major pickup shootout- send your pups and be heard

[trioderob]

ok all you guys- the proof is in the pudding.

how well will YOUR pickup hang in there against the best ???





see this link for a major pickup shootout:

http://www.lespaulforum.com/forum/sh...d.php?t=157217


and please dont start with the " I dont like this comparison stuff"
if you are good - fuck it -take a chance.

[David Schwab]

Saying it's a "shoot out" implies there's going to be a winner. To have a winner it would mean the pickup would have to meet some sort of criteria, which means they have to sound a certain way, and then it's totally subjective, and cannot be objective.

"Against the best" also shows some personal opinion on what is best, or that there is a recognized best, by someone, or even worst, a committee.

So instead of a "shoot out" it would be better to say you are going to audition a bunch of pickups and describe them.

After all, the vast number of aftermarket pickups for any given guitar style shows that one size does not fit all. Everyone wants something a little different.

And that's why I specialize in bass pickups, where it pays to be different. I'm more than happy to compare my pickups to any others, but they are going to be different. Otherwise, what's the point?

[trioderob]

shootout

I would just like to state that it is not my shootout
and I am not connected in any way with them.

they did not ask me to post here.

while I agree with everything you have stated in the above thread, logic would
dictate that there must be events like these to weed out the best from the
rest.

or to put it in another way, imagine a wine tasting where there were
fantastic $300 french wines and $8 cheapo brands.

had you never tried the good stuff you could be under the impression
the the cheap $8 wine was as good as it gets.

now to me the real problem is that a better shootout would take
more time with the pickups so the reviewers could live with the pickups
for awhile. that way all the qualities or faults could be found in a natural way.

so while a shootout like this has many flaws it still is very important.

and it is a gamble for the maker, what if he does not win or rate
highly ? what if his pickups are found to be medicore ?

what if the hype he has generated is found to be unwarrented ?

is it worth taking this risk ?

As a side note I posted this thread because I would like to see
all of your pickups reviewed. I am not about to buy pickups
from EVERYONE here as it would be $$$ and i an just not going to do it. but on the other hand if one of you guys does well I might
spring for the cash and pop in a set.

good luck!

[pupoholic]

U would think those Les Pauly forumites would have figured out the best PAF years ago since thats all they ever do over there -- ehhe - Just kiddin! --

but I may be on to sumptin..??????????????
like -- AIN'T No such thing as the BEST PAF in the whole world.. ????????

Just Food for Thought.. hehe!


actually in order to conduct a fair shoot out with any pickups - is nearly an impossible task in itself -
just consider all the variables and try to equal the playing field - you would need some serious test equipment most of which has not been invented yet -

the only FAIR way to know anything is just read as many reviews as you can find for each pup in question - and make a "personal decision" whats best for your personal guitar & playing styles - there will never be a "best pickup in the world" just because its a personal thing -

I love how those old Blues guys made total cheap pickups sound like a million dollars -- for me "Hound Dog Taylor" had all that going on for him.. hehe!
http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...2&oq=hound+dog
Pupo

[pupoholic]

U would think those Les Pauly forumites would have figured out the best PAF years ago since thats all they ever do over there -- ehhe - Just kiddin! --

but I may be on to sumptin..??????????????
like -- AIN'T No such thing as the BEST PAF in the whole world.. ????????

Just Food for Thought.. hehe!


actually in order to conduct a fair shoot out with any pickups - is nearly an impossible task in itself -
just consider all the variables and try to equal the playing field - you would need some serious test equipment most of which has not been invented yet -

the only FAIR way to know anything is just read as many reviews as you can find for each pup in question - and make a "personal decision" whats best for your personal guitar & playing styles - there will never be a "best pickup in the world" just because its a personal thing -

I love how those old Blues guys made total cheap pickups sound like a million dollars -- for me "Hound Dog Taylor" had all that going on for him.. hehe!
http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...2&oq=hound+dog
Pupo

PS... my vote for best PAF's goes to Greco Dry Z's - I had a set send over from Japan $530.00 - I love em! - don't know if their really the best PAF clone- but the float my boat of a Les Paul here -- heeh

[Possum]

...

this is horse shit, many of us have been banned from the Les Paul forum and can't even read the link you sent. I was banned 6 years ago and they just plain won't let me join, despite several attempts to connect with Lily or whatever her name is over there. So you won't see my product there. If they are advertising it as a "shootout" this means its a competition with judges and they will choose a "best" of. This is a bad idea, basically its a political judgement call, there is no basis for saying one pickup is better than another, better by WHO's standards? Are their judge metal players, classic rockers, jazz fusionists, are they even competent players you would pay money to go hear, or are they bedroom players who want a bunch of free pickups they will test through Blues Juniors and will pick the darkest one that sounds best in their printed circuit amps? Inevitably is they are picking the "best" then someone's pickups are going to be judged the "worst." Again, by who's standards??? We've seen over the years hysterical buying sprees of certain maker's pickups and those pickups didn't stand the test of time if you talk to some who bought that stuff. Even if they would let me join their forum I wouldn't enter, shootouts are purely a couple people's opinions, even if they had celebrity players, its still human opinions and there is no scientific method to prove that someone's pickups are "better" than someone elses. I would like to see someone disguise a real PAF in a new cover and enter it and see what kind of reaction it gets. I guarantee you it won't be judged as "best" because few have ever played the real thing and they don't generally fare well in shootouts. Enter at your own risk, ask yourself do you really want to risk your business being judged as "worst" in a shootout? Shootouts are divisive and political, kinda like Republicans....bad idea. My two cents worth

[gilligan]

Bad Idea

Shootouts are divisive and political, kinda like Republicans....bad idea. My two cents worth

I suggest we keep politics out of the pickup building world.
Ron

[David Schwab]

while I agree with everything you have stated in the above thread, logic would dictate that there must be events like these to weed out the best from the rest.

Logic does no such thing. There's that word "best" again. Logic would dictate that there is no best. Best is the opinion of one person, at least when it comes to pickups, because you can't quantify tone. Maybe you can pick one that is the loudest, or most expensive, or what ever, but not "best".

"Best" can mean "most appropriate", or "to the highest degree", as in "the one we liked best"; but then again, that's personal preference. You like it, or you don't. You don't even have to know why.

I recently built a guitar, and replaced pickups in 4 more for a customer. He bought the pickups based on the opinions of people on forums, etc.

I installed them in the various guitars at the positions he wanted them, and then gave my opinion on why some where not good choices in the context of that guitar and the tone he was after. Some just didn't work well together, and some didn't enhance the tone of the guitar.

He ended up agreeing with me, and we swapped them around between the guitars, and then they were perfect. So while an Air Classic was bland sounding at the neck on a Jackson, it sounded great on an alder Strat style guitar I built for him, which he had wanted a Breed neck, which sounded like mud. The Breed brought out the tone of the Jackson though, which was on the tight and thin side.

or to put it in another way, imagine a wine tasting where there were fantastic $300 french wines and $8 cheapo brands.

Once again, this is apples and oranges, and even with wine, some inexpensive wines are quite good, especially the young wines like Beaujolais Nouveau. Wines are judged by the type and what is expected in that context. So OK, if a pickup is claimed as being good for Jump Blues, then you have to use it in that context. You wouldn't chill a fine red wine...

With pickups, expensive does not equate to tone. Even the best pickup is the sum of its parts, and as such doesn't cost very much.

had you never tried the good stuff you could be under the impression the the cheap $8 wine was as good as it gets.

People like what they like. I've given good beer to people who like Coors Light, or even worse, Bud, and they hated it! And those hardly count as beer. I like eating at fine restaurants, and I like chinese takeout too. Or even Taco Bell. Everything has its place.

now to me the real problem is that a better shootout would take
more time with the pickups so the reviewers could live with the pickups
for awhile. that way all the qualities or faults could be found in a natural way.

Yes and no. If you live with a pickup for a while you forget your first impressions of it. But then it is good to give it more than a cursory listen. But then by the time the next pickup is in, you forgot the first one. I make recordings of every new pickup I make so I can do direct A/B comparisons.

Ideally you need a guitar where the pickups can be swapped quickly, prewired. And you need the same player every time. And then make recordings of the auditions. And another thing that must be accounted for is the amp's settings. You can't just change pickups and expect the same tone settings to work. They might, they might not.

And having said that, I wound a new pickup, and tried it out, and really disliked it. Then I tried it the next day, and all the things I didn't like about it were gone. But of course it's me, and not the pickup. I might have had certain expectations, and the next day I had different ones.

so while a shootout like this has many flaws it still is very important.

It's nice to read reviews of pickups by capable writers and testers. But once again, a "shootout" is not the way to go. Especially one that has a hidden agenda.

and it is a gamble for the maker, what if he does not win or rate
highly ? what if his pickups are found to be medicore ?

Win what? Found mediocre by whom? Once again why would the testers be qualified to critique the pickups? What are their credentials? They could be quite mediocre themselves. Do the pickup makers get to critique them?

And as I asked in my first post, what is the criteria for not being mediocre? That's the real question. For any given person who thinks something sounds great, another will think it sucks.

what if the hype he has generated is found to be unwarrented ?

is it worth taking this risk ?

Hype is always nonsense. And once again, it's who's word against who? You shouldn't let other people tell you what to like.

As a side note I posted this thread because I would like to see all of your pickups reviewed. I am not about to buy pickups from EVERYONE here as it would be $$$ and i an just not going to do it. but on the other hand if one of you guys does well I might spring for the cash and pop in a set.

good luck!

Reviewed by whom? In a real review, pickups would be provided by the maker, so no $$$ would be required. Do you think Guitar Player magazine buys all that stuff?

I had a guy who bought one of my pickups and then wrote at Talk Bass that they weren't as loud as his P bass, and then pointed out that he had it adjusted more than a half inch from the strings! Well duh! So in this case he was neither qualified to have installed the pickup, or reviewed it. And if he just didn't like it, that doesn't make it a bad pickup either. (he also said it was "modern" sounding, and he thinks he wanted the same tone as Jack Casady, even though he didn't know what Jack sounds like... oh boy!)

See, on the Internet, everyone is an "expert".

I'm sure everyone here will feel the same way, and they also wont waste their time saying so. I have nothing else to do so.... (well I have three pickups to wind but that can wait until tomorrow...)

[soontobe1968]

Thank you David Schwab

I'm always glad to hear people that make sense. Ex: I used to go see Michael Powers at Terra Blues in NYC all the time and each time it never failed.. After Michael and his band just blew everybody away, some guitarist would walk up and check out his rig during a break or after the show to see how he got that sound.. What did they find sitting there? 2 fender 25r frontman SS amps that you can buy for $130 a piece!!

[Possum]

....

Vintage Guitar did a PAF "shootout" years ago, that might be a good model for the LPF but those guys wouldn't go for it I"m sure. There was NO competitiveness involved, it was simply a review of characteristics of each set of pickups. But you know, there were some borderline nasty comments made about some of the entries and they unsoldered and removed the covers off all of them to "even the playing field" according to them. Pissed off every single maker who entered by doing that too :-)

Personally I've tried the supposed best PAF sets out there and found all of them totally lacking in authenticity and character. The best humbucker I've ever tried is the one real PAF I own, yet these pickups don't score high in shootouts, thats the reality.

You guys go ahead and enter that LPF thing and good luck to you, be prepared to have your products publicly trashed and archived for years so Googlers can find out how bad someone thought your work is, or maybe you'll get lucky. For me, any kind of competitive shootout can never have foolproof rules, or testing techniques because you are judging using subjective opinions of a couple of human beings. What if one of the test guitars turns out to be a clunker, someone made a slight wiring blunder, or put some cheesy tone caps in it etc. and every entry tested in it got bad marks without anyone noticing the guitar was flawed? Or they didn't put new strings on one guitar so your pickups got rated as dull sounding, or they used different types of strings and no one paid attention to that? There's millions of things that can push a player's opinion this or that way, the whole idea just doesn't work and there is no method of making a competition for an artistic product really work in a fair, scientific way.

[PAF-Boy]

Forums are funny.

Last time I lurked to the MLP I saw that they ( at that time ) were totally blown by an OVER THE POND MANs PAFs.
Who ever that man is but the pics they posted there look verry much like PAF.
I wonder were he gets his bobbins from...

But why a PAF shotout now?
I thought they have gotten what they were searching for.
Anyway they live in their own MLP world,not a pickups makers.

[Spence]

If you have a good product you don't need to be in a shootout of any sort.
Your pickups will sell themselves.

[Mark Hammer]

I want to see a "shootout" of EQ pedal settings. Yeah...exactly.

If one wants to compare PUs in order to identify which one has a little more of this and little less of that, that makes eminent sense, since our auditory memory of something we tried in this store three weeks ago, compared to something else tried in another store under different circumstances, may not be all that dependable.

But "best"? Fuggedaboudit.

[salvarsan]

It's not the PAF shootout so much as who does the shooting.

Y'know, that UFO thread wasn't so bad after all.
I'll go bitchslap the Immoderator into unlocking it.

-drh

[trioderob]

car

so if you were in the market for a car - you would not want
to see how it faired in reviews against other cars ?

what if Honda did not want to submit a car for review
because the same arguments you guys have given ?