Bad pickups or bad playing?

blues bondsman · **Joined:** Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:08 pm **Posts:** 2889

I love this subject !
Sitting on my guitar stand next to a Robert Cray and my #1 50th Anniversary is a guitar bought for $35.00 at a local auction, its an older Samick, it sounds amazing through my 68 bandmaster with a very special 2x12 cab and some very special speakers.

The pickups are warm and clear, in my own humble opinion, the tone is 75% amp 25% guitar.

as far as "its in the fingers", thats called style, if the amp and guitar didn't matter we would all be playing SS chinese made dumpster amps and epiphone's lowest junk.

Eric Clapton said it was his dream to play one note in a blues song and make the listener cry, think about that for a minute !

ozrv · **Posted:** Fri Jul 13, 2012 6:59 am

Gold thought......

BMW-KTM · **Posted:** Fri Jul 13, 2012 7:56 am

Martian wrote:

If the individual is a good player, (s)he will still sound good even with a lousy guitar through a lousy amp.

As always, this is merely IMO where YMMV.

There was a time when I was in 100% agreement with this right up until about maybe 5 or 6 years ago when I had the mixed blessing of going up at a jam session and using someone else's gear. An unknown (I've forgotten) brand of Telecaster copy and an equally forgettable amplifier. No pedals. Both pieces were brands that I recognised but had no experience with and I've forgotten them. I want to say Jay Turser for the guitar but I know that's not it. Both pieces of gear should have been better than they were They both felt and sounded to me like they should have retailed for $39.95 and not a penny more at Wally World. I tweaked the amp settings at every opportunity and constantly rolled the guitar tone up and down trying to find some kind of balance bewteen truly evil and barely present. It was the most frustrating experience with a guitar I'd ever had. We played 4 numbers and by halfway through the last tune I had it sounding what I figured was the best I could given what I had to work with. When I came down people said I sounded good up there but they were not musicians either, so ....

I think I will have to go with Voodoo Blues on this one and say 99% of the time it's hands. I know from experience there are rare occasions when hands or no hands the gear sounds like crap.

91Stratplayer · **Joined:** Fri Jun 22, 2007 6:19 am **Posts:** 108

Well I have one guitar that I really like with all my amps. And I'm sitting here thinking what am I going to do with my other guitars. I will admit that most were bought with a big amount of GAS. But once I acquired the object of my desire, it was over, and I moved on to the next GAS attack. Nothing to do with trying to sound better, just GAS by itself.

Now I'm just contemplating keeping one or two and getting the rest gone.

Smokin' Frets · **Joined:** Wed Feb 08, 2012 1:33 am **Posts:** 1247

ozrv wrote:

Smokin' Frets wrote:

So we all should take the road in the middle: accept that we need to improve but also accept that MORE GEAR WILL NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM!! Stupid comment....

/quote]

Really????

:lol:

Smokin' Frets · **Joined:** Wed Feb 08, 2012 1:33 am **Posts:** 1247

blues bondsman wrote:

as far as "its in the fingers", thats called style, if the amp and guitar didn't matter we would all be playing SS chinese made dumpster amps and epiphone's lowest junk.

You're right!
I wrote my comment given that one has good quality gear already. :wink:

ozrv · **Posted:** Fri Jul 13, 2012 8:26 am

......In Gas jest yes.........More gear will solve any motivation problems..... :wink:

Smokin' Frets · **Joined:** Wed Feb 08, 2012 1:33 am **Posts:** 1247

91Stratplayer wrote:

Well I have one guitar that I really like with all my amps. And I'm sitting here thinking what am I going to do with my other guitars. I will admit that most were bought with a big amount of GAS. But once I acquired the object of my desire, it was over, and I moved on to the next GAS attack. Nothing to do with trying to sound better, just GAS by itself.

Now I'm just contemplating keeping one or two and getting the rest gone.

Same with me!
I bought several guitars lately, I literally doubled my collection count and now I rather sit there, comparing the Strats to each other, instead of really playing.

I'm no more happy than before, the thrill is gone and I find it rather confusing to have that many guitars.
I still end up with the same two or three strats I like most.
Don't get me wrong, I love the sound of almost every one of them but I realized I just don't need them all. Additionally there's no "bond" between some of them and me, if you know what I mean?

There's at least two of them which will go again. That still leaves me with 6 strats (not counting the others) which still is too much but I'm afraid I can't part from any more.
Time will show....

paris · **Posted:** Fri Jul 13, 2012 9:25 am

Burke-CLT wrote:

As an actual young player, I'll tell you exactly what the problem is: headphones. Or rather, doing almost all your playing either thru headphones or at very low volume.

Guys use too much gain to make up for the lack of vol and only find out they sound like crap when they turn up to hear themselves over a live drummer. The lack of vol also means they've never EQed their rig properly, which means they think the problem is -- the pups.

(In fairness, though, it seems this EQ via pup swap mistake is common to all age groups.)

Having said that, there are bad pups and wrong pups and advertising won't tell you which ones they are, your ears will. If you bother to listen -- which gets us back to lack of rhythm, timing etc.

Finally, single coils are no more or less revealing than humbuckers. Just a different tool for a different job.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pgVHFh6DM8

I loved your reply. I think there is some truth to some of what you say, but even pickup that are not loud (hot) can shine and be loud with a proper amp. There some crap pups out there and a lot of it comes down to taiste.

As to pickups hiding or exposing bad playing, I'm still inclined to believe that this does make a difference, but purhaps that has more to do with players saturating thier guitar with distortion.

paris · **Posted:** Fri Jul 13, 2012 9:27 am

blues bondsman wrote:

I love this subject !
Sitting on my guitar stand next to a Robert Cray and my #1 50th Anniversary is a guitar bought for $35.00 at a local auction, its an older Samick, it sounds amazing through my 68 bandmaster with a very special 2x12 cab and some very special speakers.

The pickups are warm and clear, in my own humble opinion, the tone is 75% amp 25% guitar.

as far as "its in the fingers", thats called style, if the amp and guitar didn't matter we would all be playing SS chinese made dumpster amps and epiphone's lowest junk.

Eric Clapton said it was his dream to play one note in a blues song and make the listener cry, think about that for a minute !

I love my 50th Anniversary Am. Series Strat. Fender really went out of thier way to make a great guitar at a reasonable price. I just got mine back in working order.

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