Impact of neck pickup on electric guitar tone

[Hall Guitars]

Double blind testing and accurate analysis of any possible differences in the sound envelope and frequency spectrums are the only way to prove something like this one way or another. That's exactly what I'll be doing later this week!

I honestly don't think anyone can really tell the difference but I'd like to prove it rather than just go on assuming something might or might not be the case, which many people involved in guitar making do.

Thanks for the reply, Simon

[Hall Guitars]

I totally agree it all comes down to what you like and didn't mean to suggest it would (or has ever) inhibited a performance. I'm actually looking to dispell the notion through testing (as I don't believe the difference is noticeable to the human ear) for a degree paper, but wanted to gather informed opinions such as yourselves too.

Fot the record, I mostly play strat types and my favoured position is neck and middle pickups combined - so I'm certainly not going to rush out and yank pickups out of one of mine!

[Leo_Gnardo]

I'm sorry that you don't think the topic is relevant to the group. I won't ask again!

No need to be sorry, and whether you ask again or not, I'm sure we'll beat the subject to flinders, as we often do around here. Besides we're mostly all group jumpers here, there's no escape.

Now I see you're looking for a subject to write your guitar-making degree research paper on, must admit IMO it's kind of a thin subject to approach, based on "I've occasionally heard ... whatever hearsay anyone wants to make up." But don't let me slow you down. OTOH don't forget to make up test instruments that include extra magnets but NOT pickups, to prove whether it's the "invisible fingers of magnetic fields" causing this vaunted reduction of tone/sustain. Of course instruments with pickup routings but no pickups/magnets mounted, that's a given. Also . . . sustain isn't everything. Nice to have it, but in actual playing it's all too often necessary to limit sustain with palm muting & felt or foam string mutes. Note "value" has its place, and notes that linger too long are unwelcome; a too long decay just gets in the way. As a bass player it took me way way way too long to understand this. I should have learned a thing or three from Carol Kaye. She always seems to get it right!

If you do pursue this research, I'm sure we'd all be fascinated to see the results. Even if the research disproves the theory, that's perfectly OK.

[Hall Guitars]

Thanks for the tips. To be fair, it's not a final paper, just a very minor case study but I'll definitely take your points on board and will build them into the tests. Hopefully it will disprove the theory as my own opinion is that the differences will be too small to notice by the human ear but I remain open minded until I do the actual tests.

[Mike Sulzer]

If the neck pickup has very (way too) strong magnets, then the "stratitis" that it causes is heard when the bridge pickup is used. But nobody rational would play a guitar with extremely strong magnets. In general, proper adjustment of pickups assures that there is little effect on the sound.

I think this is an interesting question, one that deserves to be discussed in this forum. After all, much of what is discussed here is at least partly subjective. Int is hard to do double blind tests for everything.

But I think your tests need to include listening to both pickups. Perhaps the question investigated could be something like this: when the neck pickup is increased in strength, are differences heard in it due to strong magnets always accompanied by audible differences in the bridge pickup? My guess is that you have to have strong effects on the neck pickup before it becomes much of an an effect on the bridge pickup, but that is just a guess.

May your tests go well!

Thanks for the tips. To be fair, it's not a final paper, just a very minor case study but I'll definitely take your points on board and will build them into the tests. Hopefully it will disprove the theory as my own opinion is that the differences will be too small to notice by the human ear but I remain open minded until I do the actual tests.

[mozz]

The reason why 1 pickup guitars sound better is................... the guy playing the guitar only has one pickup, he tries harder and concentrates more on his playing, simple.

[bbsailor]

Thanks for the repy Joseph, I totally agree that I need to cut out all variables and conduct scientifically sound experiments and blind tests to prove it one way or another. That's exactly what I'm going to do but I thought you guys would have valid opinions which were well worth hearing too, which they have been!

Thanks for the tips, Simon

Simon,

The energy that a pickup converts into electrical energy is based on the amount of energy that the strum or note pick passes on to the strings in the initial attack and then as the string(s) decay. How the energy is removed from the strings by the things that affect initial attack during the first 20 to 30 milliseconds should be measured separately. Then, focus on the near sustain after the attack and the longer sustain levels followed by the decay rate down into the noise level. The less energy the guitar body, neck, and hardware suck from the strings allows more energy to be left for the pickups to deliver to the amplifier. Finding a consistent way to pick the strings with equal energy and measure the output consistently will allow you to easily analyze many guitars and draw some statistical inferences about various guitar design styles on your measured outcomes.

There has been a lot of research done on this general topic but not on how the various body, neck and hardware variations styles as well as pickup variations affect the attack, sustain and decay of string energy being replicated by pickups. Choose your research battles wisely!

Joseph J. Rogowski

[rjb]

OK, I'm an ignoramus.

agreed:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]38795[/ATTACH]

Is that an ES-225?

[jack briggs]

Is that an ES-225?

'57 es 225T
nice, huh?

cheers,

[Jammin'John]

Yes. That's the reason.

JJ

[rjb]

'57 es 225T
nice, huh?

Nah, needs another pickup.

[jack briggs]

Nah, needs another pickup.

cheers,

[rjb]

That's not a guitar.


That's a guitar.

With apologies to

[John Kolbeck]

If the neck pickup has very (way too) strong magnets, then the "stratitis" that it causes is heard when the bridge pickup is used.

You often hear that it's a bonus to use weaker magnets because less string pull means less sustain, but do you think it's possible for there to be too little pull to cause "Stratitus", but yet enough pull to have a meaningful consequence on the sustain?

[Mike Sulzer]

You often hear that it's a bonus to use weaker magnets because less string pull means less sustain, but do you think it's possible for there to be too little pull to cause "Stratitus", but yet enough pull to have a meaningful consequence on the sustain?

I do not know, but I would not make that claim without careful testing. I would also want to know why the magnetic field causes more energy dissipation in the string when the magnets are not strong enough to cause stratitis.