Define "Note Definition & Articulation"

[GroundskeeperWillie]

I hear musicians talking about this when referring to pickups ,
Pickups lack note definition or not articulate enough
in humbuckers ,Is this something you can manipulate/control with the way you wind & the amount of tension
or are other factors at play like type of screws & slugs

[David Schwab]

Keep your humbucker bright sounding, and it will be articulate. Otherwise you lose what you are playing in a sea of mud.

[GroundskeeperWillie]

Thanks .
along with my no note definition & not being articulate can a pickup be harsh sounding
i guess in other words can a pickup be dull & harsh

[Steve Conner]

Articulation is what a semi truck has that an ordinary truck doesn't.

To me at least, dull and harsh are opposite ends of the same stick, so you'd have to try hard to get both at once.

[LtKojak]

To me at least, dull and harsh are opposite ends of the same stick, so you'd have to try hard to get both at once.

That's easy, just get a 14K Epi bridge HB and set it too close to the strings. There you have it. Boomy and harsh at the same time.

HTH,

[Steve Conner]

What's the difference between boomy and dull?

[Stealth]

If Mr. Lemme's notes are to be believed, dull pickups have a low or non-existant (close to fully damped) resonant peak no matter the setting of the tone control after them. Boomy pickups, on the other hand, have a slightly higher low-frequency content (close to the fundamental tones). Having less highs isn't the same as having more lows.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

"note definition" and "note separation" are a couple things that tend to be more apparent to the player than the audience. "Articulation" is a little more fuzzy to me, it gets used in a few too many ways to be sure.

"note definition" - sometimes when you play you just hear this smear, and the percussiveness of the playing takes over, and it seems like you could be playing brilliantly or forgetting what key you're in, and all you'll hear is "plink plink plink" - that is poor note definition. Also, if each note has the same sort of character because of some electrical phenomenon (like a little hump at a certain frequency, or a buzz from a cheesy fuzz pedal) they can all smear together. GOOD "note definition" is when the notes you're playing sound truer to their harmonic structure. A given pitch will still be a given pitch in either case, but it is more obvious when "note definition" is nailed. Tonics sound like tonics, fifths sound like fifths, etc. Bowed instruments have excellent "note definition" to my ears. Often this has more to do with the amp and in terms of selecting your gear wisely for your playing situation. I've had this problem with strats when I have an amp that I have to play waaay too low in a given setting.

"note separation" is a term you hear often too, and that is more a phenomenon you get when you're playing chords, and is usually a jazz thing. Strum a chord... do you hear it as one sound blended together (like a good chorus, recorded from the other end of a cathedral) or do you hear it as four, five or six sounds blending together (a smaller, folk style vocal group when you can pick out individual voices)? To my ears, this is the biggest thing that affects this is guitar design and strings - flatwounds "separate" more to my ears, which is what makes them lovely for chord melodies, and phosphor bronze blends very well, which is why strummers think they sound so pretty. Having good string balance on pickups helps too.

[David Schwab]

What's the difference between boomy and dull?

Boomy too much low end. Dull is lack of top end. You can have boomy and still have top end.

[Steve Conner]

OK, so boomy and harsh means too much lows and too much highs, with not enough mids in between.

That is possible, unlike dull and harsh, which is too little highs and too much highs.

The jazzmen like note separation because they play all these over-complicated chord voicings.

[David Schwab]

OK, so boomy and harsh means too much lows and too much highs, with not enough mids in between.

That is possible, unlike dull and harsh, which is too little highs and too much highs.

Harsh might mean upper mids more than highs. Too much high end and it's "ice picky".

[Steve Conner]

Yep, that sounds about right

Another idea of mine is that anything that has lots of bumps and dips in its frequency response ought to have poor "articulation", "definition", "separation" or whatever. According to all that Fourier stuff, a frequency response with lots of fine structure implies a lot of ringing and muddled behaviour in the time domain.

[belwar]

Keep your humbucker bright sounding, and it will be articulate. Otherwise you lose what you are playing in a sea of mud.

You can always remove treble content, but you cant add it

[Stealth]

Harsh might mean upper mids more than highs. Too much high end and it's "ice picky".

And too much high end and not enough low end and mids and it becomes glassy.

Another idea of mine is that anything that has lots of bumps and dips in its frequency response ought to have poor "articulation", "definition", "separation" or whatever. According to all that Fourier stuff, a frequency response with lots of fine structure implies a lot of ringing and muddled behaviour in the time domain.

Going by frequency response alone, I'm not sure how much water that holds - yes, it implies a lot of ringing, but I'd guess it depends on the Q-factor of each crest and dip. After all, all side-by-side humbuckers have a bit of comb filtering going on, and that doesn't break the sound.

You can always remove treble content, but you cant add it

Which is true enough - until someone sticks an onboard preamp and buffers it all so very little if any treble is lost - but that's another ballgame altogether.

[Mike Sulzer]

You can always remove treble content, but you cant add it

Of course you can. Pickups do not fall off that fast.