Upgrading pickups on cheap guitars?

VellaJ

I recently heard from a guy I respect a lot that the pickups on your guitar only account for about 40% of the quality of the sound produced. The rest relies on the quality of the wood.

As we know, Behringer guitars can hardly compete with a Fender in the sound area ??? It's like the pups have a built-in distortion... I have 3 pickups from an old Vester that are just lying around, so I was wondering whether it was worth replacing the Behringer pups with the Vester ones? Obviously it remains a beginners guitar...

Tonedef

I don't have an answer for you, except to say that you'll probably never know if it was worth it until you tried it! ?

flatfourfan

I wanted to do the same on my Ibanez Gio that I had, killer playing guitar, just crap electrics..........I'm miffed that I didn't do it.

DO IT!!!!! Get some decent 2nd hands gear........what you got to lose?

kp247

Try the Vester pups first and see if you like them, otherwise just get yourself Toneriders. You won't be sorry! Just follow the Tonerider threads here on GF and you'll see. ?

BMU

There was a good thread on this exact question a while ago. Yes, do it, you have nothing to lose. Can always take the pickups out again.

Pickups account for only part of the sound very true: unless they're REALLY BAD, then they can do a 100% effective job of destroying any tone you might've hoped for. ?

VellaJ

kp247 wrote Try the Vester pups first and see if you like them, otherwise just get yourself Toneriders. You won't be sorry!

The main reason I'm considering the change is that the Vester pups are lying around doing nothing in particular... :-[ When they were in the Vester guitar body they worked great, so I would imagine they would work fairly well in the Behringer too :?

kp247

VellaJ wrote
kp247 wrote Try the Vester pups first and see if you like them, otherwise just get yourself Toneriders. You won't be sorry!
The main reason I'm considering the change is that the Vester pups are lying around doing nothing in particular... :-[ When they were in the Vester guitar body they worked great, so I would imagine they would work fairly well in the Behringer too :?

+1

Try the Vesters first!

Isis

Just do it! If you have the spare pups lying around you have nothing to lose. Let us know how things panned out.

MikeM

I've put pickups twice the price of Seymour Duncans into a Epiphone Standard (as well as a series of duncans - best "mass produced" pickups out there) and you know what, I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread UNTIL I spent some time with a Gibson. Long story short, you can polish a turd until you're blue in the face, at the end of the day, it's still a turd. Not to say you can't make a great guitar out of it.

Gearhead

Mike subsequently sold said Epi to me since I wanted a LP and was happy with the Epi quality for the time being. I now know why Mike does not like polishing a turd - this particular Epi is not exactly vibrant.

To me it boils down to a couple of things:
- the resonant properties of the body/neck/join affecting tone, sustain and susceptibility to feedback;
- the 'feel' of the neck and the setup affecting playability;
- nut/frets/bridge affecting mainly sustain but also bend stiffness;
- the strings and pickups doing the rest.

IceCreamMan

u have the pups lying around , its going to cost you ..... 1 hour of yr time to try em out and i reckon will be the best 1 hour spent in search of tone ...

upgrading pups can and do make a great difference...even 40% is huge imho.

i have an ibanez sa160qm which is hardly a cheap guitar but a cheapish guitar and i put in toneriders ....was blown away ....it was a completely new guitar .....

Gearhead

I don't think it is easy to attach a percentage to it, since poor pups can take away a lot more than 40%. With top-of-the-range parts like pups/bridge/nut/tuners/electronics you can only take the Behringer to what the wood, the join and the finish can do.