The first guitars were straight acoustics, but soon enough players were looking for ways to make them louder in order to perform to bigger and bigger audiences. Guitar makers tried larger bodies, fatter strings and many other innovations but hit a wall. They could only get so loud…

The answer was clearly to find some way to amplify the guitar’s sound using an external amplifier and speaker. The bit in the way was how to convert the vibrations of the string into electrical signals – and so the pickup was born.

Going back to school for just a second, all sound is the result of vibrations. When you play a guitar string, it vibrates making a sound. A pickup uses it’s magnetic field to convert these vibrations into electrical signals and then they pass down a cable into an amplifier - instant rock and roll!

But it’s not quite that simple - in the same way as the rest of the guitar, how the pickups are designed affects the sound.

The two most common types of pickup used in guitars are single coils, and humbucking pickups – both of these have distinct advantages and characteristics – read on…

SINGLE COILS

Single-coils generally sound clear and bright, with a sharp attack, producing a distinctive ‘single coil’ tone.

Single Coils are very versatile and are often used with a clean or low-gain sounds to get a very bright, ‘twangy’ sound. Great for rock, blues, country, funk – all sorts.

While single coils are widely used with high gain sounds to excellent effect (think Hendrix, Tom Morello), they can sound somewhat hollow when used with extreme amounts of distortion – so probably not great for metal!

The most obvious disadvantage of single coils is that they are susceptible to hum and noise when used with a lot of gain. This is not a fault, the design of single coil pickups just means they can hum sometimes.

This can be frustrating, but this lead to the creation of the other most common type of pickup:

HUMBUCKING

Humbucking pickups, or humbuckers, are essentially two single-coil pickups which are wired together, but one is wired in reverse – the original design was all about getting rid of the hum inherent in single coils.

Humbuckers get their name because they essentially cancel out the majority of the interference and buzzing usually found with single coils (they ‘buck the hum’).

Thanks to being essentially 2 pickups wired together, in addition to having almost no noise or hum, humbuckers produce a fat, powerful sound perfectly suited to use with higher gain distortion. Great for rock, alternative and metal sounds – but they can sound much thicker and darker, losing some of the clarity and snap that single coils enjoy.

So again, the designers went back to the drawing board to find the best of both worlds.

The result? A switch that cancels one of the coils on a humbucker. This little feature is known as a coil tap and makes the pickup sound just like a single coil - job done. This offers the player a wide variety of sounds from the cleanest of cleans to the heaviest of overdrives, all in one pickup.

Alnico – huh?

Pickups use magnets to convert the string’s vibrations into electrical signals. The type of magnet used in each pickup also affects the type of sound produced by the guitar.

Most pickup magnets are either Alnico or Ceramic. Alnico (an acronym for Aluminium, Nickel and Cobalt) magnets produce a very warm, smooth tone. If you’re looking for a vintage sound – Alnico is the way forward.
Ceramic magnets are more affordable, but not to be discounted. If you like bright, powerful, punchy sounds, Ceramic pickups are for you.

Alnico magnets are more fashionable and more expensive so are often regarded as simply better. That’s not necessarily true. The best way to choose the type of pickups you want is to try as many as possible and pick the sound you like. While players wanting a vintage sound might prefer Alnico, many modern metal players choose ceramic magnets every time. Beauty is in the ear of the beholder…

Pickups? Easy.