Electric Guitar Pickups – How Do Different Types Sound?

In this article, we’ll shed some light on an absolutely crucial element of the electric guitar sound: pickups. 🎸We take a look at the tonal differences to help you decide which pickups are best for which style of music. 🤘

How does a guitar pickup work?

Let’s start with a few basics. Simply put, a pickup captures the vibrations of the (metal) strings and converts them into an electrical signal. This is passed on to the amplifier and then to a speaker, which converts it back into audible sound waves.

A pickup consists of a copper wire coil wrapped around one or more magnets. In some cases, metal rods (pole pieces) are used in conjunction with a magnet.

What kinds of guitar pickups do exist?

The first pickups for guitars were so-called single coil pickups. As the name suggests, this type of pickup is equipped with a single coil. These pickups have a slight disadvantage:

They are relatively susceptible to interference, often referred to as the single coil hum, which can be caused by nearby transformers or stage lighting, for example.

Single Coil: faithful reproduction of the classic single-coil sounds of the 60s

To suppress this hum, the humbucker was developed in the late 1950s. Thanks to an ingenious combination of dual coils and a bar magnet, this type of pickup eliminates the dreaded single-coil hum.

Humbucker from Gibson

The P90 pickup strikes a middle ground between a single coil and a humbucker. In terms of construction, it’s similar to the single coil, as it only has one coil, but the design is slightly different.

P90 pickup from Seymour Duncan

The coil of a P90 is much wider and taller, which is easy to tell by the pickup’s external dimensions. In addition to these three main types, other variations exist that are often derived from these basic models.

Examples include gold foil pickups or active single coil and humbucker pickups, which are connected to a small preamp that is usually powered by a 9 V battery.

What does a single coil pickup sound like?

Single coil pickups are used in the classic Stratocaster and Telecaster guitar models, for example. Their sound is usually bright and brilliant, and the intermediate positions of the pickup selector switch, e.g. the combination of two pickups, produce particularly characteristic sounds.

The typical “country twang” is often achieved by combining the neck and bridge pickups on a Tele, while Mark Knopfler’s sound on “Sultans Of Swing” is synonymous with the classic Strat single coil tone.

Single coils are ideal for clean sounds and also work well at medium distortion levels. They’re less suitable for highly distorted sounds, e.g. for metal, mainly due to their interference behaviour.

However, there are now solutions for this problem, such as active single coils. So-called noiseless pickups, which are fitted with an additional coil that suppresses background noise without strongly affecting the sound, are another alternative.

Fender Ultra Noiseless ST Vint PU Set

Single coils are very sensitive, and with the appropriate setting on the amp or overdrive pedal, they allow for expressive distortion control – a quality that many guitarists value.

PRS SE Silver Sky Piano Black

Musically, the pickups are at home in many genres. Well-known guitarists who created their trademark sounds predominantly with single coil pickups include John Frusciante, Cory Wong, John Mayer, David Gilmour, and Jimi Hendrix.

Seymour Duncan Cory Wong Clean Machine Set W

What are P90 pickups good for?

The P90 pickup became popular when it was used in the first Gibson Les Paul models in the early 1950s. It was also known as the soapbar pickup because of its visual resemblance to a bar of soap. Due to its design, the P90 not only has a larger housing, but also produces somewhat higher output levels.

Gibson P90 Soapbar Pickup Cream

This means that you’ll get more distortion from an amp or overdrive pedal than with a regular single coil pickup at identical settings. Like single coils, P90s are valued for their open sound and expressive dynamics, while delivering a slightly more powerful mid-range.

Yamaha Revstar RSP02T Crisp Gold

Due to these qualities, the P90 is well suited to slightly more aggressive sounds, as proven by prominent users like Pete Townshend (The Who), Billy Joe Armstrong (Green Day), or Chris Buck (Cardinal Black). It’s a great pickup for rock, blues, and other styles where gritty, crunchy sounds with the right dose of rowdiness are required.

Which sounds work best with humbucker pickups?

Of the three basic pickup types, humbuckers generally have the highest output level and overdrive the amp more quickly. However, this doesn’t mean they can’t deliver clean sounds. Many jazz musicians cherish the humbucker for its warm tone, and the combination of the neck and bridge pickups can also yield some crispy funk sounds.

That said, humbuckers are mainly associated with all styles of rock – from classic rock to modern metal. They generally sound a little thicker and warmer and not as brilliant as single coils or P90s. The more windings, the fatter the sound. The sounds of Slash or Jimmy Page are exemplary of the classic humbucker tone.

Seymour Duncan APH-2s Slash Alnico II Set N

When it comes to humbuckers, we need to differentiate between vintage and modern styles. The classic vintage style humbuckers are usually inspired by the Gibson PAF pickups that came out in 1959 and deliver a warm, open, and clear tone with a slightly lower volume.

They sound almost like P90s, which is why they’re still so popular. Due to their dynamics, many players prefer them to modern humbuckers for clean and low-gain sounds. Modern humbuckers, on the other hand, such as the Fishman Fluence active pickups, are perfect for the bright and distorted sounds needed for modern rock or metal. They combine punchiness with a tight bass range, which is very important for drop tunings.

Fishman Fluence Mod. Humb. V2 Set BBKN

One specialty of humbuckers is that they can also be split. This involves deactivating one coil of the pickup to create a single-coil sound. Tim Henson of Polyphia has a sophisticated circuit in his signature guitar that allows him to produce a wide variety of sounds.

Ibanez TOD10 Tim Henson

Gold Foil pickups: insider tip

In addition to the three main pickup types described above, newly developed or rediscovered variants sometimes pop up. For example, gold foil pickups have been quite popular for some time now.

Dan Auerbach (Black Keys) and Jack White like to play guitars with gold foil pickups and Mateus Asato also had a signature Telecaster fitted with two of them.

Gold foil pickups are available as single coils and humbuckers, the characteristic elements being the gold foil that covers the pickup and, of course, their unique sound. They have a lean and very wiry tone, which works particularly well for slightly crunchy sounds. High-gain sounds aren’t their main strength; you’ll mostly find them in modern blues or indie rock.

Suhr Mateus Asato Classic T WH Foil

Check out guitar pickups at thomann.de

Feel free to browse the Thomann shop. Got any questions? Don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Online Guide: Electric Guitar Pickups

Want to learn more about this topic? Then check out our online guide via the link above.

What’s your favourite type of pickup for your sound?

Which pickup type do you prefer for your sound? Let us know in a comment!

Lawrence started playing the electric guitar because of his passion for rock music. Back in the day he played in a metal band, but now plays more for himself.

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