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

Magnets
Copperwound
Was it that hard? What can go wrong 😆

Sounds similar. Save your money.

What i heard that , the expensive pick up its like more easy to play and more easy ring out...and more clearity sound...

Once again who can tell with distortion.? I can make an elcheapo radio shack guitar sound good with distortion. I want to hear clean tones.. 😢 pex

I guess where you can really tell apart is on the stage, stage volumen will blast the pickups with frequencies and not desired feedback that's where the premium ones will shine. I have had cheapos and a few of them have feedback unlike fender, EMG, Ibanez (Japan) ones which barely did I have problems with.

Playing technique and string gauge makes a huge difference as well. Once you get used to a certain pickup you can get more out of it by the way you play/attack it at different points on the neck. String gauge is huge too. Get thinner strings if your thicker strings sound muddy or too bassy.

Fender ones are a tiny bit more spanky... thats all they got for ten times the price?

Forget about the pickups what kind of crazy key was that you were playing in? I felt like I was having a stroke or I was drunk or something seriously what key was that😮

Not much difference at all

Invest in a bitchin amp.

Boutique pickup builders will defend their excessively expensive pickups to the hilt and I've had personal arguments with Chris Kinman on line over this, but I can only go on what I hear when I play and I didn't feel that my sound improved when I purchased and fitted his AVN set to my Strat, I'm back with the originals. It was all based around the Hank Marvin sound at the time and a lot of people invested in Kinmans, Going back to the roots was the best thing I ever did.

At the end of the day, Leo got it right first time around and the hits are testament to that, although his later work at G&L did produce the excellent MFD pickups that I think are actually better that his first ones.

Moral of the story: Just buy the reasonably priced guitar that plays well and stays in tune. 🤘🏾

What’s interesting is that all your recordings have white pickups and the cheap pickups you held up to show are solid black 🧐

cheap one 1k mile behind

i like guitar madness pickups i use their "1984" in my LP studio

My question tho is why are the fender ones that much more expensive for not much of a difference. Slightly clearer, slightly less buzz. What inflated the price, is there a specific way they were built or something?

Who taught you to smile while you talk? Are you from California or something

Don't sleep on cheap pickups unless you're aiming for studio recording.
I changed the pickups on my first guitar (an old beginner's Behringer strat). The original ones sounded really low and crappy. For 25 bucks I got a cheap ceramic pair of a humbucker and a humbucker sized p90. The sound was 10 times better and I didn't even made a decent soldering job on it.

To my ear, the Fender pickups sound just a tiny bit more trebly and clear than the GFS ones, although it's such a small difference you would only notice it with a side-by-side comparison like this.

Old video, still relevant. But surely, these days with even more expensiver pickups, they most surely make me player better.. right? (....right?)

interesting review

My wife bought me for Christmas a Harley Benton guitar for 88€. TBH it sounds better than my Charvel and my old Pro Strat and the cheap pickups sound great. The only down side is the feeling and comfort.

It sounded kinda muddy to me. Not bad, but not a sounds I’d like for most things.

That $5 is the ceramic pickup sound. I knew it well, and I sort of.. hate it

Other than the beginning I can't hear a difference after that..

Expensive guitar pickups sound better and the guitar plays better

This makes me think of the cheap Amazon P90s that I put in my $25 Gibson/Baldwin Educational Series Spirit. I really wonder what percentage of people could tell the difference between that guitar, and a real Les Paul Special with Gibson P90s.

A pickup is simply a wire wound into a coil around magnets.
The sound depends on the position (bridge or neck), the wire quality (resistance), the coil structure (single or humbucker), the number of windings and the magnets (ceramic or Alnico).
The manufacturer and the price are a question of marketing.

For a record, you'd want the high end pickups. But for my garage, the inexpensive ones are more than good enough.

Hi, Sorry all I can hear is that dreadfull 60hz hummmm even on low gain settings (clean) (pos 1 3 and 5) .We are in 2024, have we still have to live with that humm having Di Marzio´s Areas 58-67.61 for the same kind of money. They stood the test of time. Di Marzios Area dates from 2006 and are as close as a single coil as can be without that awfull hummmmmm. Just my two cents.

When you have to stop, rewind, relisten, clean your ears and relisten again just to find the fifth order differences between two Pickups it means that the 135 $ price difference is not justified.
Copper is copper, magnets are magnets (provided you're using the same material/geometry)... A small contribution comes from the manufacturing process, but cheap components do not sound cheap!

Ill take my GFS stuff over any over priced duncan or dimarzio any day. Ive owned both and the gfs stuff is just as good for a lot less money

Personally I can hear it sounds more crisp and idk gives the tone more voice it’s hard to explain

The reality is, pick ups should never be 150 bucks.

Really interesting how there's a predominant 340Hz tone with the Fender pickups, but the GFS pickups are more "frequency flat".
An interesting experiment would be to take the GFS pickups and either replace the bar magnet with AlNiCo5 bar of the same gauss value, swap for the same gauss value AlNiCo5 as the Fender pickups, or swap the ceramic magnet with a lower gauss ceramic magnet to change the output strength.

I personally preferred the GFS pickup sound as it sounded "balanced" more than the Fender pickups that had that predominant 340Hz tone that I want to EQ out.

Thanks again for a terrific video, Darrell!!!!!

I wish you would've played the same tune for both sets of pickups. playing a different song makes it look like you're hiding a major flaw in the comparison

The differences are there. The question is, "Do they matter?"

Hey Darrell -- thanks for all the useful and informative videos comparing pickups. I just thought of one you haven't done that might be a good watch -- the "What's up with stock pickups?" episode. We've seen how cheap aftermarket pickups compare with expensive ones, but what about the stock pickups that we're all replacing and throwing out? Where do those come from, how much do they cost the manufacturer to include, and how do they differ from the aftermarket pickup brands we know and love? I can't believe how much better my GFS pickups sound than a stock MIM Tele or my old 1990 Yamaha Pacifica, but why wouldn't an OEM have as good or better quality than today's cheapest aftermarket pickup brands?

I bought 3 quad rail/coil humbuckers on Amazon for $16 each to install in my custom Strat based build.. they measured at an average of 18.6 K ohm DC resistance each.. that's right very hot...they are wired in coil pairs as humbuckers with 5 wires. one braded ground wire with 4 other wires fir the start and finish of the coil pairs that make up the humbuckers in 2 pairs of coils. the small size of those ciols ar such that they produce a clear crisp/bright tone that sound like they are in fact single coils. so I would like to hear your opinion of them when and if you decide to ckeck them out on your channel sometime in the future as for the guitar itself well strap in tightly this is gonna be a wild ride bud ... Beginning with the stars and Planets paint scheme over a Black and dark blue background done with spray cans and airbrushed detailing as well as silver micro glitter sparsely scattered across the body and head stock and lightly sprayed with dark blue for effect. finished with a 2K clear semi gloss pairs of coils the small size of the coils produces a crisp/bright tome overall and a little brighter when coil split. so rally sounds like a regular Strat or at least so close that you might think that they are in fact single coils if you hadn't seen them. ok there are more tricks to tell about. Like the fact that I used all the pots are 500Kohm audio taper pots 4 are P/P and 2 regular style pots. 3 P/P vol. and the 4th P/P in the bridge tone pos. to activate the bridge and neck P/Ups together regardless of any other controls. that's 6 Pots in 3 pairs for the 3 Humbucker P/Ups with coil splitting and the ability to have all 3 P/Ups active at the same time depending on the control config. and a blue anodized aluminum Kill Button for even more fun.. Yup, it all works just right as i designed it to after all the custom wiring in this unique circuit design that I dreamed up for the ultimate Super Strat or as I call it the "Stellarcaster" started as a 'Starcaster'-'Strat' electric guitar By: Fender (said that right on the head stock from the factory). I will also add blue LED light 'active coil indicators' wired through the other unused side of the vol. P/P part of the switches that normally would remain unused.. hey use what you got for your purposes right??? I still have to drill the holes in the right places in the pick guard for that little trick though. More fun and even cooler looking ... Wanna Play???

Props for even keeping the strings. About the difference i've expected, if they're not built differently i'd just keep the stock ones on a strat. Higher gain from ceramic magnets is a bonus, with something like big muff it'll be deliciously crunchy.

I have a pair of $11.50 Chinese made Jazz bass pickups in my handcrafted bass. It sounds like an angry piano. What is more important is to use 500k pots instead of 250k pots. Also a .022uf Orange Drop cap rather than the usual stock .047uf cap. This simple wiring upgrade saves you lots of money and makes any cheap pickup sound amazing.

You can hear the difference if you know to list for it but they were close .

Excellent vid. 👍🏻

The expensive one had higher output imo, but that doesn't justify the freakin price 😂, u could literally tweak that in an amp modeller, and eq.

The old adage still remains. It's not the tool it's the user.

I"m sure there has to be at least some difference. However, with the headphones that I am using, I can't hear it.

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