Why do most import pickups sound the way they do?

[Lewguitar]

I know they're built on a budget and I wouldn't be surprised if really good pickups and electronics on an import guitar wouldn't bump the retail price out of the target price range.

But my question is why don't most import pickups sound as good as a USA made PRS or Duncan? Is the steel in the baseplate and screws and slugs different? The copper in the coils? The alnico or ceramic in the magnet? What's the deal?

Why do most Asian made pickups sound weak even when they have the same DCR and similar specs as US made PRS and Duncan pickups?

PRS is making some nice sounding import pickups for SE's in Indonesia now, BTW.

The pickups that come in the SE Silver Sky are professional sounding and those in the DGT SE and SE McCarty 594 sound good from what I can tell.

I didn't care for the Korean SE humbuckers I've owned but the new pickups from Indonesia seem to be better.

But why? What's different? That's my real question.

 

[Jimmy]

I'm curious as well. I actually love the 85/15s pickups in my S2 Custom 24. I'm sure the core 85/15 pickups sound better and have more clarity, but I don't feel a strong desire to upgrade.

 

[jak3af3r]

Maybe it's a higher capacitance wire that makes them have less high end.

 

[László]

There may be different properties in wire, though how that happens is a mystery to me.

The 53/10s, which were great pickups, were made with NOS 1950s wire, if I recall. The pickups sounded very different from others PRS was making.

I loved the set that came on one of my guitars. Of all the guitars that have come and gone, the one with those - SC58 Artist - is my biggest guitar selling regret.

I was told they ended production of those pickups when they ran out of the wire.

 

[The Bird]

I have wondered the same thing. Doesn’t seem to make sense. One would assume that a large manufacturer in China could EASILY produce EXACTLY what Seymour Duncan does for, like, 20 bucks. I mean, where’s the cost? There are no special ingredients really, and all the information required to manufacture such a simple item is rudimentary and widely available. I mean, Seth Lover didn’t know more about pickups than whoever engineers pickups for someone like Cort. He probably knew less, had worse skills and faultier equipment. After all, he didn’t have 8 decades of learned lessons about pickup design and manufacture behind him when he built his legendary models. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

I mean, they can clone much more complicated (but still actually really simple) pedals and effects for 5-10% of the price of boutique pedals and still sound exactly the same. Heck, I have built pedals that are easily as good as my Analogman etc pedals, and I know nothing about electronics and possess very limited skills and equipment.

 

[Torvald]

I certainly don't know the answer, but I know that guru pickup winders like Lollar and Duncan are very specific about exactly what materials they use, so those choices must make a difference. I'm sure that they understand capacitance and inductance as well.

 

[Jimi D]

I dunno, I've had some excellent sounding pickups of off-shore manufacture over the years (an Ibanez "flying fingers" set in a '70s Artist and the TCI pups in my Santana SC spring immediately to mind), and I've had some really mediocre US-made pickups too (Gibson 490T anyone?)... I suspect that most North Americans have limited experience with Asian-sourced pickups, largely hearing those large run, budget built pups destined for the low-end imports that we mostly see here. I bet you can find lots of great sounding pickups from all over the world when you get away from the $400 guitars and stretch to the $300/pickup price point...

 

[Ovibos]

Partially because ‘80s marketing convinced us that stock pickups were all trash.

 

[The Bird]

Partially because ‘80s marketing convinced us that stock pickups were all trash.

No doubt a lot of it is marketing hype, and actually many pickups DO sound MUCH closer to each other than you would expect. I once had an Epiphone ES-355 with Epiphone Probuckers (stock) in it. Swapped them for Seymour Duncan Antiquity Humbuckers. Sounded 99% the same in that guitar.

 

[Moondog Wily]

All conjecture on my part, but here are some thoughts.

As we all know, there are tolerance differences in bearings made for spacecrafts than there are for the ceiling fan in your house. Maybe the same is true with the composition of the wire (% of oxygen free, etc.), the consistency of that wires gauge, the accuracy with which it is wound, etc. in the less expensive pickups. Same with the wiring, the magnets, etc. A guy named Andy Eagle who is an advanced tech said recently on another forum, components are being manufactured that look exactly the same as higher end components, but they are not the same because of metal composition, hardness of said metals, fitting tolerances, etc. So actual materials used as well as the tolerances of those materials could both be a factor. Then you also have the issue of a company trying to stay in business and make money, and such matters could influence how close they want those overseas pickups to sound like their USA counterparts. If you build a guitar for $800 and it sounds, plays, looks exactly like your $4000 guitars, how long will those more expensive models be a viable option? And which do you make a higher profit margin on! Not saying PRS is guilty of this, but I would bet my bottom dollar plenty of companies use such logic to ensure their lower end products do not eliminate the existence of their higher end products. All of this probably worth less than $0.02, but those are my thoughts ;~))

 

[Veetwin]

None of that explains why "Blind testers" cannot really tell the difference a lot of the time, and sometimes get it wrong. As Danish Pete said, without the visual it can be impossible to tell.

 

[SinSir]

I think it's all the parts combined. Everything matters in tone. I know I put a set of Korean SE pickups in a an LP and they sounded better than in the se Cu24 by a good margin.

 

[RC Mike]

Metric vs Standard.

I’ve always assumed that the imports are built to a price-point that’s quite a bit lower. Get as close to the sound of the “real” ones at a particular dollar target.

Are current SEs and S2s no-longer using Korean-made G&B pickups? I hadn’t heard that “S” pickups were being built in Indonesia.

 

[RickP]

Human inconsistency in every part of the equation makes even answering “do cheap pickups sound worse than expensive ones?” impossible. In every thread of this type someone will say there’s no difference, some will prefer the cheaper ones, and some will have had the experience of ”upgrading” themselves right out of a good guitar by adding “better” parts.

I believe all the pieces, in concert, produce the sound. I believe quality materials and construction make a better instrument. Those beliefs affect every decision I make about guitars, whether those factors are at play or not. I know that I play more confidently when using a guitar I like and feel good about. So, whether or not it matters from an actual material standpoint, from a human being making subjectively enjoyable music interacting with an object constructed of such things, “quality” parts assembled by a “quality” maker serve to boost the quality of my output… hence I play PRS and prefer “name brand” parts. I truly cannot say whether or not , apart from my preconceived assumptions going in, I could be just as happy and musical on a certain old Silvertone from the Sears And Roebuck catalog.

Don’t misunderstand me to be saying “it’s all in your head.” It’s not. But we so cloud our perceptions with prejudices for and against things, compounded by the incredibly subjective measure of what sounds good or bad, that we often rely on the “herd opinion” instead of our own ears. Forums prove that daily. The blind test, as @Veetwin mentions above, is more valid than we like to admit because it challenges what we want to be sure of, but we ought to embrace such methods in our own selection.

For my own State Farm personal plan moment, I’ll say that all of my current favorite-to-play gear was not my “first choice” or most expensive purchases. It’s weird how actually using gear shakes out those truths.

 

[Veetwin]

Metric vs Standard.

I’ve always assumed that the imports are built to a price-point that’s quite a bit lower. Get as close to the sound of the “real” ones at a particular dollar target.

Are current SEs and S2s no-longer using Korean-made G&B pickups? I hadn’t heard that “S” pickups were being built in Indonesia.

Pretty sure they are now made in the Cort factory. The Cort facility would have to be one of the best guitar factories there is. PRS are made in their own dedicated factory on the premises or compound.

 

[vchizzle]

Don’t know. I could make an educated guess as many of you did above. Reality is that whatever cheap GFS came in my S2 SC satin, the neck pickup sounds great! If I wasn’t wanting P90 tones, I’d leave it in there. Bridge pickup didn’t float my boat, but 1 out of 2 ain’t bad.

 

[László]

Some folks may call this confirmation bias; I'm thinking of it in a little bit different way, but perhaps the result is similar:

There are expensive guitars that feel right and sound good to us. There are also cheaper guitars that feel right and sound good. Certainly, differences exist between them, as with any two builder's guitars, and we're not imagining those differences. However...we might give greater weight to our interpretation of the differences we hear in favor of the more or less expensive instrument, depending on how we want things to turn out.

That's my experience, anyway.

When I'm playing a cheaper guitar (usually an import) I'm sometimes listening to what's wrong with it. Playing an expensive guitar I'm often listening for what's right with it.

It's kinda like listening to a record; you can focus on the guitar part in a way that makes it more important to your brain than the other instrumental or vocal parts that are definitely there.

You're concentrating on only the one instrument you're listening for, and shutting out the others to a degree. In other words, your brain is giving greater weight to what you're concentrating on.

So it's not a matter of something akin to 'confirmation bias' which is largely imaginary.

Comparing the cheap guitar and the expensive one, you're actually hearing differences between the two instruments, and the differences aren't imaginary. However you're weighting them differently, assigning different importance to various things you're listening for.

So I may pick up an expensive instrument and find its sonic characteristics more satisfying, because I give those characteristics greater weight. And that's where a certain bias comes in.

Not exactly confirmation bias - I'll just call it 'preference bias'. The differences are real, but what's their importance?

Speaking only for myself here; I'm always willing to spend the extra bucks on the thing I think is more in line with my preferences. Other choices would be equally valid for someone else.

 

[Lewguitar]

I think if I were a guitar maker like PRS and I had an import line and a USA made line, I would not want the import line sounding just as good as the more expensive USA line.

I'd do what PRS has done:

1. Sell the import version for a third of what the USA version of that guitar sells for.

2. Make sure the USA made guitar has much better pickups.

IMO, that's the big difference between the SE Silver Sky and the USA made Silver Sky: the USA version has better pickups...also locking tuners.

The SE Silver Sky pickups are the best sounding import single coils I've owned, but the USA version still sounds better.

Which is as it should be.

 

[The Bird]

Some folks may call this confirmation bias; I'm thinking of it in a little bit different way, but perhaps the result is similar:

There are expensive guitars that feel right and sound good to us. There are also cheaper guitars that feel right and sound good. Certainly, differences exist between them, as with any two builder's guitars, and we're not imagining those differences. However...we might give greater weight to our interpretation of the differences we hear in favor of the more or less expensive instrument, depending on how we want things to turn out.

That's my experience, anyway.

When I'm playing a cheaper guitar (usually an import) I'm sometimes listening to what's wrong with it. Playing an expensive guitar I'm often listening for what's right with it.

It's kinda like listening to a record; you can focus on the guitar part in a way that makes it more important to your brain than the other instrumental or vocal parts that are definitely there.

You're concentrating on only the one instrument you're listening for, and shutting out the others to a degree. In other words, your brain is giving greater weight to what you're concentrating on.

So it's not a matter of something akin to 'confirmation bias' which is largely imaginary.

Comparing the cheap guitar and the expensive one, you're actually hearing differences between the two instruments, and the differences aren't imaginary. However you're weighting them differently, assigning different importance to various things you're listening for.

So I may pick up an expensive instrument and find its sonic characteristics more satisfying, because I give those characteristics greater weight. And that's where a certain bias comes in.

Not exactly confirmation bias - I'll just call it 'preference bias'. The differences are real, but what's their importance?

Speaking only for myself here; I'm always willing to spend the extra bucks on the thing I think is more in line with my preferences. Other choices would be equally valid for someone else.

Yeah, but if we are not talking about different guitars but only different pickups? As in, why does not some Asian corporation effectively drive companies like Seymour Duncan out of business by selling EXACTLY same sounding pickups for a fraction of the price?

Not that I need or want anyone to do that, but why hasn’t that happened? Why doesn’t someone like Mooer sell aftermarket pickups for $49 or something that would sound exactly like Duncans? They are able, certainly, to do it with pedals. Clones with imperceptible differences. After all, classic and traditional passive guitar pickups are certainly simple devices that are easy to build and fairly cheap to manufacture on a large scale.

I just think it is weird. Think about how little SM57 and SM58 mic clones cost that sound identical to the proper ones. One would just assume that in this day and age it would be easy to get pickups for very cheap that sound exactly like PAFs or whatever. Not that it is necessary or necessarily even desirable, but still, why do they not really exist?

 

[László]

Think about how little SM57 and SM58 mic clones cost that sound identical to the proper ones.

As a professional studio rat, I've heard many clones that were close, but no cigar. It's not like buying the real thing is all that expensive.

It's even worse with condenser mics, and even lots of the electronic gear. The copies are usually junk, so why bother when people have the option of buying lots of inexpensive original mics, like Rode, that are very good mics? No reason to buy garbage.

I only buy the originals, but it's my livelihood that's at stake.

One would just assume that in this day and age it would be easy to get pickups for very cheap that sound exactly like PAFs or whatever. Not that it is necessary or necessarily even desirable, but still, why do they not really exist?

Well, it might be easy to make them, I dunno.

But people who buy aftermarket pickups tend to want what they think are the best, and there are luxo brands that are kinda statusy. So who'd buy cheap imported clones? Is there much of a market?

Perhaps they've done the research and concluded it isn't worth the effort?