This talk about Q meters got me thinking. What's the most useful test equipment?

[Possum]

?????

How can what be?

[Béla]

The top isn't rolled off on your plots. As I understand it, guitar pickups have a second order low-pass transfer function. This does not happen with your pickups, and that's why I'm confused.

[Possum]

...

Of course its rolled off, the peaks are around 5-6K then then they drop off. Now, consider I'm blasting the pickup with the output through a pair of amplified speakers, using that amplifier, I have the tone at the brightest level, so my plots aren't going to look like yours. Keep in mind what I've been saying all along is settle on a standard that works for you then stick to whatever you're using and use it for every pickup. On some of these pickups it kept saying the level was too low so had to turn the amplifier up, not sure if that changed the comparative plots or not. Don't get too serious about this stuff, none of the big pickup manufacturers use the same methods either and their charts are pretty much useless for anything except pretty pictures or to compare their own pickups against their own pickups :-)

[David Schwab]

Should pickups be tested with a typical load they would have from volume and tone controls, and the cable?

I'd imagine that would lower the resonant peak and the upper roll off.

[Possum]

........

should they? Its up to you. Do you want to see it in a guitar or do you want to see a pickup by itself makes no difference to anyone except you. If you use a load then you should use the same load and same exact cap on all your measurements. I think Bela's charts were done from a guitar, mine weren't.