Guitar Gear

Earlier today, I was watching a video demonstration of the Seymour Duncan Mag Mic acoustic guitar pickup. It was a great demo and really showed off how the pickup performs and sounds with a variety of musical styles.

Several people made some negative comments on how they wanted to hear the mic or the humbucker isolated, or others just posted rude comments on the guy’s playing (which is actually quite good). Others commented on how they got lost in the great music and forgot that it was a demo for the pickup. I too got lost in the great music the demonstrator was making and to me at least, that was the whole point of the demo: To show off how the pickup helps you make music.

I get it. Getting an idea of how the independent components function has its uses. But for this video, I think it was more important to show what kind of sound you could get within the context of making music.

But here’s the downside of isolating the components or hearing the raw sound: Your mileage may vary. Think about it. How many times have you purchased gear based on a video or audio demo and it sounds completely different from what you heard online?

Especially with pickups, you’ll never know how it truly sounds until you’ve installed it. And make no mistake: Once you get a pickup – or any gear for that matter – you’re going to have to balance out the EQ to make it fit in your rig.

One guy commented that the video was completely useless. I totally disagree. For me, I wanted to hear certain things; actually one thing in particular: Does the pickup make a “quack.” I certainly couldn’t detect it. And that alone made the video totally useful for me because no matter what style the demonstrator played, there was no quack at all. The thing about acoustic pickups is that you have look for that because – and I don’t care what anyone says about this – pickup quack cannot be EQ’d out.

So the next time you evaluate gear, keep in mind that your mileage will vary. Your gear is most likely completely different from the person demonstrating. So look for other things like dynamics and voicing and attack. Those are things that will translate over to your rig. Also, you have to take a bit of a leap of faith with a lot of gear with respect to voicing. You should ask, “The dynamics are wonderful on this, but it’s voiced a little high, so can I EQ it?” You’ll never know until you get the gear…

Rock on!