LUKE BFR and EMG P-ups.

[TimSz]

Hey guys and dolls.

I feel a little less than knowledgable about a few things, and figured this would be the best place to settle my quandries.

To my knowledge, EMG pickups are active. They need the 9V battery to work their magic. From what I have been led to believe over the years, the guitar itself plays very little into the sound of the guitar, because the pickups do all the work. Is this something I have been grossly misled about?

If not, then how would a mahogany tone block add to or take away from the sound of the LUKE guitar? I don't want to make this sound like a knock to the LUKE BFR, because it truly is the last thing on my mind... to knock EBMM. That'll NEVER happen from me. I just don't get it. It seems to me that if I have been correctly informed about the EMGs creating the sound, then how would a BFR LUKE vary from a regular LUKE, other than looking really bloody fantastic in comparison? ... Not that the regular LUKE doesn't look stellar... ya'll know what I mean.

Can someone shed some light on this? I dislike being unknowledgable about something, and I love knowing as much as humanly possible about everything EBMM. It also makes it that much easier to talk up the LUKE to potential buyers at the guitar store I work at when I have all the correct facts.

Thanks all.

 

[Mick]

My Air guitar with EMGs sounds killer

No forget it. The pickups active or passive are always only one piece of the puzzle.
there are so many other aspects. Wait till you have your Luke

 

[Antoine]

Play 2 guitars, made of different woods, for example one Alder body and one Mahogany body, and play them unpluged, you will hear a lot of differences in their tone due to the differents woods used. Then if you play them plugged, you will hear the same differences because pickups can only reproduce the things the guitars gives acoustically to them. It's true that every pickups has it's own sound but the acoustic sound of a guitar unplugged has a lot to do with the final tone of the instrument.
I always try electrics guitars unpluged first to make an idea of what his tone will be once plugged, the resonnance and the voicing of a tone is made by the wood first, then duplicated and colored by his pickups.
So chances are that the BFR Luke will sound similar to the normal Luke (same maple neck, rosewood fingerboard, alder body, same tremolo and same pickups) but with enough differences due to his mapple top and Mahogany Tone Block added.

 

[roburado]

Lucious has even posted here saying that the woods in the BFR proto make a big difference.

 

[THE_EB_KID]

Iwant A Bfr Luke!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[beej]

My guess is that the BFR Luke will have the most noticeable difference in tone. The EMGs have a pretty flat frequency response unlike most pickups, so you should be able to hear the difference in the woods clearly.

 

[Big Poppa]

Jimmy
You answered your own question. I love Rob at emg and all but we actually have something to do with the sound of the luke too...

 

[TimSz]

Hey hey hey!

I hope I didn't come off negatively in any way, which I probably did in some way. I have played a few different guitars with EMGs, from the crappiest of crap to a five thousand dollar guitar. IMO it was definitely apparent that the guitars had EMGs because the sound is very specific.

Don't get me wrong in that comment or in my questioning about the BFR. I am all for the notion of improving on such a wonderful sound. Every guitar with the EMGs has sounded brilliant to me; and knowing that the secret zest that these BFR models holds adds even more glory to the sound is something I cannot actually control my excitement over.

Again, I hope I didn't in any way sound belittling or demeaning with my question about the EMGs "doing all the work". That was poor phrasing on my behalf and in retrospect, could have been worded far better.

I do nothing but spread the love for the LUKE and every other EBMM. I have no problem sending customers at the guitar store I work to another store to play one. My intent in this thread was to get a little more background to further inform everyone I possibly can about these magical pieces of work.

 

[kneeoh]

From what I have been led to believe over the years, the guitar itself plays very little into the sound of the guitar, because the pickups do all the work. Is this something I have been grossly misled about?

I think you've been grossly misled. If the actual wood had nothing to do with the tone of the guitar, you could slap any high end pups on a piece of plywood and get a great tone. Of course we all know that isn't the case. IMO, the wood is the primary factor in determining the overall tone of the instrument.

 

[adamrogo]

He meant EMG's specifically, because they have active preamps, not all pickups in general, specifically passive pickups.

 

[kneeoh]

He meant EMG's specifically, because they have active preamps, not all pickups in general, specifically passive pickups.

Yeah, I understand that. I think the principle still applies to active pups. If you put EMG's in the aforementioned plywood guitar, the tone may improve slightly but what you still have is a plywood guitar with EMG's and slightly less crappy tone.

 

[glockaxis]

I used to have a Gibson SG years ago w/ active EMGs and that thing sounded like crap. My Luke w/ active EMG's sounds awesome.

 

[TimSz]

EMGs

Hey again. I did specifically mean EMGs. The active aspect of the pickup is what I was told contributed almost wholly to the sound of the guitar. i know that with passive pickups that the wood, construction, neck etc. make a huge difference in the sound. The active pickup thing just kind of threw me for a loop, and apparently everyone I've ever spoken to about them. It appears I have been misled about the active pickup thing.

I suppose that this thread turning into an opinion and knowledge gathering for EMG pickups in general is what I was hoping for. Thanks everyone for your opinions thus far. Hopefully I've not pissed off anyone in my phrasing and questioning. I am just trying to up my game with EBMM know-how.

 

[uvacom]

Active preamps don't really change the fundamental way a guitar works. The preamp can't magically take away the resonances which will both create complex modulations in the string vibrations and vibrate the pickups slightly, altering the magnetic field in which the strings interact.

I think the reason people say that EMGs become the sound of a guitar, maybe has more to do with the buffered aspect of the pickups. Because of how they work, the pickups are isolated from anything down the signal path - so the EMGs behave the same pretty much no matter what you plug them into. Preamps will isolate your guitar from the signal chain in which it is inserted, but they cannot isolate the pickups from the guitar in which they are placed. Period.

*edit* The other thing to consider is that EMGs tend to have a very wide frequency response. Although they are fairly neutral pickups, they do not behave like many other pickups in this regard so in that sense they will tend to lend their overall "sound" to a guitar perhaps to a greater degree than other pickups. Again, this in no way negates the interaction between pickups and body wood. If anything, it may highlight it more, as the EMGs might reveal subtleties in the wood (desirable or not) that would have been masked by traditional passive pickups.

Not only that, but in my opinion for some guitarists there's just this stigma surrounding active electronics, so you get a lot of misinformation based on nothing but people's biases. I'm not saying that people's tastes or opinions aren't valid, but people do make up crap based upon that sometimes. When it comes to discussions revolving around active electronics, tube technology, or basically anything regarding guitar technology, you have to put on your BS glasses. Don't believe everything you hear.

 

[TimSz]

Sweet Jiminy.

That was a beautiful answer. Wow. I am officially a little more intelligent after reading that. Thanks!

I have all the information I need, and will mislead people no further with the misrepresentation that was given to me about EMGs.

 

[roburado]

All I know is, I want a BFR Luke. Heck, I'd love a regular one.