How to Tell If a Guitar Pickup Is Good or Bad?
- 1). Understand the type of guitar sound you want. To decide the quality of a pickup, you must first know what you want it to sound like and if it suits the style of music you play. Depending on your tastes, a good pickup may be designed for distortion (humbucking pickup) or a clean sound (single-coil pickup).
- 2). Research the pickup. Read user reviews, talk to your guitar teacher about pickups or seek advice from guitar store employees. Understand what the pickup should sound like, and find out through research if it lives up to its manufacturer's intentions.
- 3). Test the pickup using a good amplifier and guitar at a guitar store, with your teacher or at a friend's house. A high-quality pickup will improve the sound of a low-quality guitar and amp, but if you want a clear idea of a pickup's potential, try out the pickup using high-end gear.
- 4). Try out the same pickup on different guitars and amplifiers. Become more familiar with the quality of the pickup by observing how well it performs with a variety of guitar gear.
- 5). Compare your pickup to other pickups. Replace the pickup in your guitar with another pickup and use the same amplifier. Listen for differences in quality and tone to decide which pickup sounds better to your ears.
- 6). Use a variety of settings on your guitar and amplifier. Turn up the gain to test how well the pickup handles distortion, clean tone, bass frequencies and high frequencies. Each type of pickup reacts differently to particular settings, but trying out a variety of settings will test a pickup's versatility and its ability to produce the sound you desire.
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