"Not marketing" is marketing, though. What percentage of aftermarket pickup users don't know that these are out there, available, for anyone who... really needs them? If they were to push them, it might just cause that which all aftermarket companies dread, which is - an actual comparison test. It's real, real easy to claim anything you want, as long as you don't have to back it. I have long thought it would be informative (and probably quite comical) to rope in Seymour Duncan, Larry DiMarzio, Jason Lollar, Bill Lawrence, Greg Kinman and however many others of these guys you wanted, and do some simple, subjective, LISTENING TESTS. Throw in some rock stars, and just test - which pickups sound the best?
In all these decades, with all the money, print, hype, shuck 'n' jive that's been expended on secret Russian wire warehouses and cryogenics and exact duplications of extinct bobbin compounds and all that - nobody's ever evaluated them by a vote of listening experts. The answer to "why is that?" is most informative - REGARDLESS OF WHAT IT IS. If the answer is "One sounds much better, but we won't tell you what it is" that tells you something; if the answer is "They all can sound fine, depending on what you're using them for" that tells you something too (the latter answer is my view). Given the apparently-endless number of makers - anybody can go into it, for under $1000 easy, and the information on how to make a great "P.A.F." or "Tele bridge" pickup is widely available - it's pretty clear that what music you play is more important. Like, two hundred and fifty-million times more important.
Although "magical thinking" is inherent in human makeup - yes, granny was a gorilla - it's also dead wrong. The fact that marketers and "true believers" can wallow in puddles of half-facts and mis-ascribed emotional reactions doesn't make any of it TRUE, no matter how popular it is. Inanimate objects contain no magic out here in the real world.
To the best of my knowledge, there have been no exact published facts regarding the qualities of silver wire that would lead to any sort of superiority. Greater conductivity might lead to slightly quicker response - if you were winding two pickups ecatly identical, one silver, one copper. But you drift right into the over/under conundrum, that is, using copper, you can already make a pickup that is too weak, too powerful, too trebly, too bassy... so what perceived weakness is the silver supposed to fix? (other than a too-full wallet...)
In looking at the Duncan and DiMarzio product lines in particular, I can't help but feel the owners, marketers and blurbists are just laughing at us... "good god, they'll buy ANYthing... what ELSE can we promise the li'l monkeys?" It's like walking down the corn-chip aisle of your favorite grocery superstore, marveling at what can be done with, and to, corn.... dozens and hundreds of products, all the same underneath. I could extend the metaphor to the end results, the earthly similarity of what happens after you buy the product and process it through your gorilla-based biosystem, but that might be rude.
:blob7:
