Guitar Pickups

[The Jniac]

Hello everyone, I am starting this thread in hopes of getting a good discussion going about pickups for guitar, and possibly other instruments as well. In particular, I would like to know why pickups sound the way that they do. For example, Seymour Duncan offers a variety of pickups, and even within the subcategory of humbucking pickups, there are quite a few different sounds available. With my somewhat limited knowledge of electronics, I suspect that it has to do with the windings, with higher windings creating higher output but also higher impedance, which may act as a filter and thus alter the sound more than lower wound pickups.

 

[goat76]

I have nothing to add for the technicalities for what changes the sound, but good aftermarket-quality pickups make a big difference for the better.

I changed my stock pickups in my Telecaster for a set of Creamery pickups and couldn't be happier.
The Creamery Pickups is a small one-man operation based in Manchester, UK, the owner Jaime can be emailed and you can discuss with him and explain exactly what type of sound you are after, and he will make them to the specification you want.

The pickups I got was spot on for what I wanted and have a very clear and dynamic full-range sound, a very good upgrade to the stock pickups.

I don't know Jaime personally, I’m just a happy customer.

Creamery Custom Handwound Pickups - Made in Manchester, UK

Handmade Guitars, Handwound Pickups from The Creamery. Custom Guitars, Scatterwound Pickups - Handcrafted for Tone in Manchester, UK

www.creamery-pickups.co.uk

 

[fredstuhl]

Hello everyone, I am starting this thread in hopes of getting a good discussion going about pickups for guitar, and possibly other instruments as well. In particular, I would like to know why pickups sound the way that they do. For example, Seymour Duncan offers a variety of pickups, and even within the subcategory of humbucking pickups, there are quite a few different sounds available. With my somewhat limited knowledge of electronics, I suspect that it has to do with the windings, with higher windings creating higher output but also higher impedance, which may act as a filter and thus alter the sound more than lower wound pickups.

Yeah, also gauge of the wire matters, the type/thickness of insulation, the tension of the windings, scattering, magnet types, position of the magnets in the pickups and so on - really anything that changes the current induction in some way. Cool topic. I can‘t contribute much on the scientific background, but I’d be very interested in reading a deep dive into the physics of a guitar pickup, too.

 

[Bob from Florida]

Hello everyone, I am starting this thread in hopes of getting a good discussion going about pickups for guitar, and possibly other instruments as well. In particular, I would like to know why pickups sound the way that they do. For example, Seymour Duncan offers a variety of pickups, and even within the subcategory of humbucking pickups, there are quite a few different sounds available. With my somewhat limited knowledge of electronics, I suspect that it has to do with the windings, with higher windings creating higher output but also higher impedance, which may act as a filter and thus alter the sound more than lower wound pickups.

Go to the Bill Lawrence pickup site - https://www.wildepickups.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI_pu_rbOJ_AIVho-GCh2PPwgXEAAYASAAEgJMRfD_BwE
There is quite a bit of good information there. The pickups there are significantly less expensive than the typical options.

 

[anmpr1]

... but good aftermarket-quality pickups make a big difference for the better.

I would change it to read that aftermarket pickups will likely make a difference. Whether the difference is for the better depends upon what you are looking (listening?) for. Also, there is the 'wow' and 'brand name' factor that most always influences folks. People ask, "Why should I buy the Epi Slash (using Chinese pickups) for a thousand dollars, when I can buy the '59 with Gibson USA pickups for nine hundred dollars?" Good question. You'd buy it mostly because you like the color, and you don't get the Slash logo with the '59.

FWIW, I was at the Gibson Nashville store wandering through a lot of guitars I couldn't afford. To my old and tired ears, the Epiphone Slash Goldtop pickups sounded fine. I wish they'd make a '59 style Goldtop for a hundred dollars less, though.

People say (and they are no doubt correct) that the cheaper the guitar, the cheaper are the electronics. But cheapness doesn't always mean a lack of sonic goodness. One of my favorite playing and sounding guitars is an ugly, bottom of the barrel Schecter C-6 with their own branded (probably made in China) pickups. I would never change those out. They do what that guitar is supposed to do, and they do it well.

On the other hand, the electronics (switches and pots) on an 2015 Les Paul Standard started to fail after a year. And the pickups were muddy sounding. I replaced them with a matched set up Duncan pickups, along with new wiring harness and switches. Transformed the guitar.

Generally, pickups don't go bad, and with all the hobbyists who like to change things out, you can easily find discounted used sets. It's pretty quick and relatively inexpensive to experiment.

Somewhere on one of his weekly firesides, Phil McKnight offered an opinion--coming from his years of wiring pickups. He said something to the effect that automated machine wiring gives you a consistency you won't get from hand wiring, but the hand wired product tends to be more valuable in the minds of customers since... well, since it requires a human to actually wind the coils. So there's a sense of pride of ownership a customer gets from that, which they probably don't get from a robot made pickup.

 

[Multicore]

It's a complex topic and there's a lot of confusion in the market.

I read a couple of academic articles a few years ago that suggested that electric guitar pickups are significantly nonlinear.

 

[Multicore]

The Book – Gitec-Forum-eng

www.gitec-forum-eng.de

This book has quite a lot of science info on pickups.

 

[jschwender]

Todays guitar pickups are just sticking to design goals from 50 years ago. At that time there were only tube amplifiers with high noise level and high input impedance. Low impedance preamps were just not available, and preamps could not be integrated into the instrument. Therefore the pickup had to provide a high voltage to get an acceptable signal to noise ratio. The voltage of such a pickup is determined by the magnet and the number of turns. High number of turns results in high inductance, capcitance and resistance. All this constitutes a filter that forms the sound, or in other words which limits the higher frequency sounds. With today's amplifiers that could be improved, but both customers and industry sticks to this outdated technology. Once something becomes a "standard" it stubbornly resist all improvements over a long time. The other reason why magnetic pickups never ever reach natural sound of a string instrument is that it is always a comb filter. Multiple pickup combinations can only slightly mitigate the problem. Choosing one or the other "old technology" pickup may sound differently, but it will not overcome inherent problems.

 

[Prana Ferox]

Musical instrument discussions tend to be filled with a lot of hearsay and voodoo, and like hi-fi stereophilia there is usually the assumption that 1) changing things always leads to improvement, and 2) more expensive things must be better. Neither is true. Don't even get started on 'tone woods'.

Pickups can and do sound different from each other, but remember:
- The pickups are part of a signal chain including tone controls / preamps, amps and any effects. Often the signal processing downstream is capable of changing the sound much more than a different pickup would.
- It also includes your fingers and technique. You may be able to emulate someone else's sound with the same equipment - or completely different stuff - but you can't eq in talent. I'll admit I've spent tons of money on pickup swaps and I continue to suck. The player having so much influence in the sound is one reason why pickups are hard to AB compare.
- Arrangement of the pickups to the strings (neck vs bridge, height), coil config (single vs humbucker etc) and mix/phase of pickups are all going to have more effect than swapping a single pickup. Sometimes what you really want is a different instrument.

 

[jschwender]

Musical instrument discussions tend to be filled with a lot of hearsay and voodoo, and like hi-fi stereophilia there is usually the assumption that 1) changing things always leads to improvement, and 2) more expensive things must be better. Neither is true. Don't even get started on 'tone woods'.

Pickups can and do sound different from each other, but remember:
- The pickups are part of a signal chain including tone controls / preamps, amps and any effects. Often the signal processing downstream is capable of changing the sound much more than a different pickup would.
- It also includes your fingers and technique. You may be able to emulate someone else's sound with the same equipment - or completely different stuff - but you can't eq in talent. I'll admit I've spent tons of money on pickup swaps and I continue to suck. The player having so much influence in the sound is one reason why pickups are hard to AB compare.
- Arrangement of the pickups to the strings (neck vs bridge, height), coil config (single vs humbucker etc) and mix/phase of pickups are all going to have more effect than swapping a single pickup. Sometimes what you really want is a different instrument.

At this point i am not arguing about instrument, my point is specifically the pickup and it's clearly defined function: transducing string vibrations into an electric signal. This is not a question of music but a question of signal theory. And a frequency response that is not capped at 6 kHz is clearly an improvement. This is not necessarily more expensive.
Pickup is the starting point in the chain you mention, information that is lost here cannot be compensated by subsequent chain components.
Completely agree: music comes from the fingers, not the instrument: Marcus Miller for example will sound better than me on any base, no matter what expensive or exotic instrument i play… ;-) And what you say confirms me, as long as you just scale the technology by changing one 10kwindings pickup by another you get the same downsides. Only if you change to other technology you may overcome these. If you ever tried for example a peizo pickup on a string instrument, you noticed that it does not sound like a comb filter – even though it might have other downsides …
A good example for improvements with "old technology" is the humbucker: hum is reduced, bus also is the frequency response. With today's preamp there is no need for 10000 windings in a pickup. Even 10 windings can be perfectly matched to an amplifier input and provide much wider frequency response than all "old technology" pickups. Especially humbucker which kill frequencies above 2…4 kHz.

 

[fredstuhl]

At this point i am not arguing about instrument, my point is specifically the pickup and it's clearly defined function: transducing string vibrations into an electric signal. This is not a question of music but a question of signal theory. And a frequency response that is not capped at 6 kHz is clearly an improvement. This is not necessarily more expensive.
Pickup is the starting point in the chain you mention, information that is lost here cannot be compensated by subsequent chain components.
Completely agree: music comes from the fingers, not the instrument: Marcus Miller for example will sound better than me on any base, no matter what expensive or exotic instrument i play… ;-) And what you say confirms me, as long as you just scale the technology by changing one 10kwindings pickup by another you get the same downsides. Only if you change to other technology you may overcome these. If you ever tried for example a peizo pickup on a string instrument, you noticed that it does not sound like a comb filter – even though it might have other downsides …
A good example for improvements with "old technology" is the humbucker: hum is reduced, bus also is the frequency response. With today's preamp there is no need for 10000 windings in a pickup. Even 10 windings can be perfectly matched to an amplifier input and provide much wider frequency response than all "old technology" pickups. Especially humbucker which kill frequencies above 2…4 kHz.

I mean, but that‘s not necessarily a bad thing if you talk about instruments, isn‘t it? Haven‘t these objective technological shortcomings shaped the sound of whole music genres?

 

[Prana Ferox]

At this point i am not arguing about instrument, my point is specifically the pickup and it's clearly defined function: transducing string vibrations into an electric signal. This is not a question of music but a question of signal theory. And a frequency response that is not capped at 6 kHz is clearly an improvement. This is not necessarily more expensive.
Pickup is the starting point in the chain you mention, information that is lost here cannot be compensated by subsequent chain components.

I'm not even sure what you're getting at or why you picked my post to respond to. When people talk pickup swaps they're generally talking about tweaking the instrument, not reinventing it. If you don't like the limitations of magnetic field pickups you can get piezo pickups, or mic an acoustic instrument, or get a MIDI device driving a synth, or play a theremin instead. I'm betting that's not what the OP was asking about.

E: I see you mentioned piezos. I'm more familiar with basses and they're not unheard of there, but I'd certainly not call them popular. They just don't offer a different sound that enough players look for.

 

[Inner Space]

Phil McKnight offered an opinion--coming from his years of wiring pickups. He said something to the effect that automated machine wiring gives you a consistency you won't get from hand wiring, but the hand wired product tends to be more valuable in the minds of customers ...

My observation has been that consistency in pickups is a bad target, given any electric guitar's generally terrible string-to-string consistency, because of varying tensions, etc. Consistent winding is guaranteed to be suboptimal, whereas sloppy hand winding stands a chance of working better at least some of the time, on a lottery basis.

What's nuts is thinking of vintage handwounds as a homogenous category, as if swapping one in is an automatic panacea. The whole point is they're all different from one another, and finding one that suits your string choice is a matter of luck.

 

[Tom C]

I’ve heard excellent quality pickups for acoustic instruments that sound full range to my ears.
Electric guitar pickups are a different animal. Most players wants to sound like their favorite guitar hero, and couldn’t care less about fidelity, accuracy, or linearity.

 

[jschwender]

I mean, but that‘s not necessarily a bad thing if you talk about instruments, isn‘t it? Haven‘t these objective technological shortcomings shaped the sound of whole music genres?

No doubt, but that was a limiting border condition not a choice.

 

[KSTR]

The Book – Gitec-Forum-eng

www.gitec-forum-eng.de

This book has quite a lot of science info on pickups.

Yes, this pretty much the only comprehensive text about (electric) guitar science and engineering (which includes the amps, obviously) I'm aware of that is worth reading.
Sadly, it's not a truly scientific book, the author couldn't resist to place a lot of opinion and unduly sarcasm (call it Bavarian humor if you will). Nonetheless it still is unique.

As for pickups, while the electrical properties are easy to cover and understand as this is one-dimensional simple electrics (RCL circuit), the magnetic stuff is incredibly complex in contrast and thus not well understood by many, including many pickup makers. The above book is one of the few truth islands in the sea of hearsay and misinformation.

The exact geometry of the AC(!) magnetic circuit and field and its interaction with the strings is the dominant factor to pickup sound -- the electrical properties are just placing a simple linear filter (EQ) on top of that. Of course only the part of the field is relevant where we have windings to pick it up its changes. Very complex 3D problem and pretty nonlinear. One and the same pickup with a given magnetic circuit and given coil specs can sound extremely different depending on where exactly the windings are placed in the field. Now additionally vary the magnetic circuit and it becomes apparent that there are so many variables with complex interactions that makes it almost impossible to strategically design guitar pickup sound and that's why most pickups are delevoped by trial and error, besides the historical factors.

 

[Multicore]

Todays guitar pickups are just sticking to design goals from 50 years ago.

What about Fishman Fluence?

 

[Multicore]

Yes, this pretty much the only comprehensive text about (electric) guitar science and engineering (which includes the amps, obviously) I'm aware of that is worth reading.
Sadly, it's not a truly scientific book, the author couldn't resist to place a lot of opinion and unduly sarcasm (call it Bavarian humor if you will). Nonetheless it still is unique.

The author seems strongly motivated to not just debunk the nonsense in the guitar world but to ridicule it. That's understandable and I think it's acceptable too. It's not reasonable that science and engineering texts have no subjective content. So if we allow that (I do) and grant that readers are smart enough to distinguish different kinds of information then the ideal of a truly scientific book is just a traditional style preference, and a kinda tyrannical one.

 

[Multicore]

Most players wants to sound like their favorite guitar hero, and couldn’t care less about fidelity, accuracy, or linearity.

The sound of electric guitar is an evolved cultural artifact that has been mature for decades. Is that what you mean?

 

[anmpr1]

The sound of electric guitar is an evolved cultural artifact that has been mature for decades...

When thinking electric guitars, the instrument itself is only the beginning. Consider it more of a 'platform'. Apart from possibly unusual headless designs, odd-ball cosmetic features you find on, for instance, the Vai guitars, plus the use of 'exotic' build materials and so forth, the really interesting and creative stuff shows up downstream, in amplifier effects.

Sophisticated emulation, modeling and profiling. All for not unreasonable prices (ex: the higher-end Kempers), and more so in moderate to lower priced gear such as Katana, Catalyst, and Mustangs--selling at give-away prices considering what you get for your dollar. Not to mention pedals.

The 'bang for the buck' one gets in the electric guitar scene makes what is typically available in 'hi-fi' gear look pretty pitiful.

The good news is-- distortion is where it's at, in guitars. Not like today's hi-fi scene, where arguing about minuscule amounts of amplifier distortion comes across as pretty silly within the overall scheme of things anyone will ever hope to hear in their living room, and that could affect their musical enjoyment.