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Righty, this has been a good test for me. After relistening and then comparing the Duncans and the EMG’s with Voxengo SPAN wave analyzer, I have come to the concusion that EMG’s are compressed, compared with the Duncans which are fruityful, fullbodied and pack an almighty punch accross a wider dynamic range. Now, the thing is here this is a cool thing and not a cool thing. Although I have to go with Duncans over EMG’s, but in EMG’s defence a slighty more compressed sound makes them easier to slot into the mix of a digital song, or I imagine even with a band on stage depending on the construction and dynamics of the songs being played.
The reason I say I prefer Duncans actually is that I guess you can not get back what wasnt there already (usually) in this situation, so basically if you use EMG’s remember your pickup sound is being compressed a little bit by the internal preamp so you should fit into the mix of the rest of the instruments easier, whereas with Duncans rich sound may be TOO MUCH for some things and may require some more tweaking and more compression to fit in like the EMG’s did.
This is very interesting, at the end of all this for me both are bloody great and it’s understanding the equipment you are using that is the most important thing here, and with this understanding you should be able to do more with Duncans, but you might have a little less hassle with EMG’s for mixing certain songs. I guess the conclusion here for me is it doesnt really matter what you got, definately making what you have work for the right situation is the key point. Referring to the thread starter it’s not the pickups that dont have soul – soul comes from you and people you are making music with.
Another cool point here is string choice, I don’t know about you guys but I use D’addario and Ernie Ball Strings. I think it’s obvious D’addarios are much brighter sounding than Ernie’s, but of course brightness is not always a good thing. But it’s interesting if you use EMG’s putting D’addarios on will help get more of a passive kind of a sound, whereas putting Ernie’s on will give you duller tone and the duller pickups. And the reverse for Duncan passives slap D’addarios on and it will be very very bright whereas dulling the Passives down a bit using Ernie’s might be a cool idea. Remember duller sound is not always a bad thing since when you amp up that dull sound of the pickups it ain’t dull any more far far from it. So these are things I have been thinking about for thre past month and it’s great to actualy run a test and find some cool results, which i can use to make string choice and better pickup choice for different songs.
Thanks all!
Sorry man I was actually just talking to a guy called Michael, he posts here a lot so I will say this without knowledge of his usual antics, but in the very second post in this thread he said:
“Wasn’t metal or some trollap was it?”
Now, that comment ignites a flame for me. But after re-reading my comments I will apologies for calling him a retard and will just leave at snob / racist. hehe. Everyone has their own opinions, but being open-minded to areas of life that you enjoy and are learning about. We are all learning, no matter how brilliant you may think you are and taking the open-minded view will make you more polished in the head and technique etc.
Anyway moving on…
hey, too clinical is an excellent way to describe them 🙂
they are clinical and dull, although not dull across the dynamic range, so clinical is a great way to describe them. However for guitar duller strings (ernies over d’arraio) are sometimes better as you drive them through the amp, but compared to seymours which are more lively, it’s actually quite crazy how much difference there is between them.
I just did a test for guitar. I actually did this test totally by accident, but I think this might be a good example of 2 types of pickups against each other.
OK, dokee basically this is the 4th song I have ever covered and recorded, and this is the first time I have ever double-tracked guitars. I used to play the guitar between the ages of 13-16 years old and then quit and now im 30! i had not touched a guitar until 7 months ago, when someone showed me how good and easy it was to record nowdays and bloody hell I went out and bought 4 guitars in 1 day 🙂
I have been playing technical songs for practice for the past 4 months, since I had to get my technique back a bit, since I was RUSTY!!!! and still am, but I keep taking baby steps and working on things that i can’t do. So basically i have been using a DAW for 2.5 weeks Cubase 5 and good god it’s not easy, but it’s a hell of a lot nicer to work with than my original 1993 4-track tape recording thing was, and holy crap you can do so much stuff nowdays. It’s all very well but there’s so many plugins and wonderful things out there, so I have been reading up on compression and allsorts of stuff and decided to try mixing songs. So, I have picked a really easy song to start with, I did not know how to play it and i worked it out (it’s nice and easy :)) and mixed where I have so far got to in just under 2 hours. There are problems in the mix, that I will work on when I understand more, but I thought instead of practicing hard songs then trying to mix hard songs, since I’m a total noob to DAW land i would try and mix easy songs to to start with so I can concentrate on certain mixing techniques.
Here is the link (it is not finished):
http://www.esnips.com/doc/5935b1e2-d7e6-4b76-80bd-af5e2e576cab/1
OK, basically I have 2 LTD EC400 Guitars, they are EXACTLY the same, one has EMG’s in and the other has Seymour Duncan’s.
Basically as I was recording this about 5 hours ago I did all of the rythmn parts on the LTD with EMG 81, so the whole song is played on the EMG 81’s I was going to work out the solo at the end and put that in (I didn’t finish working out the solo this still needs working on), but basically as i was practicing the solo my little E string snapped, i was pretty gutted, so I liteerally just swapped out the guitar over to my Seymour Duncan guitar plugged her in and played the solo, there is also a snippet of the main riff just before the solo that I also played on the Seymour’s. So I guess my some random fluke this will be a test, not necassarily a good one (obviously getting out a wave analayser on a good DI signal would be a good test for example Voxengo Span which I have done but anyway).
So the whole song is double tracked, everything is played on the EMG’s, apart from between 1 minute 25 seconds to 2 minutes 5 seconds which was played on the Seymours. I messed this bit up! I need to redo it, but it was just a test to see what difference it made, I will redo it on the EMG’s since the rest of the song was on them when I get my new strings. I think I preferred the Seymours tone, although both sounded ok to me, yet very different.
The first thing that suprised me was to hear the Seymours being louder, basically I love both pickups it’s amazing to me how different pickup’s sound, but one thing they all sound bleeding great 🙂 I think that having a good variety of pickups at your disposal is great when recording, it always amazes me some pickups sound better at the most unexpected songs when you are mixing, but you can pretty much make most pickups sound how you want.
are you lot mad? i’ve never heard so much rhubarb in my life.
music theory, practice, your guitar setup, picks, strings, pickups, leads, amps, pedals, all of this stuff makes your “guitar chain”. EMG’s are fantastic pickups obviously understanding about your equipment means you can adapt the rest of the chain to make it fit your needs.
For an example please sit down and watch this video:
if you cant be bothered to watch it all, then fast forward to 3 minutes 37 seconds and you can see EMG in action through a basic Marshall 5w Class 5 tube amp.
EMG’s are great pickups so are most pickups out there – there are ways to make them fit any your needs, knowledge is key here people.
And to be honest a lot of people here are knocking genre’s of music – please dont be a retard – music is music you can like parts of music and not liking parts of music is good as well, but completely blanking a genre of music is being a “music snob” and I don’t like that. Make your opionions about songs, but blanking a genre is just the same as racism. i don’t like anyone from a particular country is a stupid, backward kind of attitude to have. There is no helping some people…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtFRmlPw3cY
Emg’s at work through tube amps!
