New here, got my axefx2 a month ago (yea, it's my hobby to get into EOL products lol).
I know tone matching from software so its nothing new, but I used it usually in the "end" of the audio material, meaning like on a mix or a guitar sound after the amp+cab+fx.
So in the last couple of days I started looking into matching pickups... which is really matching *guitars* at a certain pickup position.
First of all, for those who said "all pickups sound the same", which is of course an exaggeration for the sake of argument, try to nail Malmsteen's tone (the good one lol) without an HS3. even with tone match its like kinda... in the spirit of...
Anyway, just wanted to say that matching a guitar tone (what you call pickup tone) is WAY harder than it seems.
There's no comparing a clean guitar sound to the sound of a whole chain, you could get a good EVH sound match from a couple of seconds clip but for a clean direct guitar sound? forget it, a 10 seconds clip with strumming couple of cords is not enough.
I tried to match a guitar with an SD Hot Rails to a guitar with a common alnico humbucker, both humbuckers just different size (and magnets!!! on that later).
Even with me, strumming my own two guitar for like 30 seconds the same way, same pick, same cords etc, I got all sorts of weird dips and peaks in the sound... fail.
I scratched my head what could be wrong? I mean I've put in enough time, did the whole neck, was very precise.
A day later I thought I'll try again, this time with an eq matching software. I did the first guitar spectrum, but when I started strumming the second guitar the sound was right there too different, way to much treble with plenty of harmonics... and there it hit me... I didn't count in the position of the pick, like where on the strings I'm strumming.
Apparently on the second guitar (PRS SC) I tend to play a bit closer to the bridge than on the first guitar (a strat like).
I went back and forth and I could never find a single position to strum the same sound on both guitars, a tiny move of the pick changes the sound and harmonics a lot.
So short of using a magnetic transmitter to pump white/pink noise into each guitar, I thought I'll fake it with strumming
Every guitar was played where every chord was strummed multiple times going from just above bridge position, gradually to the mid point between neck<> bridge pickups... it took like 2-3 minutes for each guitar.... drum roll... it worked!!!
The poop SD hotrails came to life
It had now zing and PAFie life and lost the mid range focus which on its own suddenly showed the mini bucker is not lacking in the low end.
So all is great, right?
Well, no.
What I got was a perfect example of the same "pickup", but with a Ceramic magnet instead of an AlNiCo.
And AlNiCo rules