Beginners guide to Pickups

Electric Guitar

Pickups are the components in electric guitars that convert the sound coming from the strings into an electrical signal to be transmitted to an amplifier. Essentially they are made up of a wire that is wound up many times into a coil but there are many different types of pickups with slightly different components. The wire is wound around a magnet so that when the strings vibrate, they alter the magnetic field around the magnet, which in turn generates current in the wire. The characteristic tonal quality of the pickups varies according to their components and construction and so different pickups can be used according to what style of music you want to play.

Single coil

As the name suggests these pickups consist of a single wire winding and are usually found on Stratocaster type guitars. They pickup sound from a very localised section of the strings and have a bright twangy tone that is full of character. They tend to have a lower output and be more noisy than humbuckers - i.e. subject to feedback!

Humbucker

These pickups are made up of two coils of wire and take up a larger space than single coils (see Fig.2). The magnets inside each coil are reversed in polarity and this acts to cancel out any unwanted hum or interference from other sources, hence hum 'bucker', American slang.

The extra coils give them a greater power but makes them less responsive to higher frequencies.  Their increased width gives them a longer area of the string over which to receive sound. Humbucker tones are consistent and powerful with less twangy character than single coils. Because they are less noisy than single coils, they sound great with the distortion turned up!

P90

These are large single coil pickups and were originally found in early Gibson Les Paul guitars. They have a powerful tone similar to humbuckers but retain the characteristic ‘twang’ of single coil pickups (see fig 3).

Figure 3: P90 Pickup

Bass Guitar

Bass pickups tend to be named after the styles of basses that they were first found on, however many modern variations exist and basses can have variations in pickup styles – the most common being the P and J formation. As with many differences between bass and electric guitars, bass pickups employ the same components but tend to be a bit more chunky!

Precision Bass-style pickup (P)

Figure 4: P Style Bass Pickups

Fenders Precision bass-style pickups consist of two separate coils that are offset from one another. These are reversed in polarity to form a staggered humbucker (see fig5). These pickups produce more midrange due to their deeper set coils and pole pieces resting in-between the strings. These pickups are generally positioned near to the neck of the guitar.

  Figure 5: Staggered Bass Humbucker

Jazz bass-style Pickup (J)

These large single coil pickups were first used in Fender Jazz basses. The single coil pickup stretches the width of all of the bridge with pole pieces lying directly underneath each string. These pickups give a tighter treble attack great for finger playing, and are generally located at the bridge end of the guitar.

  Figure 5: Jazz Style Bass Single Coil

Music Man

First developed in Music Man basses, this is a large profile, dual coil pickup with wide spread metal poles giving ultimate bass tone (fig.6). Music Man, now owned by Ernie Ball, were the first production bass guitars to use active circuitry.

Figure 6: Music Man bass pickup

Active Circuitry

Having active pickups means that they batteries are needed to operate the electrics. This boost in power gives more control over the frequency range transmitted, so active bases tend to have more tone controls, including bass, middle and treble boosters.

Pickup Position

Pickups are generally placed in the neck, middle or bridge position on a guitar in order to achieve different tonal qualities. Whereas Stratocaster-type guitars have single coils in the neck, middle and bridge, Les Paul style guitars generally have dual humbuckers in the bridge and neck positions. The variations in pickup types and position affects what sort of sounds your guitar will make when plugged in.

Pickup position affects the output sound of a guitar because the sound that the strings make varies from bridge to neck. To avoid getting too technical it can be said that when the string vibrates, it takes on many different shapes. By placing the pickups in different places along the string they pick up these shapes differently and so the sound that you get changes.

As you move closer to the bridge, the pickups get more treble and the sound gets quieter. The closer to the neck you go the tone becomes louder and warmer with more mid tones. In most Stratocasters the three pickups are of the same type – it is their location that makes them give out different sounds.

Selecting specific pickups for certain sounds allows you to take these differences into account. For example it is common to find a high output bridge pickup (to compensate for reduced volume) with a vintage style neck pickup (to concentrate on the warm tones). These combinations of different pickups allows you to customise your sound and gives you a more versatile range of tones out of a single instrument.

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