Why Do My Pickups Sound Different When I Take Them Out of One Guitar and Put Them into Another

I often get this question from players and here are a few of my thoughts and idea's about exchanging pickups in guitar and basses.

  1. A. I feel the most important reason why pickups sound different when exchanged into other instruments is body and neck material and related properties. I find the lighter and less dense woods will make the tone coming out of the pickup softer and less attack. The heavier woods make the pickup sound harder and brighter. I'm not pleased with the sound of composite bodies made from fiberglass, graphite, plastics or metals and I feel they don't do the pickups justice. I like the traditional tone you get from wood bodies made of ash, alder or mahogany capped with a nice piece of figured maple. I get more than enough pleasure listening to Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eric Clapton, Jimi Page, Albert Collins, Roy Buchanan, Danny Gatton, Robben Ford, The Ventures, The Shadows, Brent Mason, Arlen Roth and Freddy King using traditional instruments made of wood.
  2. Other factors that could influence the sound of your pickups are the neck material and fingerboard type, the one piece neck through body, glued neck joint or neck fastened by screws. I would also consider the body material, weight, grain, hardness, routed cavities, drilled holes, neck angle etc.
  3. The bridge unit could challenge the tone of the body and it's resonance of the strings. The angle of the strings over the bridge from the tail piece if one is used can influence tension on the body. Also the neck angle or pitch to the body. Some guitar use shims or spacers at the neck joints and some use adjustable screws which can really mess with sustain. The string vibration can radiate out of important areas such as the neck joint or bridge saddles. The higher the saddles are raised by set screws, the string vibration can radiate out from them causing the whole instrument to lose sustain or make the pickups sound different from one instrument to the next.
  4. The string gauge, length and tension from one guitar to another. The fret height and width and how the frets were installed either by pressing in from the top or sliding the fret in from the side like Leo Fender designed and used during his days at Fender.
  5. The electrical components value and tolerances can effect the tonal output of a pickup. And the stamped value on a product doesn't mean that's exactly what it is. A 250K Audio taper potentiometer with a 20 % plus or minus tolerance could actually be 200K or 300K ohm pot. A 200K potentiometer would cut more of the high end than a 300K potentiometer which would allow more highs to pass.
  6. The number of electrical components in a circuit. This can be the combination of potentiometers used for volume and tone controls, switches for making pickups series, parallel, split, out of phase or to combine others. The pickups can be passive without pre-amps or active with some type of onboard or internally modified pre-amps to boost the signal. The circuits can be 9 volts, 18 volts or other power rating.
  7. The gauge of electrical conductor or hookup wire that is used within a circuit to the jack. The typical or standard in most American made Vintage instruments is 22 AWG. The 22 gauge wire that is usually stranded is for hooking up electrical components such as pickups, wiring harnesses and switches. The general capacitor used in most early Gibson instruments is .022 mfd. and Fender used .05 mfd. for most of their instruments. There can be variations in the value of capacitors and other values of potentiometers.
  8. One of the biggest influences on tone is the type of finish and especially the thickness or number of coats. I feel the modern finishes with plasticisers in them tend to dampen or reduce the tone in an instrument and even though two instruments may look a like, the finish is a huge factor from one instrument to another.
  9. Are the pickup adjusts identical from one guitar to the next. Exact measurements should be taken from the first instrument before putting them into the second such as the pickup height and other factors are the distance from the strings, from the bridge or from the neck. Using two identical pickups in an instrument the neck pickup will have more output than the bridge. The string will have greater vibration in the neck position along with fuller and greater output than in the bridge position. The bridge will be brighter and less output because of diminished string vibration and proximity to the bridge.
  10. There are so many reasons why pickups don't sound the same in one instrument as compared to another. Look at all the possibilities and combinations and you'll see all the reasons why.
  11. Make sure you don't miss match your pickups by putting the bridge pickup in the neck position and vice versa. Some pickups are custom calibrated for either the neck or bridge position to compensate for the area of string vibration. The neck pickup can be slightly under-wound as compared to the bridge pickup.

Some pickups may sound great in one instrument and not in another. You really need to look at the instruments and understand why instruments all sound different. If you put a great sounding pickup out of an old Gibson ES-335 and put it in the neck position of your Telecaster, it doesn't mean that your Tele is now going to sound like your old ES-335.

WRITTEN ON JUNE 12, 2015, BY sltwtr

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