CHEAP vs EXPENSIVE Guitar Pickups! - Can You Hear The Difference?

In this week's video we compare a set of $15 pickups vs a set of $150 pickups!
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[allkinds]

Always making good, useful & genuinely interesting comparisom vids. Keep it up man!!

[baumfr]

Too funny. My son and I watched the video together. He's a HS senior and I'm an old man. We listened, paused, discussed and both agreed that the neck pickup was the less expensive pickup. Thought it was pretty simple. Then we listened the the bridge pickup and paused the video. He said it was the more expensive Fender pickup. I said no way, it didn't have the bite/energy (I like your term - clarity) that a strat bridge pickup should have. When you said it was the expensive Fender pickup, my jaw hit the floor. My son got up and walked out of the room, giving me that "what do you know, old man" look. I had to call him back in to let him hear the real answer.

[gerdpfeil]

NIce demonstration of the fact that it's always the last 10% of sound costing 90% of the money.

[DarrellBraunGuitar]

**Be sure to watch the riff comparison after the solos to hear some clean tones**

Let me know if you'd be happy with these super affordable pickups or if you would prefer to spend the money on a more expensive set :)

[rioriggs]

Every time I watch this video... the little voice inside me goes "stop shopping for pickups and practice!"

[leonardoattilio]

actually it's absurd that we still pay some hundreds of dollars for a 70yo technology. it's more or less as if you were gonna pay 600$ for a nokia 3310, just because there is a strong brand logo. it's a magnet with some cables around, c'mon! by the way, great video, as always!

[brotendo]

This is the beauty of the internet today. 25 years ago, looking through catalogs and listening to guitar salesmen, you'd be inundated with so much marketing garbage. Tonewoods, "vintage voiced" pickups, resonance and sustain (which.... lol--if the body is resonating a lot it means it's absorbing a lot of the vibration, which means less sustain) etc. almost mean absolutely nothing, and even if there were any discernible difference, you'd have to be playing alone in a room and listening extremely carefully to really notice anything. But A/B tests of pickups, woods, expensive and cheap pedals, etc. just proves that much of what goes on in the industry is pure BS marketing, or differences that are so negligible that there are massively diminished returns after surpassing certain price points for specific items (pickups, pedals, amps, etc.).

[billducas]

I spent years replacing pickups on MIM Strat and a made in Indonesia Squire Strat. After a lot of money being spent on Seymour Duncan and Dimarzio, I went back to the stock pickups and realize they were the best sounding pickups of all. A Friend of mine did the same thing with his. Live and learn. The grass is not always greener on the other side. Its just a different shade of green.

[LarryMar]

The real question is: During a Live setting would you be able to tell if the guitarist was playing on $5 pickups or $150 pickups? I wouldn't.

[derekguitarmax]

I’m a custom guitar builder. I use $40 Wilkinson ceramics as standard equipment in all my builds. I’ve yet to have someone complain about the sound. It’s all a scam.

[Thirsty_Fox]

Closer than you'd expect given one costs as much as a sandwich while the other as much as a new entire entry guitar (or many sandwiches!).

[paulfrombrooklyn]

I have put many of those Guitarfetish $15 Strat pickup sets in my project Strats. It started when I was bought an MIM Strat body(unloaded) and I wanted to try to keep my costs down. I saw the $15 GF pickups and I thought, as you said, Darrell, for $15, if I don't like them, I can get different pickups and replace them. Well... I installed them and when I tested them out, I was blown away that a $15 set of Strat pickups can sound so good. I started buying two sets at a time just to have ready for another project. It became really hard to justify paying $150 for a set of pickups when I can use these $15 pickups. I found it hard to justify $70 and $80 sets, too.

Yes, if you are a professional musician with an amazing ear and can hear really subtle differences, then I can see paying whatever it takes to get the sound you are looking for,
but if you do not have that rare ability, and most of us don't, these $15 pickups are excellent.

Now, just to clarify, as I see in the comments many people making this mistake. These are NOT GFS pickups. These are clearance section pickups on the Guitarfetish web site. They don't come with screws or height adjustment springs. They are not packaged in any way. They arrive wrapped in thin foam-like paper. But they are excellent pickups.

BTW, Guitarfetish also has a set of Tele pickups in the clearance section that are just as good. They are $20 but worth every penny.

[Breaker]

It's long overdue, and I know this is an old video, but I really owe you and this video and need to give you my thanks. I bought an old, massively screwed up squier bullet from a work buddy for $20, just to mess with and kinda customize and rebuild. Took me four hours late into the night, using almost every tool I own (filing and sanding the frets and neck edges, opening out the headstock holes for the tuners, which I replaced, soldering in a new loaded pickguard, resoldering the input jack, e.t.c.), about $60 or so in parts (the loaded pickguard and tuners), and a lot of sweat, but it's now a sweet strat (which I affectionately call my ratocaster) and is easily my favorite guitar in my collection, and is pretty much always my go-to now. I went straight to guitar fetish for my loaded pickguard based on this video. So once again, my lovely ratocaster and I give you our thanks.

[cuty]

Yeah, the extras cost for expensive pickups gave me ability to hear the fret buzz :)

[rayross]

According to my ears the difference between the $15 ones and the $150 ones is $135.
Thanks Darrell, I own a Squier Strat and the neck is the best on any guitar I have played & it sounds great, all stock.

[EvanHansen]

Fantastic video. Thank you for making as close to an empirical comparison as possible. In a live gig setting, even the most exquisitely refined ear could not possibly discern a difference. Even in a careful, delicate studio recording, it would impossible to hear any difference if the guitar were mixed in with drums, vocals, or any other instruments. The only remote possibility of hearing a difference is in a side-by-side solo comparison, which is what you gave us. Again, thank you for approaching the subject with wisdom, sanity, good ears, and excellent chops!

[ilmeni]

Hi Darrell, could you please do a cheap guitar with expensive pickups vs expensive guitar with cheap pickups comparison? I think that would be super interesting!

[agateenchantmentrockwizard]

Excellent demonstration!
For me you've busted the myth that I've bought into for years. Although the Fender pickups did have a bit more clarity and definition the ceramics sounded great as well. I recently bought and installed a set of genuine Fender Tex-Mex pickups (made in Taiwan...lol) for my Monoprice strat. I Also added a new Genuine Fender 5 way switch and 250k cts pots. After it's all said and done I like them but they are so bright that I literally have to eq off some of the crisp brightness to use on most songs.
Thanks Darrell 😊 this really helped me!

[matrodmedia]

Seeing as to how simple of a design a single coil guitar pickup is, I see this as more a comparison between ceramic pickups and alnico. I personally prefer alnico, it's easier to dull the tone down than to try to add chime/clarity to the slightly duller ceramic pups. And this will be true throughout any price range. And as I mentioned earlier, a single coil pickup is a simple design, so as long as you do your homework and are able to figure out as many details about a particular pickup you're looking at (number of winds, alnico or ceramic, and what the output reads on a multimeter) you are pretty safe just finding the best deal. Obviously there are some factors which are less noticable to the ear but are more just the sentimentality of it, like handwound pickups from a particular maker (i.e. Abigal or something), in which case, yeah, you're going to have to pay a premium for that, and if that's what you're into then in my eyes you got just as good of a deal as anyone else getting any other pickup at any other price range. It's your money, your preference, and at the end of the day YOUR guitar tone.

[geemac]

The Fenders did sound a little better but not enough to pay for imo. BTW, most impressive to me is that you can remember--and play--the same riffs twice in a row. I forget a good riff as soon as I play it.