If you play electric guitar or bass, chances are you already know what pickups are. It’s also likely that you have some pretty strong opinions on them. For those of you who don’t play, pickups are the devices that essentially make an electric guitar, well, electric. Pickups are super sensitive magnets installed in the body of the guitar and wrapped in copper wire.How do they work?Have you ever played an electric guitar that wasn’t plugged in? It’s not very loud. When you pluck a guitar string (made of steel), it produces metallic vibrations which are then sensed, or picked up, by the pickups. These vibrations are then carried by the copper wire to potentiometers, or pots. These transistors control the volume and tone of the sound. From here the sound travels through the guitar cable to the amplifier (which also uses magnets, but we’ll cover that in another post). Although the process is pretty much the same in every guitar, many musicians are obsessed with tweaking and modifying the configuration and styles of their pickups to achieve that perfect sound.Are All Pickups the Same?The short answer is no. While all electric guitar pickups work the same way--magnets picking up metallic vibrations--there are tons of different styles and configurations that lead to many different sounds. Guitarists can use multiple pickups on the same guitar. They are positioned in different places along the body of the instrument to pick up different tones. The Fender Telecaster, credited as the first commercial electric guitar, features two different pickups: one high up on the body, or “neck” position, and the other lower down in the “bridge” position.For a bluesier or more traditional sound, you might use single coil pickups like the ones in the first picture. Single coil pickups typically have one set of magnets (one per string) and can be found on famous guitars such as the Fender Stratocaster played by blues rockers like Eric Clapton.Another popular pickup style is the humbucker, typically used in heavier rock. Unlike single coil pickups, humbuckers have two magnets per string and produce a much more robust sound. They are used on a variety of guitar models, but were popularized by the Gibson Les Paul. Electric guitars could not function without magnetic pickups. The pickups make it possible for guitars to break free from their acoustic constraints and literally reach a larger audience. Rock n’ roll owes its very existence to magnets. What kind of pickups do you or your favorite rockers use?
