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Have you ever noticed that if you pluck the string close to the bridge the note will sound bright and twangy, whereas if you pick right down by the neck you’ll hear a softer, rounder tone? Similarly, if you place a pickup near the bridge of the guitar it will sound sharper and brighter compared to one that’s placed near the neck. This is why the majority of guitars have more than one pickup: so you can select different sounds from the full and warm to the thin and snappy.
The simplest way to think of a pickup is as if were a microphone for an electric guitar. A guitar pickup is a magnet that senses the vibrations of your strings, then converts them into an electrical signal that can be amplified, thus making noise! A pickup’s magnet is usually made with a core material such as alnico or ferrite, then wrapped with coils of copper wire, but if you start changing these properties, i.e. the core material or the number of coils, you can attain different sounds!
Single coils (like you might find on a Fender Telecaster or Stratocaster) have a clear, twangy sound, and they tend to sound really great through a clean, un-distorted amp setting. This type of single coil pickup is made by wrapping wire around six ‘slug’ pole pieces (which are held in place by flatwork to create a bobbin). A cover is usually placed over the pickup to protect the wire. But single coils have a drawback: you’ll notice a bit of background buzz which is just part and parcel of the single coil experience. Some players swear by this excess noise, as it evokes a vintage sound. Others want to get rid of it, and simply enjoy the pristine single coil sound minus the hum. Various noiseless single coils are available from companies like Fender, DiMarzio, and Seymour Duncan. Single coils are great for country, blues, indie and alternative styles.
The idea behind humbuckers is to use two separate pickup coils, each wound in a different direction, over a central magnet. The hum is cancelled out by the two different coil directions (hence the name ‘hum-bucker’), and the overall tone is generally thicker, louder, warmer and fuller than single coils. Humbuckers are great for heavier styles like classic rock, hard rock and metal, and they can add some toughness and raunch to blues too. And the softer, smoother tone of humbuckers makes them great for jazz as well, especially if you use a humbucker in the neck position on a big hollow-body guitar. Gibson guitars are closely associated with the humbucker as their iconic models, such as the Les Paul, SG, and ES-335, all use them. Bare Knuckle, Fishman, EMG, Seymour Duncan and more all make humbuckers ranging from vintage-style, to high-gain metal monsters.
In some cases, you’ll see single coils and humbuckers in the same guitar. Popular configurations include a humbucker in the bridge position with single coils in the middle and neck spots, humbuckers in the bridge and neck with a single in the middle, or a single coil in the bridge position of a Telecaster with a humbucker in the neck position.
There are two main types of pickups: single coils and humbuckers. Let’s have a look at each, and what they do, and then go into a little more detail.
How they work: Insulated wire is wrapped around six individual magnets. When the steel guitar string is plucked, the magnetic field is disturbed, and this change is captured by the wire and sent to the amplifier.
How they sound: Clear and detailed: snappy, twangy, bell-like, jangly.
How they work: A humbucker is made up of two coils instead of one, each with their magnets going in different directions (one with north ‘up’ and the other with north ‘down’). When connected together, the characteristic single coil hum is cancelled.
How they sound: Full, thick, ‘hot,’ loud, smooth.
A passive pickup is the most common kind (to the point where people rarely even use the term ‘passive pickup’ unless they’re comparing it to an active pickup: they simply say ‘pickup’). An active pickup is usually wound much weaker than a passive pickup, but its signal is amplified from within the pickup itself, often via an internal 9V battery. There are several advantages: the output is usually more powerful, with greater sustain, tonal consistency and strength of signal regardless of cable/chain length. Active pickups are available in humbucker and single coil versions, and they’re both very quiet. Companies like EMG and Seymour Duncan offer a wealth of active humbucker options that are great for heavier styes of music, notably brandished by some of the biggest names in modern rock and metal. It’s generally very difficult to install active and passive pickups in the same guitar, so usually you’ll find one kind or the other, not both.
How they work: Built like a ‘regular’ pickup but additional electronics (powered by a battery) are used to enhance the sound before it leaves the guitar.
How they sound: Very low noise; crisp; full; sustaining; ‘hi-fi’; sometimes compressed/squished. The extra power means the sound will sound good no matter how long your cable is.
Why you’d want them: For playing in environments that might otherwise cause a lot of interference and noise; for when you’re using a very long cable; or because you like the tone. Especially great for very clean or very distorted sounds.
How they work: All onboard sound-shaping is handled by parts that don’t require additional power.
How they sound: Organic, smooth, natural, ‘vintage.’ The sound will grow darker and more muffled when you use (very) long cables.
Why you’d want them: If you want a more natural, organic sound. Less processed, plenty of dynamics, responsive to your playing style regardless of what it is!
Whether you choose single coil or humbucker, active or passive, the size, type and configuration of magnet/s used in your pickup all have a big influence on the sound that the pickup produces, as does the type of wire: how thick it is, how it’s insulated, how it’s wound around the bobbins, how many turns of wire.
All of these factors influence the sound of a pickup, but one of the easiest to quantify is the magnet type. There are a few magnets that are typically used in pickups, and by knowing a little bit about them you can more easily figure out which one might work for the sound you’re going for. Let’s take a look:
Many players confuse ‘coil split’ and ‘coil tap,’ using the terms interchangeably, but they’re actually quite different.
Amplifying an acoustic guitar can be tricky. Part of what makes an acoustic guitar great – perhaps the most major part, really – is the resonance that occurs within the body itself. But the most popular type of pickup for acoustic guitars is the piezo element, which lives underneath the bridge saddle and translates the vibration of the strings through the bridge into amplifiable sound. But this process gives you a distinctive harsh ‘quack’ tone which you then need to either live with or eliminate. Acoustic guitars often contain different types of preamps that allow you to thicken/smoothen the otherwise synthetic effect of the piezo pickup.
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