Learning about pickups ...

Wizard

Continuing my questions in a non-DiMarzio zone.

I now understand the desire to have higher output pickups, as a means of putting a higher input signal to the amp than expected ... hence causing distortion.
Would it be possible to achieve the same effect with a pre-amp built into the guitar to boost the output?
Or external to the guitar, inbetween guitar and amp?

dee

Yes, it is possible, and not that difficult really.

There are gain boosts available that do exactly that, both built into the guitar itself, and as a pedal, between the guitar and amp.

Fender for example have a pre-amp mid boost kit in the Eric Clapton and Buddy Guy Stratocasters.

//Edit: After reading your comment again, I might have misunderstood. Are you merely looking for a higher output, or specifically a distorted sound?

Wizard

Ah.
Is THAT what the 'gain' button does ?
(knew what effect it had - but not why)

That answers a question that was destined for the future.

AlanRatcliffe

A lot of times people use booster pedals to kick the amp into overdrive and it's also common to use a distortion/overdrive pedal more as a booster, with the drive turned down and the volume turned up.

There are also the active pickup like EMGs, that uses a low power magnet and low impedance coils and has a preamp built right into the pickup itself.

Werner-Carstens

Hi guys, IMHO a good live sound is produced by using less gain and more volume. It therefore does not really bother me how much gain my pickups have, but rather how articulate they reproduce sound at high volume and how microphonic they are. The dirt I add with stompers. Do you guys agree?

Gearhead

@ Werner: Sounds a bit (not entirely) like you're contradicting yourself here. If I turn down the gain in my preamp and up the power on my poweramp I am actually getting less triode distortion and more pentode distortion - regardless of effects. Imho you can add dirt with stompboxes, but it's pricey to add Tone with them - better done with a nice amp. The whole thing about high output pickups is sorta beyond me - unless you like the tone of an input stage of an effects pedal or rack unit when overdriven (I don't).

Writing this down it occurs to me the 'ideal' output of your pickups depends very much on the rest of your setup. SRV went to hot pickups after the advent of high gain amps, but was not using them - getting a different tone than his contemporaries.

AlanRatcliffe

Makes sense to me. Power stage distortion is different from preamp distortion and cranking the amp gets you a lot more natural sounding compression from power stage and speakers, which gives you the feel of having more distortion but is actually a cleaner, more articulate sound. In fact, turned up loud enough, the inertia of the air ends up compressing the sound too (but somehow I don't think Werner is doing that in his church ?).

I think SRV's biggest thing was the sheer power that he played with and the baling wires he called strings. When fender took apart No1 to copy it for the SRV signature guitars, they found the pickups were stock standard late '50s models - well within spec (5.9K for the neck, 5.7K middle and bridge). SRV's heavy playing style just got a lot more power from the guitar than most players could. Fender went with the Texas Specials for the production model guitars to enable normal players to get more level from the guitar, but SRV himself never used them.

Bob-Dubery

Werner Carstens wrote Hi guys, IMHO a good live sound is produced by using less gain and more volume. It therefore does not really bother me how much gain my pickups have, but rather how articulate they reproduce sound at high volume and how microphonic they are. The dirt I add with stompers. Do you guys agree?

I think it depends on what you're trying to achieve and what constraints you are working under.

We know that not all overdrive pedals and fuzz boxes are the same. I'm not getting into "better" or "worse" here, but they all offer different variations on a theme and what suits one player will not suit another. Sound is a personal thing, and I might find that the way to get a sound that *I* like is to rely on a specific pickup rather than a stomp box, or only a stomp box. I might like the "hot" pickup just because it has more midrange - not necessarily for the higher output.

It's all trade offs and it's subjective to a degree.

Even "hot" is a relative term. There are degrees of "heat". You could go just a little bit hotter in terms of pickups to get a warmer tone rather than overdrive.

Horses for courses etc etc.