Dylan Talks Tone Ep #16 Does Hard Mounting Pickups Make a Difference? #36

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[@alexm66]

This amigo is the most informed pickup builder I know of in the modern America.

[@liquidstar9]

i have also found another change that makes a world of difference- changing out all pickup mounting screws and pickguard screws to brass or stainless, or any non-magnetizable metal, makes the pickups sound audibly clearer and tighter. my thinking is, the magnetic field in the pickup will deform and change shape when you have permeable (magnetically conductive) metals near the field. the field conducts more easily through these magnetically attractive metals, and changes shape to include them, just like it does with the strings. you want to confine the field as much as possible to only the pickup and strings. and on a side note, this works marvelously for speakers as well! change to brass or stainless for the mounting screws, and also use a torquing driver (commonly available for gunsmithing) to precisely tension the mounting makes a noticeable difference too! think of it like a drum head, they need to be evenly and appropriately tensioned to sound good too! plus i find using said torquing driver on bolt on neck screws to make an evenly tensioned joint makes a huge difference in sound. try it and see.

[@alanst.4417]

A very interesting point! It'd be a great idea for a comparison, I'd love to hear the difference.

[@liquidstar9]

@@alanst.4417 i would encourage you to try any of the things mentioned above. personally, once i actually tried them out and listened, i adopted them on the spot as standard practice for all the work i do. all the small incremental improvements add up, and while little improvements like these don't individually leave my jaw hanging, i have definitely found that it's when i incorporate as many of them as i can on the same instrument that the difference becomes immediately obvious.

[@alanst.4417]

@@liquidstar9 that makes sense with adding up small improvements in guitar making or upgrading. In the case with stainless or brass screws, I'll have to find where to buy them yet... Cheers!

[@liquidstar9]

@@alanst.4417 i'd suggest mcmaster-carr :D

[@alanst.4417]

@@liquidstar9 thanks for your suggestion but I bet we don't have them here in Central Europe...

[@MrKentaroMotoPI]

Flip-flop material is essential for surf guitar 🤘

[@MajRatbag]

Great explanation Dylan. I recently built a hardtail strat style guitar for my daughter and put noiseless P90s in it, soap bar ones with the mounting screws through the pickup. I made the body routs fit the pickup covers perfectly and put firm foam in the bottom that the pickups sit on. some adjustment for pickup height when you compress the foam but they cant rattle or vibrate. The tones are so clean and articulate, its well worth doing.

[@ggregorsch]

Straight to the point, thanks!

[@jafo5192]

I direct mounted a set of pickups with a part from FU Tone. I was skeptical but pleasantly surprised. It did change the pickup definition and frequency of the pickup.

[@xanderjones6239]

Semore duncan has the foam built in on some of their pickups. It DEFINITELY makes a difference! I never thought of cutting up flip-flops! Thanks for the video, my new pickups are noisy at times when I move around all the time!

[@ccjmusic]

Great tip about the flip-flops. I will be changing pickups on a body mounted guitar soon and would never have thought about that.

[@jeffreytelmo2135]

Best explanation so far thanks!!

[@kinkorev]

Awesome video man! Thanks for the great info

[@nurk_barry]

Exactly what I needed to know, I was debating wether to mount my single humbucker with the ring or not based purely on aesthetics, in which case I feel the direct mount looks better, cleaner and sharper. I’ve got a minimalist charvel-style strat from warmoth I’m putting together and I have yet to mount the SH-5 Seymour Duncan in there. Now I know I want to go direct mount with flip flop foam underneath. Thanks Dylan!

[@TheDeftonedigga]

Top job Dylan. Bryan may's pickups are actually set in epoxy in the body to eliminate rattle and microphonics so he can't even adjust the height anymore. The physics is right and p90's screwed in do sound great. Pad them out with foam and use silicon tubing instead of springs so the pickups are nigh on 'fixed'. Great video.

[@robbievalentine8239]

Great lesson Dylan!- another one!!

[@andyt6191]

Thanks Dylan! I was messing with a guitar years ago unplugged and could hear something buzzing! I thought where the hell? I already had sponge under the springs to dampen them! Parts of the trem nope! Was very subtle! Machine head nuts a couple were loose enough to turn with fingers snuck them up tighter, screws on rear of headstock for tuners they fine! The buzz still there! But i noticed it got worse on certain notes it was something moving in sympathetic relationship to note frequency I think an a? Open a was worse! I found oddly it seemed to amplify scratchplate off the pickups were all ringing or the springs were all allowing the pickups to vibrate in harmony to the a note! An 1/8" piece of foam wedged between pickup an spring stopped it! The flipflop idea seems a better idea!

[@jameshill2015]

A higher tension spring l believe would achieve the same effect. The screws being stainless or brass may improve the transmission of of the frequency to the pickup if they indeed interrupt the magnetic field. I have not seen stainless pickup rings but l believe they would be optimal for guitars with rings, they would be far more ridgid for a clearer, cleaner frequency interpretation by the pickup than the far less Ridgid plastic. To me everything beyond the nut and bridge effects tone only due to the hardness of wood between, effecting the sustain...having little to no direct effect on the actual tone produced.. that is mostly had through the pick up and speaker choice, wiring has little but will effect overall tone as do pots and capacitors but overall it's the pickup and how it's mounted is what is responsible for the tone. Just my theory.. great vid! Thanks

[@jacoponaspi9577]

i guess i doesn't get more clear than that...exellent work!!!

[@dougcook7507]

This is an absolute perfect video. This will get put in my memory banks for many uses in my building. I was looking for good information on this subject, when I seen you had done a video on it, I clicked here first. When it comes to electronics on guitars, you are my go to person. Although, we are awaiting the rematch of the century...RC v Sander !!

[@kylezakk]

For one of my guitar builds I 3d printed pickup rings and modeled them the the exact size of the pickup so they can't move when their mounted. I wonder if adding foam underneath will have any affect.

[@sergeantcrow]

Excellent tuition... I know I will learn here...

[@Jinnuksuk]

You are the Stephen Hawking of guitars. It's great how you explain subjects to their full extent where you leave us with no questions. I was thinking about how I could make a floating design in a guitar cavity without pick guards or pickup rings. Now I'm thinking I'll just hard mount my pickups. Thanks a lot, Dylan! I did think about the benefits of feedbacks but it's easy enough already on a hard mounted pickup and there IS such a thing as too much.

[@claudefox2882]

Great info. Thanks 🙏 ❤

[@jonahmoore1779]

My HSS Jackson has direct mount single coils and the springs are pinching the pickup wires and causing them to short out.

[@guitarjonmichael3886]

I put cunife WRHBs in my Tele. I just stayed with the 250k pots to see how they sound, before just going straight to 500k ones. I really like the way they sound with he 250k ones, and so does everybody else as they really rock. Is it common for WRHBs to go either way... 250 vs 500?

[@MrBallynally2]

Strat pickups are mounted on the pickguard. I always assumes that is part of the Strat sound together with the trem.

[@liquidstar9]

great info! i personally make custom wood blocks to go between the bottom of the pickup and the floor of the pickup cavity. first i adjust the height where i like it, then measure the height above the top of the body surface, and then calculate how big the block should be from that. it can be tricky at first but i got a feel for it pretty quick. a couple drops of superglue secure the block in the pickup cavity while allowing removal later if needed. i know it sounds like an excessive move, but it really seems to make an audible difference. i suspect it has to do with getting the pickup as hard coupled to the body, so the pickup gets more body vibrations telegraphed into the pickup. but it’s all basically the same thing you’ve outlined here. anyway, thanks again for the very useful info!!!

[@realtruenorth]

That's how I do it, except I use wood glue so it can be easily taken off if needed. But,, still yields no movement

[@Mherkava]

Excellent simple and clear presentation !!! And sorry for the question, but... what is 'flip-flop' please? Sounds like a slang word for maybe foam or the like. Please clarify that for me. Thanks

[@victorrene3852]

flip flop is a very special foam made from the hardest to reach places in the world, it gives your pick ups the best tone available to date..

[@notalkguitarampplug-insrev784]

Does direct mount pu screwed in enough wood...? I mean, just under is the springs/trem cavities no?

[@drewboy7319]

Thanks Dylan..

[@That52TeleGuy]

I like neoprene foam weatherstripping vs. those cheap old flip flops. LOL Good video as I never thought about using foam under ring mounts though I think techs use it a lot to get the pickup to sit correctly.

[@mitchconnerandsometimesjlotoo]

Hey Dylan. If the routing in your guitar is too deep/hollow would it be better to fill with a block of wood closer to the pickup and would that make any difference?

[@igdedzillaigdedzilla3324]

Best channel on YT

[@timesurfingalien]

With a mount or without both are still suspended on a screw with a spring, correct?

[@rachelivy9712]

I have an HSS guitar where the humbucker is mounted in with 2 screws on each side, it doesnt rock back and forth and you can adjust it parallel with the strings to keep with how bridge ajustments change the string angle, wish that was standard, espesially on gibson style guitars where the neck is angled backwards creating an uneven angle between the string and coils like my sg special. Models with mounting rings are better for matching the angle and being more stable, but it bugs me that cheaper ones could be improved easily with another couple screws/springs and holes in the pickguard but aren't

[@grayaj23]

Pardon the necropost, Dylan. I'm trying to find something that talks about 2018 Gibson HP mounts with screwholes in the back of the guitar. Does it provide a benefit that overcomes how ugly it is?

[@boseefusmacmurphy1156]

Maybe it's in my head, but I love my lp clone with direct mounted pickups, I recently direct mounted a tele neck pickup (a pickup I usually don't care for) and it's great. If you've ever broken a pickup ring or pickguard during a show it really ummm 'louses' things up. The evh models always sound better than I expect. This is a mandatory mod for me. I like to sound like me. I wish I could play as well as some other players.. but I rarely want to carbon copy a tone. Could you do a video on the claim that reverse wound pickups sound the same as the vintage counterpart? I'll readily admit I might be crazy for thinking they sound different but; I think a thicker distortion seems to really expose this claim as bull-bird.

[@blackwolf8044]

Also. I have a modded active. Emgs. Does that make any difference?

[@TheFrankHuda]

Excellent.

[@ozotel]

Why floating neck mounted pickups( on jazz guitars) are so different in tone with body mounted pickups if they are both hard mounted?

[@andrewlittlefield3425]

Very helpful

[@5urg3x]

Thanks for this...me personally, I prefer spring mounted with rings. I think it not only looks better but it's just easier to adjust on the fly. If you direct-mount you need to shim them if you want them raised...or use some kind of spring system anyway.

[@realtruenorth]

surgeyX with EMGs string height is negligible, they would be a good choice for direct mount.

[@Walkermsh]

great vid!!

[@DylanTalksTone]

Tha k you

[@damiandifrancesco1143]

Holy crap. I had a guitar with direct-mounted pickups that fed back like you wouldn't believe. I installed pickup rings, and it cleared right up. You made me realize that the issue was actually that the foam that Ibanez had put underneath the pickups had holes, and two springs, I guess because the foam was not very resilient. The vibrations must have been getting back into the pickups through those springs. That whole experience was why I went with a pickup ring on my custom guitar, but I probably could have left that out after all. Thanks for the info!

[@MrKentaroMotoPI]

My ancient humbuckers had foam blocks instead of springs. The foam got very stiff over the decades nearly preventing height adjustment. I replaced the old blocks with polyurethane foam of medium stiffness. The adjustment problem was solved plus the tone improved.

[@realtruenorth]

To me that not the same as direct mount like Van Halen did for tonal/sound improvement. The pickups should have no movement.

[@realtruenorth]

I think it would only make a difference on a well built solid guitar, on a cheap guitar I think it's a waste of time to worry about it. I changed my pickup mount to direct so there was zero movement when you pushed on the pickup and that guitar did have a little more that I could hear, like a slight bump in volume/output. But that guitar had a good quality fixed bridge and a good quality solid nut made of bone.

[@blackwolf8044]

Thank u brother for answering my question. !! I'm going to dollar store later lol. !!

[@timnoble4137]

Finally, someone who understands it's about string movement in a FIXED magnetic field. String movement good. Pickup movement BAD. Do NOT direct-mount your pickups and get them to vibrate with the body. Muddy sound is the outcome when you do that. I have tested it exhaustively. Nice one, Dylan.

[@coppulor6500]

so is that the problem I'm having? I have a 1992 Jackson with a floyd rose and I'm guessing very hot pups. Defilly intended to be a shredder in its day. I got it because it has a shorter scale and wanted to see the difference. Love the feel, floyd seems like a big pain in the ass but fine. pups are too hot for me and I suspect the source of the problem. if you have the guitar plugged in and even gently tap on the guitar, you get all kinds of bing bong bang sounds - almost as if its too resonant - like body feedback. like no other guitar I have. its very very annoying. any suggestions? thoughts? is this from unpotted pups? or direct mounted pups as you suggest?

[@realtruenorth]

Did you notice he said the pickguard mount can cause out of phase magnetic relation? Direct mount eliminates the out of phase.The pickups are mounted to a vibrating body. And pickguards allows pickups to move even more so,,, they cause exactly what your talking about,,, out of phase vibrations. Ask Van Halen. He was the first to direct mount. He is actually very technically smart, he helped design all his amps. The point of direct mount is to keep the difference under control instead of out of phase vibrations running away. I see more guitar manufacturers going this route. They are not wrong.

[@realtruenorth]

Also, if they are direct mounted the right way, I can see the tone being ruined easily like what you're talking about. I direct mounted mind differently than others and had good results.

[@mikecamps7226]

I agree to your presentation but only to a point. The wood is very important to the tone of the guitar otherwise every material would sound the same. The point is to gain this wood tone by the best means possible which is where hard mounting the pickup comes in. You do not want to dampen it by using a sponge or flip flop material. You have to determine the proper distance to the strings for the pickup adjustment and output. My preference is based on the principle of an acoustic guitar, and the relationship of string decay. Therefore you do not want a lot of magnetic drag on the string to dampen the string to reduce its natural vibration and decay. So you drop the pickups down till the signal starts to drop out and then raise up to where the signal begins to come up again......that's the small window of the zone. You want the pickup to be where its just coming back up with a strong signal after dropping out which will probably be within one full turn of the screw. You then measure accurately the distance to the string from the pickup. The mounting fixture of the pickup to the guitar, whether it be a ring or a pick guard like a strat system...….you bypass this system and screw the pickup tabs with screws into the body and use shims to match the measured height you need. I use washers as shims between the body wood and the pickup tabs. This allows the wood resonances to be transferred to the pickup along with the string vibration much the same as with an acoustic guitar to enhance the tone. This is a direct transfer rather than having to go through other materials. The same principle as the nut and the bridge material in sound transfer. So the washers and the screws should be the same material. If you run into issues with the washer thickness, you can flat file them, or you can seek actual shims as they are used in automotive and firearms situations as accurate spacers. The washers provide more surface area of contact to the wood body for transfer. But you have to be dead on with the signal output and balance as fixing the pickup to the body will not allow easy adjustment as with conventional mounting. The Ricky "frying pan" was aluminum.....and would be an interesting dissection and examination...…..

[@mikecamps7226]

You also have to keep in mind that there is a changing relationship of string height over the pickups.....due to the curve of the fretboard...the relief. So as you fret closer to the body, the string moves closer to the pickup slightly and this will give more output in the signal as if you adjusted the pickup closer to the strings. Some guys think the louder signal due to having the pickup close to the strings is beneficial......gain gain gain....but its really not due to the magnetic drag on the strings.....hitting the brakes on vibration. If you need more gain to hit the front end of an amp.....use a KLON for the boost or an onboard preamp & buffer.

[@nicolaspalenzona6259]

Excelent

[@darktempest53]

If a pickup is mounted to a body that's vibrating a lot, why would it vibrate less than something that's just suspended atop

[@realtruenorth]

It will vibrate out of phase, because is floating. But it still vibrates no matter what. There is no such thing as a pickup that doesnt vibrate when the whole guitar does. But you want everything to match up,,, not have it's own 'rythm' cause it's off the leash,,, so to speak.

[@pekkalaaksonen8384]

I sense a strong... erm, A or B string disturbance in the force... erm, or in the magnetic field. The force is strong with this one...

[@danielbarbieri8199]

According to my experience, you have hard mount and hard mount... The "harder" the mount the best. That's why I hard mount pickups on glued wood shim. I first set the optimal height with long screws and high density foam. Then take the mesure and make a hard wood shim that I glue to the guitar body. I prepare the top of the piece of wood so that the pickup lies flat (groove for wires for example). Then screw the pickup to it. You get an amazing difference in tone this way...

[@JuanLega]

I believe the only reason guitars come with pickup ring mounted pickups, is for the convenience of being able to raise and lower their height. But in my opinion the best way for them to be mounted is to be screwed directly into the guitar body with 0 movement (once the right pickup height is found"

[@realtruenorth]

Juan. Lega agreed

[@daveleblanc3558]

Great vid, but... hard-mounted pickups can wiggle too!

[@Lavabug]

Physicist here, can't think of any physical reason direct mounting will make a tone difference (as in changes in frequencies coming out of the pickup leads), but I will certainly believe that direct mounting reduces dissipation and can increase the sustain and "loudness", which might give the illusion of a tone difference. Also if the pickup is stationary with respect to the strings (ie rigidly anchored to the body) vs jostling around (in the case of a very loose pickup ring installation), the amplitude of the strings vibrating relative to the pickup will be more consistent and therefore so will the current induced in the coils (admittedly it is a very small difference), since the pickup is totally stationary with respect to the strings instead of also in motion. Using very tight springs and tight foam padding underneath the pickup and that might negate that effect entirely though.

[@Clairvoyant81]

I can think of one, since we're talking minutia anyway: I don't think it's correct to assume the body is stationary. If you strike a chord on a nice guitar, you can literally feel the body vibrate, which means it's definitely moving. So, in theory, a directly mounted pickup will move directly with the body and pickup its vibrations. This could mean anything from the pickup vibrating "contrary" to the string, amplifying the relative motion of the string with regards to the pickup and increasing the output, or synchronously to the string, diminishing the relative motion and decreasing the output. On top of that, this behaviour could easily change depending on the note you're playing and how the frequencies are transmitted through the body and all the other parts in the guitar... Therefore, one could argue that if you want the pickup to be more stationary than your body, introducing a spring system between the pickup and the body might be a good idea, because that will dampen the transfer of the body vibration to the pickup and should result in a more consistent pickup behaviour. Then again, it's very well possible that body vibration in relation to the string is completely negligible and mounting in pickup rings only adds the hassle of having to make sure your pickup doesn't move when you don't want it to. Another option is that my entire view of the string / body / pickup system is wrong...

[@Lavabug]

If the pickup is rigidly anchored to the body, it is stationary wrt to the body. So any movement of the body happens in tandem with the pickup. They are in the same inertial reference frame with no relative motion between each other: they effectively become one solid mass. Suspended from springs and a screw like in a ring, the two masses are not rigidly attached and are partially mechanically isolated. So there can be minor relative motion between the two. This means the amplitude of the strings moving in the magnetic field would differ between the two (perhaps only by sub-millimeter amounts), which would slightly alter the emf induced in the pickup coils and therefore the amplitude the output signal. But again, I cannot imagine this being something anyone can hear if done in a controlled environment with identical pickup height/position/etc. And I think stuffing stuff underneath the pickup such as to eliminate any possible wiggle would probably yield the same effect as direct mounting to wood

[@realtruenorth]

Lavabug tone isn't really about the frequency as in the frequency changing which is changing notes, it's about how a particular frequency or particular note sounds. Tone is ALL about they way you percieve that note. When directly mounting pickups, you get better energy transfer in relation between the string/pickup vibrating and it translate into a in audible difference. I have heard it myself and as a technician that has also studied physics, it really does make sense.

[@realtruenorth]

Lavabug direct mount with foam and springs is pointless unless for looks.

[@Lavabug]

This is not actually how it works, and does not make sense on physical grounds. Or I'm too dumb to figure out what you said despite having a MS in Physics, I dunno. Your perception of a sound is based on the superposition of multiple frequencies. When you pluck a note, you hear the fundamental note plus all the harmonics, and their respective loudnesses combined are what give you the perception of a tone (brighter means more power is in the higher harmonics). The material/construction/scale length/strings on the guitar can suppress certain harmonics in favor of others, and some pickups are more sensitive in some ranges of that spectrum than others. Pickups generate an electrical signal through the electromotive force, they do not pick up acoustic sounds unless they've gone microphonic. Pickups are not microphones, string up your electric with nylon strings and plug it through your amp to see what I mean. All I'm saying is that mechanical considerations on how they're mounted are irrelevant UNLESS some looseness in the mounting is affecting the amplitude that the pickups see relative to the strings, which I believe would not matter if the pickup was rigidly immobilized with/without rings.

[@deans.4705]

I realize this post is quite late but this simply isn't the whole story. This explains some of the pickup and string relationship but does not include many resonance factors. When you knock on the body of your guitar, you will also hear this through an amp. A direct mounted pickup will detect more of the resonance from the body vibration than a floating pickup as it is directly fastened to the body. It will sound different. Whether that is what is preferred or not is a separate topic. A floating pickup has been almost completely decoupled from the body with the exception of the floating screws and springs and will pick up less vibration from the body of the guitar than its direct mounted counterpart. The "flipflop" padding would also be a dampening factor and would absorb frequencies between the body and the pickup. The easiest way to see this is to try all topologies and record them all into a DAW. Use a spectrum analyzer, usually included with your DAW, and your ears to see and hear the difference and decide which is preferred.

[@DylanTalksTone]

Lol. Not really no.

[@deans.4705]

@@DylanTalksTone absolutely. Feel free to look at the differences on a spectrum analyzer. From 100 Hz to 250 Hz the direct mounted pickup will have more information. Perhaps you didn't have time to actually perform scientific tests having spent all of your time on your elaborate white board diagram.

[@DJCD92162095]

The answers: direct mount better: Direct mount: Legato, hard to change to another pickups, tones are stable! With rings: Staccato, easy to change to another pickups, but tones are unstable!

[@gddunlap54]

I've said before but I have to again you make everything more understandable. You don't do 20 mins of gibberish leading up to the subject. So once again thank you for making mature videos

[@imededdineassoul7244]

Did he said FLIP-FLOPS

[@crumb0000]

transducers are also microphones, by inherent design. When you tap one side of a humbucker, or yell into it, you're making the windings vibrate thus creating a microphonic signal coming out of the transducer. Yelling into a live pickup proves this. This is why active pickups with a very low winding count have a much lower/non-existent microphonic element to them. Now the idea that tilting a pickup inside its mounting ring thus disturbing the electronic field is just bad thinking, remember, you would have to tilt it at least 30? times up and down for it to emit a sound (hz cycles). A more entertaining argument is whether or not string vibration creates sound waves which are then reflected back into the pickup windings which are acting as microphones, which then produce a blended signal back to the amp, a small portion of the reflected signal being audio waves emanating from the wood with the majority of the signal just plain old metal strings vibrating - or...are components of the guitar creating vibrations which cancel out some of the vibrations of the strings ( 100 percent transducer signals, no blending). I'm inclined to believe it's a microphonic/blended signal going to the amp from the pickup.

[@DylanTalksTone]

Except that is not how a microphone works.

[@crumb0000]

@@DylanTalksTone You're not getting it. The windings of the pickup vibrate inside the magnetic field created by the pickup. The guitar pickup is thus both a transducer and a microphone. Its actually a very effective microphone for wood vibration. How do you think yelling into the pickups makes it to the amp...metal fillings in your teeth perhaps?

[@crumb0000]

This is why not all wood is created tonally equal. Wood that is not excited by pleasing frequencies simply doesn't vibrate/ resonate when those notes are played and your pickups produce pure metal string tone. I have a guitar here that swells/blooms each note , it really is remarkable. All passive pickups faithfully reproduce this bloom. Pickups are misunderstood, wood is misunderstood....lots of myths

[@crumb0000]

This is why unpotted / scatterwound pickups are so alive. Remember here that a dull /dissonant piece of wood with really good pickups sounds really unmusical.

[@DylanTalksTone]

If a pickup is properly built and there are no strings on the guitar, it doesn’t work. The only reason it happens is loose parts in the pickup. A microphone is a diaphragm that moves a coil around a magnet. They are not the same. I know people try to conflate the two, but the science is actually pretty simple. Maybe I’ll talk about this in an upcoming video.

[@maxbauer1633]

good video. but i disagree on 4:10 . i want the "best" most expressive sound, that might not be what the most fidel true reading of the strings would be. maybe the vibrating pickup causes interesting adding and cancelling in the phase and thus makes it sound more interesting. (the difference is slight i agree)

[@victorrene3852]

I prefer direct mount, it just looks better.. you can always adjust the poles on the pick ups..

[@realtruenorth]

Victor Rene I prefer it for looks and for the sound (IF it's done right)

[@Flame-Bright-Cheer]

🤘 great video perfectly explained an unbiased and very professional so much show I had to subscribe 🤘 and with the will of God and all that is good on his green earth we will eventually find that perfect tone and then we will never have to solder another capacitor tweak another Knob billions of dollars on guitar pickups we will have achieved Nirvana but probably better sounding than the band Nirvana because he used pretty crappy gear for the most part except I did just purchase the Sans amp GT3 that he used on some recordings and I also play jagstang that I've modded but...... I digress great Channel thanks for the video🖤🕉🕉🖤

[@smollande]

Dude looks a lot younger here.

[@DylanTalksTone]

It was 10 years ago so….

[@smollande]

@@DylanTalksTone just kidding. Great video! Say do you know where I could go to read about how different pitches are 'translated' into ac current so we actually hear the music being played?

[@avidyp4788]

Just dip the whole guitar in rubber and just get it over with. If anyone uses rubber under their pickups or anywhere on their guitar, then you need to re-think what you're doing in guitar to begin with.

[@avidyp4788]

@@LastDays7 Vibrating springs are doing exactly what the foam is doing. Absorbing vibration....... The springs are likely absorbing the bassier vibrations while the foam will absorb the brighter lighter tones. I don't have to do a test, its just physics. The type of paint, the glue, can have an effect. These things can absorb vibration. And I do study this a lot as I make guitars.

[@arthurpiccio7906]

The movement of the springs and pickup covers and baseplates themselves can be picked up by the pickups, and you can hear it over high gain. Having the foam there reduces it significantly. Not only do I make guitars, I test them.

[@Riverdeepnwide]

Or save a $buck on the flip-flops and "borrow" a piece of your wife's yoga mat. Bonus: (Bonii?) If you take it off the end she feels taller. If you take it off the side she feels slimmer. Double bonus: take it off both and you're the man!

[@ccjmusic]

Wouldn't that be take it off the side and she feels fatter? She will be closer to the edges!

[@Ibaneddie76]

It makes 0 difference in the sound of the guitar, I have many, many guitars with all kinds of different pickups mounted all the ways a pickup can be mounted. Basically what this guy is saying is I have a red pen and a white board so it's true. I love how people will accept anything as truth because someone gives a non scientific explanation on a white board. What you are saying makes 0 sense to me though I can see how persons with little experience with guitars or people who are to lazy to figure things out on there own would find some truth in this video. I'm not knocking you personally, I believe you believe what you are saying, I'm just giving my personal opinion based off of many years as a guitar player, collector, and builder. How you mount your pickups is mainly for aesthetics, some guitars look crappy with rings. In my opinion pickup rings or pick guard mounted pickups are a much better way to mount your pickups because you can adjust the hight easily witch is something you can't do with hard mounted pickups. The big picture is, It's the player that really matters. Find a guitar and amp that you like and suits your playing style. Don't worry so much about pickup mounting and crap like that in the grand scheme the differences are so minute they aren't worth arguing over . Just buy or even better build as many guitars as possible and play the crap out of them, after playing for a while you will find what works best for you. No body has the magic formula its in your head and hands.

[@DylanTalksTone]

Lol..... If you really listen ..... You will hear that I don't think it makes any difference either.... HOWEVER.... There are a couple of ways to minimize pickup movement noise.... Two different was to do the same thing.

[@jymebale5545]

Yes, physics wise there is no difference at all, some believe there is more bottom end when mounted to the guitar but the pup is mounted to the in side of the guitar and has to be raised to pick up the strings vibrating and that is all they pick up, but, if the guitar is turned up loud and you tap on the guitar you will hear that sound because the pup is in a small hole.

[@realtruenorth]

eddie julian yeah as an engineer who studied physics in can understand perfectly well What he is saying, it's uncontrolled phase differences/out if phase and while some guitars have a phase switch to intentionally cause the signals between PUs to be out of phase I personally think is sounds like shit unless you want a thin bright tone. What he is talking about is gonna be a small difference granted, but a lot of small differences add up to a larde difference. Van Halen was the first to truly direct mount pickups the right way and he can hear the difference. Just because you don't understand it doesn't make it not true. Also I have a keen ear, and when I direct mounted my pickups with hardwood spacers I definitely heard a difference but it depends on how you direct mount. The way Ibanez does direct mount you will not hear an improvement at all.

[@realtruenorth]

Jyme Bale of course it makes a difference physics wise, you you understand in/out of phase and signal distortion? It might be a small difference, but almost every improvement (nut, strings, PU magnet, body wood, cable, tubes) are small differences that collectively add up to a large difference