Pickups

Pickups –For an electric guitar, this is obviously the single most determining factor when it comes to sound. Bear in mind, though, that pickups do not produce sound; they merely process it. While you can certainly improve the sound of a low grade guitar by replacing the pickups, odds are you will never get a bolt-on guitar with a body made from plywood to sound like a your dream axe no matter what kind of pickups you put in it.

The sound of a pickup is determined by a number of factors (warning: this is all that awful techie stuff you probably don’t want to bother with)

1. Output (Inductance) – measured in henrys. Contrary to the belief of most people, a pickup’s DC resistance is not the same thing as its output level. Output is determined by a combination of the number of turns of wire, resistance, and the strength of the magnetic field. Strip the magnet off of a pickup, and the resistance remains the same, but you won’t get any output at all. Replace a weakened alnico V magnet with a strong ceramic magnet, and the output level will jump, but the resistance remains unchanged. Unfortunately, output is for all practical purposes impossible to quantify. There are too many variables to take into effect. The change in output between two different pickups might vary widely depending on the distance of the pickups from the string, or differences in how hard the string is plucked. Consequently, most manufacturers provide other information like resistance, resonant peak levels, and magnet type.
2. D.C. Resistance -measured in ohms. This is determined by the number of turns of wire and the gauge (thickness) of the wire. Thinner and/or more turns of wire will mean more output and a loss of treble.
3. Capacitance – This occurs when turns of wire are placed next each other. The proximity of the wires bleeds off higher frequencies. A short fat single coil pickup like a P-90 sounds dramatically different from the taller thinner Strat® style pickup. The P-90 has much higher capacitance, and thus has a much thicker midrange response.
4. Magnet Type - With Humbucking pickups (or any other style of pickup in which the polepieces are made from steel with the actual magnet mounted below), only the strength of the magnet in a pickup affects the sound, though certain types of magnets are typically engineered for specific degrees of strength. Replacing an Alnico magnet with a ceramic magnet of the same strength would make no difference. This is not true, however, with Fender style pickups where the polepieces are the actual magnets. For those type of pickups, the sound is affected by the hysteresis of the magnetic material. (For an explanation of hysteresis, see Bill Lawrence’s website). The most common magnet types are alnico (a composite made of Aluminum, Nickel, and Cobalt) and ceramic. There are also different types of alnico, the most common being alnico 2 and alnico 5. In general, pickups made with alnico 5 tend to have the warmest, “sweetest” tone. Alnico 2 pickups will have more upper range frequencies, producing a slightly brighter, punchier tone. Ceramic magnet pickups often have the most output, and tend to have a harsher, more biting tone. This is because ceramic magnets are typically much stronger than their alnico counterparts. “Distortion” or “overdriven” pickups are nearly always made with ceramic magnets. There are plenty of exceptions to all this. Pickups made with Alnico can be engineered to have a harsh growl to them, while pickups with ceramic magnets can be made to produce a softer tone. These are just general guidelines.

Things about pickups every electric guitar player should know:

“Hot” pickups are pickups with a higher DC resistance, usually from an extra thousand or so turns of wire. They have more output and less treble.

“Vintage” style pickups have a lower resistance, and typically weaker magnets. They tend to have a cleaner, brighter tone.

“Distortion” pickups are hot pickups with a strong (almost always ceramic) magnet. They are almost exclusively used for the bridge position.

Most manufacturers make bridge pickups slightly hotter than their neck counterparts to compensate for inherent brightness and lower volume that comes with being in the bridge position.

With the notable exception of Rickenbacker's early hum cancelling "horseshoe" pickup, until Seth Lover of Gibson patented the humbucker pickup in the mid 50s, guitar pickups were “single coil” pickups, meaning they had one long strand of wire wrapped thousands of times in the same direction around a set of polepieces (or occasionally a steel bar) with a magnet mounted underneath. The big drawback to these pickups is the 60 cycle hum – a buzzing or humming sound that the pickup generates due to electro-magnetic interference it picks up from any nearby electrical devices. Seth Lover deduced that this sound could be eliminated by connecting one coil with another coil if the second coil were wound in the opposite direction, with the opposite magnetic pole facing upwards. In other words, one coil might be wound clockwise with the north pole of the magnet facing up, while the other coil would be wound counterclockwise with the south pole facing up. Once wired together, the hum generated by one coil would cancel the other out. A side effect of this is that certain high frequencies also get canceled out as well. As a result, humbuckers have a noticeably darker tone than single coil pickups.

The many varieties of single coil pickups:

Strat® style- This is of course by far the most popular style of single coil pickups, or any style of pickup for that matter. The middle pickup is generally a reverse wound, reverse polarity (RWRP) pickup, so that combining it with the neck or the bridge pickup cancels most 60hz hum. There are far too many variations nowadays on this style to be able to accurately describe any defining characteristics, but in general it has a clean, bell like tone.

Telecaster® style - This is actually 2 very different styles of pickups. The bridge pickup is shorter and fatter than a strat pickup, and tends to have a brittle, biting tone. The neck pickup is much thinner and generally has noticeably less output producing a thin, twangy sound. These are a popular choice among country players.

P90s– These are short, very fat pickups with lots of thick, biting midrange. These were on most of Gibson guitars prior to the introduction of the humbucker. They are most popular among jazz and blues players. Personally, I love them for neck pickups. These come in either Soapbar or Dogear versions, depending on how they are mounted to the body.

Lipstick Pickups – These are what you see on most Danelectro and Silvertone guitars. The original versions of these were indeed built with lipstick covers. They have very low output and produce a thin, clean, trebly tone. (Probably the best example of what they are capable of would be Stevie Ray Vaughan’s studio version of Tin Pan Alley.)

Jazzmaster® style – These are most popular among surf music guitarists. They’re essentially a cross between P90s and Strat pickups; a bit more warmth than a strat, but far less output than a P90. Seymour Duncan and Jason Lollar are (as far as I know) the only companies to sell these.

Filtertron and Toaster Styles - These are typically very low output pickups that make the twangy, jangly sounding tone you hear on old rockabilly or early Beatles records. The Filtertron humbuckers replaced the single coil Dynasonic as the most popular pickup on Gretsch® guitars. The term “Toaster” pickup is most commonly associated with Rickenbackers, though their single coil polepiece pickups are more popular. Nobody is neutral when it comes to the sound of these – you either love’em or hate’em. (To be honest, I tend to fall more into the second category.) TV Jones is considered the premier maker of the Filtertrons, while Rickenbacker now sells vintage reissue versions of their classic pickups.

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