One of the most important yet overlooked components of a guitar is the pickup. Usually, when guitar players enter a shop, the first thing that they focus on is the color or shape of a guitar. And don’t get me wrong, it’s important to feel good about how your guitar looks, but it can’t come at the cost of not getting the sound you want.
Choosing the right pickup is essential if you want to get the perfect sound from your guitar. To help, we’ve assembled a quick beginner’s guide to introduce you to the world of pickups.
What Is A Pickup?
Simply put, the pickup is a mechanism in your guitar that captures and converts the vibrations produced by your instrument into an electrical signal that is amplified using an instrument amplifier to generate musical sounds.
Typically, pickups are installed in the body of the guitar underneath the strings. Pickups are comprised of a black bobbin with 6 magnetic parts embedded and a coil wound around them that is usually made with copper wire.
What do the magnets and coils do?
When you pluck your string, the magnetic field around it moves around with the string. This movement induces a current in the coil of a guitar pickup, which then flows through the amp cable and to your amplifier.
The wounding of coils drastically impacts the sound
The number of times a coil is wound in will change the sound of your guitar. The more you wind your coil, the more output (or volume) you’ll get. However, wind it too much, and it can muffle the sound. Another important aspect of coil wounding is the size of the gaps in your windings. The gaps in coil are incredibly small, as tiny as 1/100th of a millimeter. Increasing the size of the gaps in a coil improves the treble.
Types of pickups
Magnetic pickups come in two forms:
- Single Coil
- Humbuckers
Single coil pickups consist of one pickup with a very thin coil wound around magnets. They are known for their bright, clean high-pitched tone.
Humbuckers on the other hand are made up of two paired single coils and are better at canceling noise, although they are less brilliant. Humbuckers also cover a larger area of your string, meaning they can detect more harmonics.
So, now that you know how pickups work, you can now decide better which guitar is best for you. Be certain to test your guitar and choose a pickup style that works for you.