What exactly doesthe term compressed or open mean?

[SAVAGEDISTORTION]

When refering to a pup the term compressed comes up a lot?
what is the audio difference between open and compressed?
does the open tone have more sag in the bass?

[rty13ibz98]

compressed means that the dynamics of source are closer to the same level. like finger picked lines will be fairly close in output(volume) to hard picked lines.

rich

[rty13ibz98]

openess typically is meant by having space in the overall frequency span of a particular instrument/mix. usually acomplished by adjusting mids and having solid well defined lows and high. also refered to as "airy" in some instances.

rich

[SAVAGEDISTORTION]

so who prefers the compressed ones to the open ones?
thrash/speed guys?
like the paf pro is that a open pup or compressed?

[neptoess]

thrash/speed do prefer a more compressed tone generally and the paf pro is pretty open from what i remember