Does growl (or bite) come from the pickups?

[ahbradot]

While reading all these replies to this thread I realized that there are some very intelligent participating TB'ers.

Now me, not so much as my limited knowledge is dumbed down simply or ignorantly to "StringRay's growl and 70's Fender Jazz's basses burp".

 

[ezstep]

I noticed a few decades ago that I could dig in harder with my fingers and that produced quite a different sound compared to softly plucking (or picking) the same string. Of course there are other factors, but I believe that most growls are produced by your picking hand.

Yes, I am old.

 

[skycruiser]

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. I’ll assert that you’re dispensing with significant factors and focusing on something very small. I’m a retired electrical engineer, conversant with the AC network theory and practice involved in the strings and pickups and controls in a guitar or bass. TBH I’d be surprised if the signal distortion generated within the pickup circuit would even be detectable once the instrument is plugged into an amp or a pedal or another device.

Thanks for that info. It sounds like my initial post (and in part, my thread title) got me started off on the wrong foot with some readers here. The original discussion topic was a question, not an assertion, and I did not mean to dispense with other causes of the production of what we think of as "growl". I have stated in a later post that I accept and understand that there are many factors that go into the distorted bass output signal.

TB is a great source of information with experts coming in from all directions and with a wide range of backgrounds. I honestly did not know if the pickup being driven to a non-linear response is something that is used and considered in pickup design. The consensus appear to be, no, it is not a key part and other factors dominate. For all I know the response could have been the opposite, something like this: "You dolt! Everyone knows that the overdriven and non-linear pickup response is the most crucial part of distortion and growl in the bass guitar! Why do you think every classified ad for pickups on TB says "this pickup has great growl"? Pickup designers have known this for decades and every nuanced feature in pickup design is related to optimizing this specific effect for each pickup application."

I'm also an electrical engineer, though my work does not get into many of the aspects of circuitry that are critical in the audio world. I see the playing of an instrument as a circuit, with a human sender on one end and a human receiver on the other end. There a many parts of this circuit and they all have their influences on various aspects of the process. In my personal experience, I'm not satisfied with some aspect of the received signal from my bass and I'm trying to understand where I should focus my resources to improve this. As an EE you understand the criticality of component parameters in a circuit. A datasheet for a part might have 50 parameter specifications, but most of those can be almost ignored in any given application. When selecting a part, you focus on those key parameters that really matter for that specific application. (Of course they all matter, but you often differentiate and select based on those key parameters). I'm trying to understand if there are pickup "parameters" and are critical to my application that I don't understand.

 

[chadds]

Beautiful discussion. We’ve been discussing observation of a phenomena and doing the phenomena. They exist in harmony. Harmony, play on words!

 

[dwizum]

It's refreshing to have someone ask a question and approach a subject like this in a systemic manner like you have. And I think you're arriving at the right conclusions. Pickup makers (at least the ones I compare notes and trade ideas with) don't specifically design for non-linear-overdrive as a component of their tone. They DO sometimes try to seek out a growly tone, but it's done through modifying the linear response curve, i.e. tweaking frequency response of the pickup under "normal" operation by changing things like wire gauge, number of turns, size and type of magnet, shape of the coil, and so on. This can be observed pretty easily in more flexible formats, like a soapbar humbucker. You can make a bridge position soapbar with tall narrow coils with fewer turns and the coils wired in parallel and it will be REALLY growly. Or you can make one with fatter coils with more turns with the coils wired in series and it'll be darker, more fat sounding, and less growly.

It's pretty different than the design process in some other elements in electronic instruments, i.e. a tube amp for a guitar or a boost or drive pedal, where you're often deliberately designing for at least some saturation or overdrive on purpose, and there's well understood and desirable characteristics in terms of how that overdrive behaves. Pickup makers don't generally talk about things like how you get odd vs even harmonics when a pickup is overdriven, because there's an inherent assumption that pickup overdrive is bad - to the extent that it's taken for granted that if your pickups are noticably overdriving AT ALL, you should change the design or mount them lower relative to the strings.

 

[markanini]

In theory you could design a pickup with a strong magnetic gauss with a sensing field that doesn't extend far from the poles, that would increase the modulation caused by the string osculation. At the same time that would stop you setting your pickups too close without unwanted wolf tones, and setting pickups relatively close to the strings is part of what brings out the harmonics responsible for growl.

I assume most pickup designs already hit a sweet spot out interest in efficiency, in terms of voltage output.

 

[geddeeee]

Growl and bite are two totally different things. The bite comes from your attack. How you pluck and fret.

Growl is a mid range thing where instead of a boom, thud, or mellow purr, your bass growls. Like aaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Those are both clean tones. Distortion roars. Clean growls.

Agree!!! Growl is lower in the frequency range. Lower mids usually 200 - 500 Hz depending on bass guitar used...