Pickups make a huge difference however on specific tones. If you are looking at clean tones, then pickups and electronics make a large difference. But so do the other elements down the line such as amp, speaker, cabinet, and microphone and placement.
However, if you are only about very high-gain metal tones, the pickups mean much less and the speakers, cabinets, mics, and placement start to make a larger difference.
It all depends on the tone you are trying to achieve and seeing which components in the signal chain have the most effect.
Here’s a good video on this:
His previous videos also debunk many of the myths.
Recently, I discovered a somewhat definitive test that shows the differences between hearing an electric guitar acoustically versus through an amp (via either magnetic or even piezo pickups).
Setup a guitar so that the action is very low. At some point, there will be some fret buzzing, even with a perfect setup. If you don’t have a perfect setup, low action will result in acoustic fret buzzing. This occurs when a fret is too high and when the string is plucked, it hits the fret and the sound you hear is the this impulse from the string to the fret and it is the vibrating fret that you hear as it is a thin piece of metal which can make a reasonable sound when struck. It is this extraneous acoustic sound that bothers a lot of people.
However, as the string is vibrating, the pickup senses this vibration and it does NOT pickup the acoustic vibration of the fret. The hit against the fret does affect the string vibration, but it isn’t as significant and really only affects the attack transient and is not apparent in the amplified tone.
This is universally known – that acoustic fret buzzing is not heard through an amp. Listen to an amp loud so that you can’t hear the electric guitar acoustically, and you will not notice this fret buzz at all. Or play the electric guitar through a modeler or amp attenuator into headphones so you only hear the amp -- not the acoustic sound of the guitar. You won't hear the fret buzzing at all unless the frets are very bad and there's fretting out.
This essentially shows that the two sounds are not correlated and physics already predicts this. The sounds could coincide sometimes (the sound is brighter and similar, or it could be very different depending on the pickups, electronics, etc.) but it's a coincidence. But they are NOT correlated.
However, if you are only about very high-gain metal tones, the pickups mean much less and the speakers, cabinets, mics, and placement start to make a larger difference.
It all depends on the tone you are trying to achieve and seeing which components in the signal chain have the most effect.
Here’s a good video on this:
His previous videos also debunk many of the myths.
Recently, I discovered a somewhat definitive test that shows the differences between hearing an electric guitar acoustically versus through an amp (via either magnetic or even piezo pickups).
Setup a guitar so that the action is very low. At some point, there will be some fret buzzing, even with a perfect setup. If you don’t have a perfect setup, low action will result in acoustic fret buzzing. This occurs when a fret is too high and when the string is plucked, it hits the fret and the sound you hear is the this impulse from the string to the fret and it is the vibrating fret that you hear as it is a thin piece of metal which can make a reasonable sound when struck. It is this extraneous acoustic sound that bothers a lot of people.
However, as the string is vibrating, the pickup senses this vibration and it does NOT pickup the acoustic vibration of the fret. The hit against the fret does affect the string vibration, but it isn’t as significant and really only affects the attack transient and is not apparent in the amplified tone.
This is universally known – that acoustic fret buzzing is not heard through an amp. Listen to an amp loud so that you can’t hear the electric guitar acoustically, and you will not notice this fret buzz at all. Or play the electric guitar through a modeler or amp attenuator into headphones so you only hear the amp -- not the acoustic sound of the guitar. You won't hear the fret buzzing at all unless the frets are very bad and there's fretting out.
This essentially shows that the two sounds are not correlated and physics already predicts this. The sounds could coincide sometimes (the sound is brighter and similar, or it could be very different depending on the pickups, electronics, etc.) but it's a coincidence. But they are NOT correlated.
