only kink is they have to be installed by a professional, and you have to pay for the labor. But for 28 days after you buy the pickup, they will replace the pickup for free (plus any difference in cost, of course). You just have to pay the labor again, which on a Strat is not all that bad. This gives you the chance to actually try the various pickups in your guitar and through your amp for a relatively reasonable cost.

But as has already been said, save for an amp first. It will make a much bigger difference.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
There are so many different pickup brands and so many opinions on different ones, I don't know which one is good for my taste or liking. I've been playing guitar for a few years but don't know the technical side of it. I don't even know what a humbucker is or how shielding a guitar sounds like and for what purposes.

Are there any samples where I can listen to before deciding which to get?:)
The Duncan site has descriptions and (at least they used to) have sound samples.

The easiest way to weed through all of this is to find someone who has the same aproximate tone that you do and find out what type of pickup they use. If you find two or three people with that kind of sound, you will know which type of pickup to be looking at.
 
None which will be helpful. MP3's quite simply do not give you the subtleties that are everything in pickup choice.

Mot to mention the fact that here are so many other factors that come into play with the amplifier used, picking style, etc., that you can't get a meaningful apples to apples comparison from an audio sample.

But as has already been said, save for an amp first. It will make a much bigger difference.

I'll go further than that and say that until you have a good amp you have no way of knowing whether or not your present pickups will do the job for you or what a change in pickups will do to/for your sound. The stock pickups on my Strat sound great through my Deluxe Reverb; I have no desire to change them.

No offense intended, but it sounds to me like you just want to throw some money at getting some new pickups to "improve your sound" without really knowing what your Strat sounds like now.

BTW, here's something on humbucking pickups:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humbucker

It really depends on what sound you are looking for. It it's a clean, glassy sound, then humbuckers or "hot" Strat pickups are not what you want.
 
NOT!


There are pickups that do the classic Fender sound far better than any modern Fender pickup, and far better than MOST old Fender pickups (the great ones were luck, not design). These days pickup designers understand the things much better, and so guys like Seymour Duncan, Lindy Fralin, and Jason Lollar are making pickups which much better than anything Fender does.


Light

"Coward can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
All of this is very subjective and depends on a ton of other factors. You are talking about the sublties of the sound of a pickup.

If you run any of these things through a DS-1 and into a POD, it won't make any difference.

If you run it through a pristine setup with only the best of the best, including the player, 2 people in 1000 will notice the difference.

But, like you said, the amp makes more difference than the pickup.
 
None which will be helpful. MP3's quite simply do not give you the subtleties that are everything in pickup choice.

For me, the problem is less the MP3's (assuming a high fidselity rate - I usually go straight to 256kbps), but rather the complex interplay between all the OTHER factors that influence your tone.

I mean, a pickup is really important, true. But, that pickup is in 1.) a guitar made of a particular body wood which may not be the same as yours, 2.) strung up with potentially a different brand and gauge of strings than you use, 3.) potentially running through a number of different FX processors, 4.) plugged into an amp that is most likely not the same as yours, 5.) dialed in with that player's, and not your, amp settings, 6.) recorded in a different acoustical environment than you are used to hearing your rig, 7.) mic'd up, which means that the player's recording abilities and "taste" in micing strategy come into play, to say nothing of the fact an amp mic'd sounds very different from one in the room, 8.) colored by that mic, which may or may not be the same as what you like to use, 9.) running though potentially a number of outboard pre's and EQ's before it hits tape, 10.) potentially subjected to amount of post-processing (EQ's, compressions, delays/verbs, etc), and 11.) considered "a good indication of the sound of these pickups) through that player's monitors in his room on playback, which may or may not translate well to yours.


Anyway, what do you mean by "rock?" the Rolling Stones? Link Wray? The Smashing Pumpkins? Guns N Roses? Howlin' Wolf?

Light, I'm definitely curious to check those pickups out, dude.
 
Great advices guys. With some recommending that I should save up for a decent amp because that would make much more of a difference than a pickup, at what price range is considered decent and what's a decent brand for rock music? So with those advices, I'll leave the pickup aside for now and shoot for the amp first. And yes, by "rock" I like stuffs like the Rolling Stones and Guns n Roses.

Should I get a head+cabinet or a combo? I mainly do recording more than playing live. The ratio between me recording to playing live is 10:1.
 
Great advices guys. With some recommending that I should save up for a decent amp because that would make much more of a difference than a pickup, at what price range is considered decent and what's a decent brand for rock music? So with those advices, I'll leave the pickup aside for now and shoot for the amp first. And yes, by "rock" I like stuffs like the Rolling Stones and Guns n Roses.

Should I get a head+cabinet or a combo? I mainly do recording more than playing live. The ratio between me recording to playing live is 10:1.
Guns and roses were using Marshalls. The Stones were using a bunch of different stuff over the last 45 years. Name some other bands, that will narrow it down a bit.

If you are trying to sound like Slash, a single coil isn't going to cut it. You will need a humbucker
 
Guns and roses were using Marshalls. The Stones were using a bunch of different stuff over the last 45 years. Name some other bands, that will narrow it down a bit.

If you are trying to sound like Slash, a single coil isn't going to cut it. You will need a humbucker

Ok, here are some more:

-Frank Zappa
-AC/DC
-Led Zepplin
-Joe Satriani
-Nirvana
-Steve Vai
-The Eagles
-Aeromsmith
-Bon Jovi
-Modern Talking
-Metallica
-The Police
-The Beatles

Joe Satriani and Steven Vai might not belong in this category but I loved their tones also.:D
 
My brother has a fender 57 reissue it had "vintage" pickups in it. Apparently vintage means noisy as hell. Guitar sounded great but without noise suppression on that thing hummed like a bastard.
He replaced them with Samarium Cobalt Noiseless pickups from fender and they made a huge difference. Actually they sounded almost exactly the same as the originals just without the noise.
 
Ok, here are some more:

-Frank Zappa
-AC/DC
-Led Zepplin
-Joe Satriani
-Nirvana
-Steve Vai
-The Eagles
-Aeromsmith
-Bon Jovi
-Modern Talking
-Metallica
-The Police
-The Beatles

Joe Satriani and Steven Vai might not belong in this category but I loved their tones also.:D

You want one guitar to be able to sound like all those guys, eh? Good luck with that. ;^)
 
If you mostly record at home, I'd go with a combo of some kind. It'll probably be cheaper and take up less space. I wonder if you'd do well with one of those modeling amps, like the valvetronix series from vox. You'd at least have a large variety of tones to fiddle with and see what you like. I'm still thinking about getting one of those. If you can, the best thing would probably be to take your guitar to a music store and test it out through a bunch of amps. Chances are you'll fall in love with one.
 
-AC/DC- Humbucker and a Marshall

-Led Zepplin- Pick a song, he used a hundred different setups

-Joe Satriani- Pick an era, always a humbucker but early on he was using a processor for his tone.

-Nirvana- single coil- Marshall

-Steve Vai- humbucker- Carvin and a bunch of processing

-The Eagles- There were 3 guitar players, pic one

-Aeromsmith- Pic a song, a bunch of different stuff

-Bon Jovi- Humbucker-Marshall (assuming you mean in the 80's, now it's single coil and a boutique amp)


-Metallica-EMGs and a Mesa mark IV

-The Police- Depends on the song, sometimes single coils, sometimes an electric 12 string with humbuckers- marshall

-The Beatles- Humbuckers- Vox

These bands are all over the place, you need to narrow it down to the type of sound you want. You are just listing bands that you like to listen to, listen to the sound of the guitar and make your choice.

Metallica's guitar sound has nothing in common with the police's guitar sound
 
-AC/DC- Humbucker and a Marshall

-Led Zepplin- Pick a song, he used a hundred different setups

-Joe Satriani- Pick an era, always a humbucker but early on he was using a processor for his tone.

-Nirvana- single coil- Marshall

-Steve Vai- humbucker- Carvin and a bunch of processing

-The Eagles- There were 3 guitar players, pic one

-Aeromsmith- Pic a song, a bunch of different stuff

-Bon Jovi- Humbucker-Marshall (assuming you mean in the 80's, now it's single coil and a boutique amp)


-Metallica-EMGs and a Mesa mark IV

-The Police- Depends on the song, sometimes single coils, sometimes an electric 12 string with humbuckers- marshall

-The Beatles- Humbuckers- Vox

These bands are all over the place, you need to narrow it down to the type of sound you want. You are just listing bands that you like to listen to, listen to the sound of the guitar and make your choice.

Metallica's guitar sound has nothing in common with the police's guitar sound

Wow, this is great. Thanks.:D

I guess I'll just do what danw recommended; go to a music store and try all to see which one I like most.

I've had the Vox AD50VT once before but returned it because I wanted a Marshall JVM combo. Actually the Vox is not bad at all. I just feel I like the JVM much more but it's way way much more expensive.
 
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