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 Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:21 am
All right, here's the issue: I've been playing guitar for two years now, and never once took this into consideration: Pick-ups. I need to know what each kind is good for. Different brand names will help and such, but I need to know specifically what each kind does...
I know of humbucker pickups, I know of ceramic pickups, hotwire, single coil, and that's about it. I don't know what any of them do. Please help me, define each one and what they're good for, please.
I hope to get some good answers, and thanks a lot.
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Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 6:40 pm
l_Shamrock_l All right, here's the issue: I've been playing guitar for two years now, and never once took this into consideration: Pick-ups. I need to know what each kind is good for. Different brand names will help and such, but I need to know specifically what each kind does... I know of humbucker pickups, I know of ceramic pickups, hotwire, single coil, and that's about it. I don't know what any of them do. Please help me, define each one and what they're good for, please. I hope to get some good answers, and thanks a lot. haha. wow. im actually kinda amazed at this. i started looking at pickups as soon as i knew i liked playing. theres so much ground to cover. haha. you seriously didnt even consider it for 2 years? eek its a HUGE part of your tone. well lets see... first of all, there are 3 main types of pickup: humbucker, single coil and soapbar. single coils are a simple skinny row that goes under all the strings like fender strats have. they can be noisy (bad noisy) but are generally good for clean sounds. humbuckers were developed to stop the humming and other 'bad' noise that single coils made. theyre generally higher output and look like two single coils stuck together if they arent covered. they're my favorite and i have no problem playing anything i want with mine. soapbars look like fat single coils, almost as big as a humbucker. theyre generally used in vintage tones and are often found on hollowbody guitars. there are a lot of different magnets used in pickups, such as ceramic, alnico II, and alnico V. listen to them to decide which is your favorite. I use ceramic-steel. hotwire? wtf? livewire is a model of pickup made by seymore duncan. its an active pickup. active pickups require a battery in the guitar, but boost the signal on the way out so they pick up noise better and can drive your amp harder. i use EMG active pickups. seriously pickups is a HUGE topic that you really need to discover on your own. that overview should get you going but wow. two years...
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Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 7:01 pm
Galzowe, you forgot about Piezo, the crystal pickup which is used in all guitars, most notably the Acoustic electric pickups and some hollowbodies. Piezo systems are similar to active pickups in that they need external power (batteries) to power a small preamp in the guitar. The benefit to a preamp is that you have more tonal control than with a standard humbucker or single coil setup. Gazlowe active pickups require a battery in the guitar, but boost the signal on the way out so they pick up noise better and can drive your amp harder. To correct you, EMG and similar active pickups don't actually have a higher output than most humbuckers. The signal they generate is compressed so that they send a more even level signal out of the guitar. They drive the amp a little harder by driving it with a more compressed signal which is preferred by some and not by others. Shamrock (or anyone else for that matter), if you want to know any more about pickups, just PM me or something....I spent a lot of time studying them to choose which ones i wanted in my guitars while I was working on an Electrical Engineering degree.
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Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 8:04 pm
Gazlowe l_Shamrock_l All right, here's the issue: I've been playing guitar for two years now, and never once took this into consideration: Pick-ups. I need to know what each kind is good for. Different brand names will help and such, but I need to know specifically what each kind does... I know of humbucker pickups, I know of ceramic pickups, hotwire, single coil, and that's about it. I don't know what any of them do. Please help me, define each one and what they're good for, please. I hope to get some good answers, and thanks a lot. haha. wow. im actually kinda amazed at this. i started looking at pickups as soon as i knew i liked playing. theres so much ground to cover. haha. you seriously didnt even consider it for 2 years? eek its a HUGE part of your tone. well lets see... first of all, there are 3 main types of pickup: humbucker, single coil and soapbar. single coils are a simple skinny row that goes under all the strings like fender strats have. they can be noisy (bad noisy) but are generally good for clean sounds. humbuckers were developed to stop the humming and other 'bad' noise that single coils made. theyre generally higher output and look like two single coils stuck together if they arent covered. they're my favorite and i have no problem playing anything i want with mine. soapbars look like fat single coils, almost as big as a humbucker. theyre generally used in vintage tones and are often found on hollowbody guitars. there are a lot of different magnets used in pickups, such as ceramic, alnico II, and alnico V. listen to them to decide which is your favorite. I use ceramic-steel. hotwire? wtf? livewire is a model of pickup made by seymore duncan. its an active pickup. active pickups require a battery in the guitar, but boost the signal on the way out so they pick up noise better and can drive your amp harder. i use EMG active pickups. seriously pickups is a HUGE topic that you really need to discover on your own. that overview should get you going but wow. two years... Thanks a lot. I was starting to lose faith in this guild, since I posted this a few days ago and haven't received a response, but I'm glad someone actually posted back... So basically the kinds of pick-ups, single-coil, humbucker, soapbar, piezo, active, are names for pick-up designs while the magnet is what ultimatelly picks up on the sound? And about the hotwire thing, it seems like a website I went to a few months ago had bad info, because they listed off maybe 10 different 'hotwire' pick ups....
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Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 2:24 pm
... I never thought about pickups eiter. I didn't know they had any major impact on the sound eiter, lolz.
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