They put an emphasis on mid-range Summary Especially if there’s lots of gain.Īs well as being much quiet, humbuckers have a warm, full, and thick sound and make the notes more rounded. The downside is because they are a magnet they can pick up interference (hum) known as ‘60 hertz hum’ from lights, computer screens, and even the earth’s magnetism (that last one is hard to avoid!). Single coil pickups work well with effects like distortion and delay. Even in the neck position (that’s typically got more low end) a single coil will sound more trebly. The bright, bell-like chime that’s so characteristic of the single coil. This results in a much greater tone clarity and tonal response than a humbucker. As a consequence, there is less magnetic pull which lets the strings vibrate more than a humbucker does. Single coils have a very narrow path that picks up the string. Let’s start with the tone, as that’s the biggest difference. In the next section, we’ll compare and contrast the two pickups in more detail, and they both have unique characteristics that are both desirable in their own right (neither one is better than the other). Pretty clever, eh!Īs there is more magnetic pull and a bigger coverage area, the strings tend to vibrate less so there’s less treble and more mid-range and a fatter sound.
The design consists of a pair of single-coil pickups mounted together, which reverses the polarity of one of the magnets, and connects the coils in a series – and voila, the hum vanishes.
This was an attempt to combat the amount of hum you get (hence the name ‘humbucker’, literally to ‘buck the hum’). As we’ve seen, single coils are susceptible to picking up electromagnetic interference noise. The humbucker was an evolution of the single-coil, invented in the 1950s by Seth Lover at Gibson. You’ll sometimes see two single coils mounted together, known as a ‘double coil’ for a louder bite. The greater the number of wraps, the louder and more gain it will have (also known as making it ‘hotter’). The more wraps of copper wire around the magnets, the higher the frequency response.
This process basically made the pickup into a transducer, able to translate acoustic waves (from the strings) into electrical signals. The electric pick up consists of two U shaped magnets with several thousand turns of fine copper wire wrapped around them to create a magnetic field (the magnets are made of magnetized steel or alloy such as alnico, neodymium or cobalt).
The solution is now the mainstay of the electric guitar: the electric pickup. They started looking at ways to make the guitar be more audible in band settings (up until this point, the guitar was always an acoustic instrument and often got drowned out by the rest of the band, especially drums and horns).Īt first, they tried simply micing the guitar up, but soon saw this was sub-optimal in terms of sound (as well as created a lot of feedback) and they realized they needed a way to amplify from the instrument itself. The single coil was the original pickup, invented by George Beauchamp (with help from Adolph Rickenbacker) in the 1920s. Single Coils Example of single coil pickups