Okay.. Slash plays (for example) Gibson Les Paul guitars, and Gibson Guitars have Gibson Les Paul Pickups in them. ...and for many years Slash is Happy..
..Seymour Duncan says “Hey, Slash! Let us make a pickup set for you!! ...we will pay you a royalty on each set sold (or whatever).. and Slash says “Okay!” (‘cause he’s not daft at all), and designs a set of pickups with Seymour Duncan that make him happy.
COINCIDENTALLY .. :0) ... he designs a set of pickups which sound like his tried and true Gibby Pickups.
So.. basically we are comparing apples with apples. No-Not just “apples with apples” but comparing Granny Smith Apples with Granny Smith Apples.
My thinking is this.. and just for example. I have a Ibanez Saber Prestige model (insert your choice of letters and numbers here), and when I got it, I liked the sound of it with stock pickups. I did! ...But, at the time I had installed a Crunch Lab in another guitar and REALLY liked that – took an overly-thin and bright sounding guitar, gave it more growl but with a more mellow EQ. So, just for giggles, I installed a Crunch Lab in that Saber... and it sounded like ass. So ripped that Crunch Lab out of that Saber and re-installed the stock pickup. And now it sounds just lovely!
There is a HUGE difference between sound being generated by pickups. So comparing two near-identical sounding pickups, in the same guitar body, isn’t really a fair comparison to make any type of judgment regarding the issue.
Now I don’t want to start a cat-fight here, again – just my theories based on my experiences - but Wood tonality affects string resonance, how that interacts with a pickup is almost unique to the guitar because no-two pieces of wood are the same - the strings resonate differently for it, which explains why no-two identical guitars will sound exactly alike – because no two-pieces of wood are identical, and it explains why that slim mahogany body Prestige Saber made that Crunch-Lab sound like ass, compared to that same pickup being installed in a brighter sounding, denser, and more hefty all Maple guitar body.
Yes 'The difference can be “measurably minute”' with an oscilloscope, but we AMPLIFY those differences to hear them. It’s those Amplified minute differences which is all it can take to make drastically different sounds from pickup/wood combinations.
Consider this.. You have yourself a beautiful Gibson Les Paul guitar. ....when you got it, you opened the case, the sun shone down upon you, the angels sang in chorus.. touched by the God of your choosing, you cried. One day! ..you pick that guitar up! ..and ...you drop it.
The neck breaks.
After you are done crying – hysterically (and understandably so), you get the guitar repaired.
...Dollars to donuts that guitar will sound better for it..
...just from repairing the neck.
...It’s how woods and wood densities – which are unique from bridge to nut, robs resonance from the strings (to one degree or another) ..The repair creates a harder bridge between sections of woods - it transmits resonance at a different rate. In mahogany you can assume that a repaired neck will EQ brighter sounding to a degree and provide very-slightly better sustain. In an all mahogany darker-sounding body/neck configuration, that isn't going to hurt one bit.
But in measurable terms - at the source - the differences are minute. But for that minute measurable difference at the guitar, the amplified and interpreted overall output generally equals a better sounding guitar.
Somebody said the amount of money you spend on a pickup doesn't guarantee a better sounding instrument. Also absolutely true in my experience. They can sound better or worse. Depending on the body you sling them into, and the sounds you want to get out of them.
I look at pickups like microphones, and guitars - the bodies and neck configurations they are installed into, as uniquely decorated rooms.
Mahogany – more plush furnishing, Maple less furnishing, one provides a darker sound, the other, brighter (for example – and “generally speaking” this tends to lean true).
Now.. Place that mic (pickup) in the middle of any of those rooms, blast any ABBA song of your choosing and record it from that mic. The recorded sound will be different – every time – due to the uniqueness of the room (wood).
In one room you may need a brighter sounding microphone to record a great ambient rendition of Gimmie-Gimmie-Gimme” ..wheras in another room you may need a darker mic to record the same quality sound.
So.. there’s that.
Using IR’s to EQ a guitar sound – in my opinion - is not the same premise as analyzing pickup/wood combinations. Because it’s like comparing Apples to 1964 Buicks. They are different things on two entirely different positions of a signal chain..
Input - Tiny differences providing more or less output to nuance transferred to, and then carried by, an instrument cable, to a signal processor’s input, isn't the same as digitally analyzing an input, digitally re-interpreting and then outputting a modified signal.
Everything before a sound processor – especially if you are using non-active pickups, everything is tonally unique - everything in THAT equation adds or takes something from the show. There is nothing cookie-cutter about it. The woods, the glues, the pickups, their magnetic pulls, the routings, the guitar cable and its length, the pots and capacitors. The solder points, the junctions, any connections in that signal path. Those differences will all be summed then Amplified, and those aspects will remove from tone to one degree or another before even reaching that signal processing stage.
Signal processing and amplification is “the rest of it”. They are completely different aspects of completely different things.
Yes, okay...Depending on what you are playing – you can EQ all the sound to your choosing, and IRs will help you achieve that sound. But all that processing is doing is re-interpreting the original input.
But that input – before processing - you cannot change outside of the wood/pickup/lead/etc., connections...and/or the breaking of, and repairing of, your neck or the body of your guitar.
I have been building and rebuilding guitars since I was a kid. True, Certain types of music, you are not going to hear massive differences between instruments.. Playing through an amp - live - similar sounding guitar/pickups will sound pretty-much identical to an audience member. But recording seems to be where the rubber hits the road. For the life of me, I can’t the EQ the uniqueness of a “guitar” out of the equation one way or the other.
And I wouldn't really want to.
...The guitar’s unique sound just is what it is. You can swap the mics out in it (pickups) and that will help or hurt to one degree or another. But it Will make a difference when you process and then amplify the sound it puts out..
These are just my opinions and mental musings you understand.. pulled from my own personal experiences. Your opinions may be different, and I can respect that.
And .... Yeah .. ... to another degree all ^^ ..that, is overly pedantic BS that doesn’t apply to even half the music played these days – music where first stage tonality isn't predictably expected to shine through – overly processed signals – I can’t figure you would really tell too-much of a difference.
But clean, and them slightly furry sounds.. The difference between pickups and the bodies they are installed in – to me - and in my experience - seem HUGE.