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Post by Deleted on Oct 26, 2018 20:04:27 GMT
To me it's not about brightness. I need dynamics, definition. Many cheapo ceramic pups can be Very clear to the point of piercing my ears! Screw that! Give me balanced definition of each string. That's what I'm after.
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3,457 posts
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Post by LeoThunder on Oct 26, 2018 22:03:26 GMT
I like neck humbuckers to be on the dark side. For brightness I have the bridge. For even more brightness I have single coil guitars. I hear no brightness come out of a bridge pick-up. They are quacky. This is mid range, not brightness. Brightness is the attack on strings, the zing of new ones, the sheen of a harpsichord, the presence control of an amplifier.
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1,773 posts
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Post by MartinB on Oct 26, 2018 22:07:58 GMT
I typically play a lot closer to the bridge when using a bridge pup, this certainly does increase the zingy brightness. Can make a humbucker jangly.
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DefJef
THBC Moderator
Due to musical differences I've decided I can't work with myself any more.
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Post by DefJef on Oct 26, 2018 23:15:52 GMT
I like neck humbuckers to be on the dark side. For brightness I have the bridge. For even more brightness I have single coil guitars. I hear no brightness come out of a bridge pick-up. They are quacky. This is mid range, not brightness. Brightness is the attack on strings, the zing of new ones, the sheen of a harpsichord, the presence control of an amplifier. What I feel I hear from a bridge pickup is 'tightness' if that makes any sense. No matter what I do to a bridge pup on anything I don't get away from the fact that the strings aren't moving so much there. It's why I love the interaction between me and a neck pickup. There's some sort of response that is very different to a bridge pickup. If I roll off the tone on a bridge pup it doesn't go warm and lovable to me, just more like a Rhodes piano note. Very useful sound but not interchangeable with the neck. Again it will depend on your mix though. When playing at home alone I never use my tele bridge. Live in the band it gets used a lot more often to sit above the bass and keyboards.
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Post by roberto on Oct 27, 2018 6:41:13 GMT
Changing plectrum or amp can change drammatically the guitar sound. Having good fingers (good playing tone is request in a guitarist for testing anything of a guitar sound) can change drammatically the guitar sound too.
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Post by LeoThunder on Oct 27, 2018 7:00:56 GMT
Yes, all these things impact the sound in a more flexible, controllable way than pick-ups, hard wired and screwed in a guitar. This is why I think pick-ups are the wrong way of influencing the tone of a guitar and prefer the widest frequency range possible. I suppose they should simply be replaced with a piezo sensor, leaving processing to something with knobs. I suppose, however, that a piezo taking input from a bridge on a solid body wouldn't be all that full sounding as one mounted on the top of a semi-hollow body, no matter how thin. I'd like to try these things out.
But then, of course, what we have come to know and like as the sound of an electric guitar is actually the crippled frequency face of magnetic pick-ups, so we keep them. They are defining the instrument the same way the geometry of a saxophone does.
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3,457 posts
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Post by LeoThunder on Oct 27, 2018 7:07:11 GMT
Hey, I found one! Here's a hollow body guitar with a piezo:
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Post by nicod98 on Oct 30, 2018 18:14:23 GMT
I quite recognize the situation of the OP. The Wilkinson pickups in my te-70 were the only reason I didn't send the guitar back.
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