We here at The Hard Times love guitar players! Sure, we might rag on them from time to time because they never practice, they’re always late, and they have egos the size of the full stacks they use at basement shows, but we still love ’em. We will hand it to them though, they do put a lot of effort into making sure their gear is the absolute best. So we decided to give all you guitarists out there some of that juicy, guitar clickbait we know you’ll love and went out and bought five pickups to rank. However, they all sounded identical and now we’re wishing we had tried them out at the store first.
Gibson 498T Humbucker
This is the stock bridge pickup that came in our sick Les Paul, which our parents gifted us for successfully appealing a DUI charge (this time is actually was entrapment). It sounds fine but this is just the base model. We’re sure all the other pickups are gonna blow this away. Time to bust out the soldering iron and see!
Gibson Classic ‘57 Humbucker
Hmm. Is it possible we accidentally installed the same pickup again? Nope. This is definitely the new one. We’re not noticing a dramatic difference in sound. Ooh, we hear something! We think maybe, no, definitely, there’s a little more high-end clarity, possibly. Wait, no. We bumped the treble knob on our amp. Well, this was two Gibson’s back to back. We’re sure a different brand will be vastly different.
1972 Fender Telecaster Deluxe Wide-Range Humbuckers
What the fuck? It’s the same! It must be this piece of shit guitar. Parents are the worst.
Middle-Earth Mithril Overwound Humbucker
Okay, now this is ridiculous. This boutique manufacturer claims to have replicated Tolkien’s fictional metal and they make pickups from it, but it still sounds like a NORMAL FUCKING GUITAR. This one took us two hours to install too because it’s shaped like an fucking axe and we had to route the new guitar we bought midway through writing this article. And for what? For us to play the “Smoke on the Water” riff and still sound like an amateur? Hard pass.
Gibson 1959 PAF Humbucker
FUCK YOU, GIBSON. ALL THIS SHIT SOUNDS THE SAME. Fuck all you dipshit guitarists. Want to sound better? Just fucking practice.
Does anyone want to buy five broken, expensive pickups?