Pickup tone match

You guys realize that you're not only matching pickups here? Strings and everything that touches the strings play a huge factor and tone matching as it is EQ can not capture nonlinearities. Meaning... match EQing a humbucker to sound like a single coil will not make the humbucker guitar act in the same way dynamically. I'm not saying that these tweaks don't give you some cool variables. I'm sure you can get some interesting/fun results. How accurate is this? Well I'm sure many of us have a humbucker and single coil guitar to you can easily compare the "fake vs real thing". :)
 
You guys realize that you're not only matching pickups here? Strings and everything that touches the strings play a huge factor and tone matching as it is EQ can not capture nonlinearities. Meaning... match EQing a humbucker to sound like a single coil will not make the humbucker guitar act in the same way dynamically. I'm not saying that these tweaks don't give you some cool variables. I'm sure you can get some interesting/fun results. How accurate is this? Well I'm sure many of us have a humbucker and single coil guitar to you can easily compare the "fake vs real thing". :)

Definitely just EQ matching. Not accurate at all but it does let you sculpt sound in a certain direction which is cool. :)
 
TM works fine for me. I matched my Alvarez AD90SK's piezo output to an acoustic recording of a 1936 Martin D-45S. I use it wherever I play that guitar.

But do you have to use Smoothing or reduce Amount to get rid of out-of-phase nasal issues?
 
But do you have to use Smoothing or reduce Amount to get rid of out-of-phase nasal issues?
Nope. Just a TM, and I’m there. I had to do some digging, though, to find a good dry clip with no Reverb or other effects.
 
tonematch profiles are on my website. profiles are still growing. i would ask that guys that use 7 string with odd tuning please try to stick with a 4 chord wav file of stuff that can be played in standard tuning....that means play higher up on the neck if need be. i recommend playing the following chords E, G, D, A. I have found that it works well that way.

http://www.singtall.com/fractal-axe-fx-ii/
 
You guys realize that you're not only matching pickups here? Strings and everything that touches the strings play a huge factor and tone matching as it is EQ can not capture nonlinearities. Meaning... match EQing a humbucker to sound like a single coil will not make the humbucker guitar act in the same way dynamically. I'm not saying that these tweaks don't give you some cool variables. I'm sure you can get some interesting/fun results. How accurate is this? Well I'm sure many of us have a humbucker and single coil guitar to you can easily compare the "fake vs real thing". :)

It's an interesting idea. Let's say you swap out your LP Burstbuckers for another popular PUP like Dimarzio PAF Pro(s) in the same guitar - is there any much difference in the tone? How much does the PUP affect the tone once you have the same guitar and the signal level is matched, and assuming same strings and string height, same PUP height? I have always been happy with the PUPs my guitars came with so I don't know the answer.
 
It's an interesting idea. Let's say you swap out your LP Burstbuckers for another popular PUP like Dimarzio PAF Pro(s) in the same guitar - is there any much difference in the tone? How much does the PUP affect the tone once you have the same guitar and the signal level is matched, and assuming same strings and string height, same PUP height? I have always been happy with the PUPs my guitars came with so I don't know the answer.
I've also been pretty happy with the stock pickups that I have, most of my guitars have stock pickups. That being said I've tried a bunch of pickups by Bare Knuckle, DiMarzio and Seymour Duncan and honestly the "pickups completely change your guitar sound" is a myth to me personally. Obviously people will have different opinions on this but here's what Fluff had to say and the video comparison I made as well. I highly recommend taking a look at Fluff's video from 5:30 forward. :D



 
With my American Deluxe Stratocaster I've played with the original pickups, EMG SA, Dimarzio Area '51 '68 '67, and now the set of David Gilmour's Black Strat (Seymour Duncan SSL-5, Fender Fat 50). I can certify that they sound very different. So different that now I miss the EMG's but I don't want to get rid of the current pickups, so I am going to buy a Squier Strat just to install the EMG's. With the EMG's I could easily get the Gilmour Pulse era tones, but not the On an Island tones. Now, with the Black Strat pickups I can get the crispy On an Island tones but not the Pulse tones. Not even adding EQ.

With my RG550LTD I've used the original pickups, Dimarzio Fred, Dimarzio Air Norton, and now Dimarzio Gravity Storm. I can certify that they sound different (I keep DAW recordings with the raw tones). I would never go back to the original pickups.

And these are just some examples of the many different flavors that I've experienced with different pickups. Not to talk about P90's...

I've tried to imitate my own pickups with the Tone-Match, but so far I haven't succeeded. It doesn't capture the nuances.

Perhap's there is no difference when playing djent, but there is when playing cleanish or slightly overdriven.

It also depends on the CAB. There are many, many IR's that make all pickups sound the same. The add a distinctive harsh tone to the high frequencies, no matter what pickups you are using. That may be good for metal, but not for more delicate playing.
 
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Obviously I do realize that when I say that pickups don't matter, I don't own any cheap guitars. My cheapest guitar is a Fender Classic Player Strat MIM that has Suhr V60LP pickups in it after all. Still listen to this comparison and try not to use your eyes:



Seriously, there were even some different pickup types that sounded very similar.

I hope this doesn't make anyone feel bad but in my experience, usually the people who blame guitar pickups for their "lack of tone" have some bigger issues that they haven't addressed like, never changing strings, simply having bad picking technique or... the most common one.. they're not using my IR's. :D
 
I've also been pretty happy with the stock pickups that I have, most of my guitars have stock pickups. That being said I've tried a bunch of pickups by Bare Knuckle, DiMarzio and Seymour Duncan and honestly the "pickups completely change your guitar sound" is a myth to me personally. Obviously people will have different opinions on this but here's what Fluff had to say and the video comparison I made as well. I highly recommend taking a look at Fluff's video from 5:30 forward. :D




I was going to avoid reentering this discussion so as not to further feed the buzzing. But you asked for comments in your video, so into the foray just once more.

As you recommended, I watched the first video from 5:30 forward. The presenter resorted to several logical fallacies while making the case that, because pickups use 70-year-old technology with magnets and coils of wire, there is no meaningful difference between them.

I hope this doesn’t make you feel bad, but I can think of something else that uses 90-year-old technology with magnets and coils of wire: loudspeakers. By that argument, speakers don’t make a difference either. You have your favorite speakers and your favorite cabs, and with good reason. They don’t all sound the same.

Something else that uses 70-year-old technology and construction techniques: Tube amplifiers. Every tube circuit was designed more than 70 years ago. Maybe amps don’t make a difference either. :eek:

My brother, you have a refined ear — more refined than mine — for the nuanced differences between speakers. Every guitar that comes through the shop gets played through the same Marshall JTM45 before it gets returned to the customer. Over the years, I’ve had the chance to hear thousands of guitars through the same amp at the same settings in the same position of the same room. Yes, many sound similar. But many don’t, and the differences can be big. Some of them sound very sweet. Some of them sound nasty and unpleasant. And most of them sound somewhere between those extremes. Try fixing a misplaced treble peak with EQ. Now try doing that without introducing other, unwanted changes to the pickup’s voice. In most cases, it can’t be done.


You followed that video with a video of your own, in which you said “Here are two pickups that sound similar. As you can tell, they sound similar. Therefore, pickups don’t make a difference.” o_O

If you can’t get a good sound from an amp model with minimal tweaking, you’re using the wrong IR. If you can’t get the sound you want from a good IR, you’re using the wrong pickup.
 
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Pickups are wide Q pre-EQ while IR's are thousands of sharp Q post EQ notches. IR's are about a million times more powerful.
 
True.


Depends on how you define “powerful.” If “power” means the ability to drive just the right mids into distortion before anything else, then IRs can’t touch that.
I think we're agreeing. :) I feel like something like driving the mids a certain way can be tweaked with amp settings or a boost pedal or a simple pre-EQ while if you have an IR that's got problems, it's really hard to fix it and still sound good. It's all opinions in the end.
 
You're right: if you have an IR that's got problems, it's hard to fix it with EQ. That's also true with a pickup that has problems. It's hard to remove an annoying treble peak and replace it with a more pleasant one without revoicing the pickup in other ways.
 
I think that being able to change pickup tone using tonematch has saved me a lot of money. lol. I hear differences in pickups especially when played through a clean amp. I hope that more people contribute to the guitar pickup vault.

one request: please play something in standard tuning like E, G, D, and A chords. if you play some weird low tuned Djent techno shred stuff and the rest of us can't play it then your tone file is pretty useless to anyone else. I've only had that happen once.

I'll be adding more pickup files to the vault soon.
 
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 :)
 
the process is not perfect, but it does give some options without spending money. even if you don't get the perfect pickup translation you could still end up with something useful. I use tonematch for guitar all of the time and even have some of the tonematches saved as a cabinet that i place before the amp block. worth a shot.

as he said, the way you hold your pick and everything you do affects the tone and the tonematch. i try to notice whether the sound file i'm about to use sounds like the guy played with a hard pick or soft one because it makes that much of a difference. but you can use that to your advantage. use a hard pick and play near the bridge if you want a warmer tonematch. soft pick near the neck and you get a brighter tonematch. tonematch compares your tone to the next guy's and tries to fill in the blanks. experiment a little and you will learn to save a few tonematches that really sound great.
 
I agree its a great process and could be considered great fun to pretty much very useful for live if done properly.
I just wanted to emphasis two aspects from my expereince:
1. To get a good match - dependent on how sensitive your ears are - strum each chord on several places between bridge and middle pickup.
2. You can't match the non liner behavior of magnet type.
 
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