EMG pickup discussion

[brandondrury]

Recently, I was contacted by LehonardEuler

with criticsm of my <a href="http://www.recordingreview.com/artic...ic-Guitar">EMG 81 Review</a>.? If figured I would post it on here, because there is some valuable information in our discussions.

Brandon

[brandondrury]

Orginally Posted by LehonardEuler:

(Ignore any typos. My article software has a way of messing with the posts sometimes)


This article is pretty poor: there are no comments on the unobtainable high-gain and yet clean sound these pickups can obtain comparing to passives. Also, it?s not only about if you do or don?t play plam-mutes wile there are lots of other thechniques ot there -that's why Van Halen prefers passives: because of the feel they have on tapping. Finally, you'll not only play the very same technique on every song, so the focus should be wider.

[brandondrury]

My reply:

Hey dude, I just read that you didn't like my article/review/ramblings on the EMG 81.

I'd like to discuss the situation with you just a tad. I you seam to make a strong case for the EMG 81 sounding clean and distorted at the same time. I'm assuming you are talking about the way you can hear each individual string in every note even when using lots of gain. Is this what you are referring to In my experience the amp has a much bigger impact on this than the pickups, but you can hear that the EMG 81s are better at this than passive pickups in a A/B test. Compare a Dual Rectifier with a Hughes and Kettner Triamp and you'll find that even with mega gain and a passive pickup, your chords always ring out cleanly with the Kettner. For me personally, that sort of thing has never been that big of deal for me. If I wanted clean and distorted, I'd just mic up a clean amp and a distorted amp. Obviously, I'm in the studio and my situation is different than your typical guitar player.

What type of music are you liking your EMG 81 Also, you said you didn't like the article. Could you give me some feedback on how to improve it I sort of took the "story telling" method mainly because it's hard for me to describe sound with adjectives and I really hate when people use "****" and "cold" to describe tone because it's totally meanlingless to me in most cases. I'd love to hear back from you.

Brandon

[brandondrury]

Reply by LehonardEuler:

I didn't make it quite clear, but I was also referring to the SNR (Signal to
Noise Relation) you can obtain on actives -which, despite of my lack of
expertise in studio situations, I believe it?s a must to avoid using heavy
noise gates. As for the passives I've heard they have a weak point here
because the bigger the coil the bigger the output, but also the bigger the
output impedance and the pickup noise. But I also believe that I'm quite far
from having heard them all -even though what I'm talking about here is basic
physics (plase forgive my scientific side on this -I'm an engineer student)
This is obviously noticeable when you're not playing or when you want a
quiet sound to go trhu -like a sustain fade out or something -'cos I think
you guys don't like noise, do ya?
I quote this because even though I've used them for a short time there's a
big difference here. Also the addition of effects to clean your sound might
end up modifing your tone or loosing something.
As for te article I thought it was poor because the conclusions were
obvious: If you're a heavy palm-mutting player (which you might listen to
Metallica, Zakk wilde, Judas Priest) they all use this pickup, so if you
wanna sound like them you might buy it. But if you want to try some other
styles, is it suitable? Because I've been reading quite a lot articles on
this pickup and most agree that it's quite sterile (personally I don't think
so): It lacks personality -of course people who want their sound to come out
mainly of their guitars will tell you so, but some don't. So I expected the
article to have a wider approach on the styles this pickup is suitable for.

Hope to hear your response, Gonzalo.

[brandondrury]

Brandon Drury reply:

Noise

A quote from the article " I also noticed that the Duncans had a lot more
noise"

As a studio owner for nearly 5 years, guitar player for 10 years, and a guy
educated in electronics (2 years of electronics, I quit when I had to start
taking English classes) I can say that I can't think of a way where I could
care any less about noise. You won't hear it in my recordings. I refuse to
use gates on guitars in the studio because they suck the tone right out of
the amp in most cases. They are not transparent. However, I must admit
that I often clean up guitar tracks by simply automating the volume of the
tracks.

If an amp is THAT noisy, it truely has problems. More than likely the gain
is up to infinity which only sounds good on an industrial record (in my
experience). I find that anyone with any sense and technical understanding
of guitar tone can use Dimarzios or Duncans and not have any problems with
hiss. Go to a local bar and you'll see guys using Les Pauls, PRS, Ibanez,
etc and 95% of these will all be guitars passive pickups. Is hiss that big
of deal? I don't think so.

You have to be careful when applying physics to music. You are right. The
noise of a pickup will effect the tone. The problem here is that in most
applications "noise" is a bad thing. I'm guessing when designing a DVD
player, television, or garage door opener noise is a big problem. However,
maybe the "noise" of the pickup is part of it's character. This is the
reason that most of us prefer tube amps. From a technical standpoint, the
tube has been outdated for 35 years or more. However, the tube sounds
better even with greater noise. You may want to look at your favorite
records and your favorite tones on those records and see just how many of
them used passive vs active pickups on their guitars before you make the
noise issue a bigger priortiy than the tone itself.



Pickup Styles
What appeared to be stating the obvious by mentioning Zakk Wylde and others
who are known for using EMGs, I was also stating the unobvious. I would
NEVER pick an EMG 81 as my first choice for any other style. Maybe I didn't
make that clear enough. I think the EMGs give mega palm mute attack (even
on strings that generally don't have that attack.), but when it comes to ANY
other purpose, I think the EMGs are clear losers. Of course this is a
totaly subjective situation and there are probably guys with great tones who
love the EMGs for other things. I like the "gravely" sound you can get with
just about any passive pickup over the EMG for any style but metal and as
the article mentioned, many of the coolest metal sounds (such as Symphony of
Destruction) use passive pickups. Again, I was trying to give real world,
obvious examples of the tones possible with each pickup with the mention of
big names. I think saying "Symphony of Destruction" is more meaningful than
"graveley" to the average listener because "graveley" is subjective, but the
popular Megadeth record is defined.


If I was unclear in my article, it's because the topic of pickups is not
something a person can be clear about. It's an entirely subjective issue.
You need to be aware of this. You already have stated that you don't think
the EMG 81 is sterile. Great! It works for you. I don't feel the same
way. However, as noted in my story, when I was younger and much less
experienced, I did not like my Duncans at first. Now I love them.

I hope this helps understand my situation. My writing is not my strength.
If it was, I'd be working for the New York Times or something. I'm a
recording / internet guy.

Get back to me!
Brandon

[brandondrury]

Reply by LehonardEuler


Ok, the description you gave me here rocks!
It's more clear and you just take the subject the way I expected.
I'm studing electronic engineering, but there are many answers on music
related subjects I must find in the music world, but there are also many
others that can be found here. That's why I study electronics while I take
music as a hobby!
well, I have a one more question, just for being curious: what pickups were
used in the Countdown to Extinction and other Megadeth albums?
Also, a note for what you quoted on noise in automatic systems: Noise is
almost no problem at all on these. Why? because you recieve a digital
signal, which in some way you know somewhat what's coming. You can
regenerate a digital signal out of an almost equal quantities of signal and
noise, that is SNR=0dB!, but not with music -and even less when using
distortion. Common pickups provide a SNR of about 70dB that, when distorted
turn to be about 40dB or even less. So when comparing distortion to clean
sounds, things get noisier near about 30 to a 100 times! That's why I wanted
to know about this subject.

Hope this helps, and I'm willing to hear your response.
Thanx and good luck!

[brandondrury]

Digital systems was the next step for me in electronics when I was told to take a bunch of English crap. So I my knowledge of that is very little.

I don't know the exact rig that Megadeth used in the studio for Countdown To Extinction. No one probably knows because big bands don't use just one guitar on a record. In fact, a buddy of mine is going through the major label meat grinder right now. He said they used 9 guitars.

There are so many weird layings and different tones that are blended that it's nearly impossible to say "Oh,we used this on the record". The big thing now days is to setup 4 amps mic them all up and blend them at the console to get a unique tone that you would NEVER be able to get with one amp.

With that said, I'd put money on Seymore Duncans for the old Megadeth records. To get that much bite and grind, I'd go with Duncans as my first choice. Of course, you could probably find an aggressive Dimarzio that will do the same thing. Whatever pickup it is, it has an aggressive 1-2k bump going into the amp.

I hope this helps.

Brandon

[noGearslut]

who cares about math and S/N in pickups? common.. we all know that EMG 81 soudn flat and liveless.. sometimes harsh but have high output and you can drive your stack really hard (good for some rythm guitars)..

so.. who cares..

[brandondrury]

That was exactly my point. S/N ratios have their place, but guitar is the total opposite of that. There was a day when guitars were too clean so guys were stabbing pencils into the speakers.

Brilliant!

Brandon