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> On every electric guitar, the pickups have dampening springs. From trolling online guitar forums, it sounds like these are pretty important for dampening some
by wk_end 6y ago
> On every electric guitar, the pickups have dampening springs. From trolling online guitar forums, it sounds like these are pretty important for dampening some vibrations from affecting the pickup.
This is a strange statement. Many pickup designs have springs as part of their mounting mechanism, but it's not for dampening vibrations - it's to allow the height of the pickup to be adjusted.
Certain pickups (notably, off the top of my head, Fender Jazzmaster & Jaguar pickups) don't even use springs for this - instead there's a block of foam placed underneath the pickup that compresses as the pickup is screwed down.
Of course, it's possible some cork-sniffer guitar nerds will claim that they can hear the effects pickup springs have on tone (and the effects of different metals in the springs, no doubt), but these are the same people who will claim that they can hear the difference different glues make on tone, or will swear up-and-down that a real $5000 Klon has a richer and fuller sound than a $100 clone made from the exact same circuit with the exact same components, or that tube amps sound better because "electrons can't survive in a crystal lattice" [0] (so buy my $100K tube amp!), or...
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVTj08qTwGw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVTj08qTwGw
- frenchie4111 6y agoYeah, maybe they aren't that important. Using guitar forums as my source of truth maybe isn't the best. In any case, I have them on my guitar :)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- YZF 6y ago"Tone" is the sum of many little things (and then some bigger things). There can certainly be differences between guitars that seem quite similar. Since part (most?) of "tone" comes from the player there can be subtle "UX" things that have an influence or even the mental state of the player and what they believe to be true. I can believe that spring mounted vs solidly mounting to the body can make some difference (physics says there should be) but I can also believe the difference can be so small as to be negligible. People gravitate towards combos that are known to be successful. Since they don't understand the exact mechanisms at work it's safe to say let's have a mahogany body, a certain pickup, mounted a certain way, a bone nut, certain fingerboard material etc. and expect certain results.
- jolux 6y agoIn rough order of significance, electric guitar tone is influenced by: - technique (absolutely the most important) - amplifier - pickups + strings - everything else (debatable whether you can even notice it) I don’t know if there’s hard evidence but I think folks who think wood and nut types and whatever make a difference are nuts. The relative difference in stiffness between the strings and the body is so huge that believing that the neck and body effect tone seems to me like believing that asphalt vs concrete effects how a tennis net vibrates.
- skj 6y agoYou can definitely hear the difference between many guitar models. Are you suggesting that pickups are the only difference?
- jolux 6y agoPickups and amps are by far the biggest difference. In an acoustic guitar, sound is produced by the whole body of the guitar resonating. In an electric, sound is produced by the string vibrating in an electromagnetic field above the pickup poles. The ideal guitar string contacts the body at three points along the body (nut, fret, saddle), on ideally as narrow a surface as possible at each of those points.
- the_local_host 6y agoIf you ever get the chance, try putting together a strat with one of those cheap paulownia bodies and compare it to.. well, anything else that is exactly the same except for the body material. To me, the difference is glaring; the paulownia is so treble-heavy it's intolerable.
- jolux 6y agoBy what principle does it make it more treble-heavy? This is the part that I haven't had explained to me and I don't understand it. I have a basswood Mustang and it sounds fine with decent humbuckers in it.
- squarefoot 6y agoI don't know about dampening screws on pickups as I don't think I ever saw them; they use springs on each screw to keep them pushed up and reduce screws play, but I'm not sure they're the same thing. Anyway, guitars with a spring vibrato bridge, have this faint but audible natural spring reverb inside their body which by contact affects the strings too adding more warmth to their sound. It would be worth experimenting with a set of all different springs so that the force applied to the bridge is the same, but they would resonate on different frequencies therefore making the reverb effect bandwidth wider.
- frenchie4111 6y agoGood thing it's easy to swap the pickups in my guitar, so I can test things like that easily :)
- lostlogin 6y ago> trolling Does the author mean ‘trawling’?
- frenchie4111 6y agoYep, you're right, I do mean that
- lostlogin 6y agoHello! Neat articles on the rest of your site too. As a Home Assistant addict, you have given me plenty to read.
- fnord77 6y agoyou were right > The basic difference between these two similar terms is that trawling involves a net and is typically done for commercial fishing purposes, while trolling involves a rod, reel, and a bait or lure," and is typically done by recreational fishermen.
- lostlogin 6y agoThe definition misses a common usage - to antagonize (others) online by deliberately posting inflammatory, irrelevant, or offensive comments or other disruptive content. I wonder though, based on the professional/enthusiast fishing definition, could you call someone who is paid for (digital) trolling, a trawler? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/troll https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/troll
- Stratoscope 6y agoAs lostlogin noted, words have different meaning in different contexts, and the fishing definitions do not apply to online discussions - except perhaps on a fishing forum! Here's an example: I went trawling through your HN comments to find something I didn't like so I could downvote it. Naw, I didn't really do that, I'm just trolling you!
- 6y ago
- stirfish 6y agoSome cheap (or expensive but old) pickups rattle when you shake them. Here's a tutorial on "repotting" some pickups in wax to fix this. https://www.projectguitar.com/tutorials/electronics/repotting-your-pickups-r33/ https://www.projectguitar.com/tutorials/electronics/repottin... You don't have to be a cork sniffer to hear small things affect your tone. You just have to play very loudly on half-broken instruments - which isn't everyone's cup of tea.
- jollybean 6y agoSmall point - 'tube amps' unconditionally sound better than solid state. It's a marked difference that doesn't really require a trained ear or anything, if you played a few chords on a 'warmed up tube amp' vs. 'solid state' to someone who's never seen an electric guitar in real life, they'd be able to hear the difference.
- somebodythere 6y agoThey sound "different", but not "unconditionally better", and it's not something you can't replicate in the signal path...
- jollybean 6y agoThe difference is unambiguous and players overwhelmingly chose tubes, all other things being equal (i.e. cost, hassle). Unless you're playing maybe a very clean sound (jazz?) without the most remote hint of warmth or distortion, tubes are it. It's ridiculous that someone would call out 'tubes' as somehow being a kind of nerdy/fake/poseur guitarist connoisseur melodrama. It's literally the most important point differentiation of amps, to the point that almost all tube amps sound better than almost all solid state (at least in the same class). While someone might possibly take umbrage that 'tubes are not always better' - there's basically no room for someone to say it's a 'petty concern'.
- jen20 6y ago> without the most remote hint of warmth I’m struggling to work out what you mean by “warm” here. By a musician’s definition, low impedance pickups and solid state electronics (usually those with input transformers) have produced some of the warmest guitar tones on record. Even a mid-tier archtop plugged directly into a solid state amp produces _incredibly_ warm. Distortion (in the musical sense), sure.
- dr_hooo 6y agoA trained guitarist's ear might notice the difference, but I highly doubt a crow would care. Also you are overstating the difference, and by no means is your opinion uncontested (just putting this out for the non-guitarists in the HN crowd). Even for those who can identify and prefer the tube sounds, digital modellers like Kemper do exist and do exist and seem to do a fine job in blind tests (see for example Anderton's on youtube).
- sunshineforever 6y agoAre you sure that tube amps don't sound better than solid state amps? This is such a common knowledge in the "guitar world" that I can't believe that it's not true. And I swear that I've heard the difference myself... Edit to further elaborate I've heard that solid state amps are used in metal more commonly because they have a different tone then tube amps which would be more common in a bluesy type sound.
- vcxy 6y agoI think this used to be true, but these days tube amps can be very faithfully modeled. E.g., the fender tone master amps sound great.
- tshaddox 6y agoEven when it used to be true, I feel like what was true was that tube amps sound more like tube amps than solid state amps.
- charrondev 6y agoYou’ve also got stuff like the keeper modelling amp and newer axe FX models that can sound indistinguishable when coming through good full range speakers. One thing that can make even modern solid state amps sound bad is crappy speakers. The bulk of solid state guitar amplifiers are combo amps with a single crappy 10” or 12” inch speaker in a cheap cabinet.
- robbiex88 6y ago"...I've heard that solid state amps are used in metal more commonly because they have a different tone" Partially false. The general trend in metal has gravitated towards tube amp distortion (and digital modeling of it) precisely because of the different tone and responses vs solid state amps. As a guitarist there's a certain response you get with a tube amp vs digital and solid state. As an HN reader, I struggle to describe and quantify this quality besides the generic descriptors of 'response' and 'feel'.
- bsder 6y ago> Are you sure that tube amps don't sound better than solid state amps? This is such a common knowledge in the "guitar world" that I can't believe that it's not true. Poets around the world throughout history have tried to quantify beauty and failed. I always find it humorous that guitar players think they can succeed when they are far less well-equipped to the task. However, a couple of points: 1) Old solid-state amps were mostly built to be cheap, so they sucked. Modern ones are constructed significantly better. 2) Vintage tube amps often have more variation (and may or may not have been repaired faithfully which increases the variation) so you occasionally get one that has "magic". The downside is that most of the amps don't have that magic--you will probably never encounter the "stage queen" personally. Another downside is that you can lose the "magic" pretty easily. This is something that the vintage amp guys all gloss over. If you got the "stage queen"--congratulations! Of course the other 300 in the production batch don't sound anywhere near as nice. 3) Dimebag Darrell, for example, liked his solid-state Randall sound very much. Who are you to argue? 4) Modern modeling amps are getting REALLY good at mimicking the tube amps. This means that you CAN have that "stage queen" that you will never encounter personally. And you can create sounds that the stage queen can't. Whether they're "pleasing" is a different story. 5) Each individual amp has a "sound"--whether solid-state or tube. The question at the end of the day is: "Do you, personally, like how that amp sounds?" And, if the answer is "Yes", plug your guitar into the amp, play what you want, and tell the poseurs to go pound sand.
- jbverschoor 6y agoYou’re only able to hear these differences if you use silver cables made by elves under the moonlight!
- ksaj 6y agoLike these cables: https://mitcables.com https://mitcables.com In the 90's they were trying to sell these to guitar players. Nobody seemed to care that if you sent a regular wave down the line and measured it at the receiving end, then did the same thing after chopping out the magical bit of fake electronics, the signal still came out the same.
- analog31 6y agoI'm an electric bassist, and springy pickups unnerve me. For one thing, I sometimes rest my thumb on the pickup. So I've replaced the springs with hard spacers, cut to the desired length. As a result, my pickups are solid, and not adjustable. For another thing, the foam turns into goo after 40 years, which is how long it's been since I set up the instrument.
- rograndom 6y agoOne of my favorite "did you know?" relates to early shoegaze bands using "vintage" jazzmaster and jaguars. The bands would buy those, sometimes original 60's instruments, because they were cheap. And the foam under the pickups would be almost gone so the pickups would be almost bottomed out and be much further away from the strings than originally intended. The guitarists didn't know this of course, but that became part of the "shoegaze" sound so people now buy brand new jazzmasters and dump the pickups all the way to the body.
- pram 6y agoThat is super interesting! How was this discovered?
- fallingfrog 6y agoGuitars with dogear P90’s don’t have any springs at all. They’re just screwed right to the body of the guitar. They were made that way because it was cheap, (and then of course as you say it became magic mojo later..)
- julianz 6y agoSame as Gretsch Filtertrons (and most of their other pickups too, I guess). No height adjustment at all.
- Gravityloss 6y agoI think you don't want your pickup to vibrate. Not sure what happens if it does, is there some interference. I bet you could test it, just take the strings off, vibrate the body somehow and listen to the signal closely.