Guitar Pickup Types Explained

For the guitarist first diving into the world of gear, scrolling through Sweetwater’s nearly endless selection of 6-strings can present a plethora of pickup-related questions. What makes a single-coil different from a humbucker? How does a pickup work? And just why do so many pickups look nearly identical but sound completely different? These are natural questions for the gear-curious musician, and the answers are all but essential knowledge for guitarists of all skill levels and styles.

Now, while most guitarists are likely more interested in tone than the finer points of electromagnetism, a foundational knowledge of how pickups function and the different styles available guarantee more informed gear decisions. So, whether you sing the praises of the single-coil, hail to the humbucker, or are still discovering just what the difference is between the two, join Sweetwater for our comprehensive primer on the almighty guitar pickup!

What Is a Guitar Pickup?How Do Pickups Work?What Are the Types of Pickups?Single-coil PickupsHumbucker PickupsP-90 PickupsActive vs. Passive PickupsPassive PickupsActive PickupsMagnet Types: Alnico vs. CeramicAlnico IIAlnico IIIAlnico VAlnico VIIICeramicAcoustic Guitar PickupsMagnetic Soundhole PickupsTransducer PickupsSoundboard TransducersMicrophone Pickups

What Is a Guitar Pickup?

A guitar pickup is the defining element of any electric guitar and the very first electrical element of your guitar’s signal chain; this is where the vibrations of your guitar’s strings are first “picked up” and converted from mechanical energy (the vibrating strings) into an electrical signal that goes to your amplifier. Pickups come in many forms and are almost always located between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge of your instrument. The earliest electric guitars often sported a single pickup, but having two to three pickups is now the widely accepted standard for most modern guitarists.

Well, if a single pickup is theoretically all you need, then why opt for multiple pickups? Strike a string close to the bridge, and then strike it again right where the fingerboard meets the body — two completely distinct tones, right? The strategic placement of multiple pickups provides you with a wealth of different tones to switch between, greatly increasing the electric guitar’s tonal versatility.

How Do Pickups Work?

Almost all guitar pickups can be boiled down to three basic parts: magnets (pole pieces, bar magnets, or both), coiled wire, and structural elements that hold the first two bits together. These parts come together to form an electromagnetic device that magnetizes your string and then picks up those vibrations. When you strike a string, the movement of the magnetized string induces a current in the coil, transforming the mechanical energy of the struck string into a weak electrical signal that can be amplified.

The process is called electromagnetic induction — the same process used in dynamic microphones, ribbon microphones, and loudspeakers. For the guitarists looking to dig into the nuts and bolts (magnets and wire?) of the matter, we recommend you check out our “How Do Guitar Pickups Work?” article for a more detailed explanation of pickup anatomy and a short history of electromagnetic induction.

There are three basic qualities you should be concerned with when scrolling through pickups on Sweetwater: the physical design/size of the pickup, the type of magnet the pickup has, and the impedance of the pickup, expressed in DC resistance, measured in ohms. There are certainly many other components to consider (the type of wire, the construction of the bobbin, and so on), but these three all-important components comprise the core of any pickup’s voice.

What Are the Types of Pickups?

Passive pickups — pickups that require no external power source — can be neatly split into two categories: single-coils and humbuckers. Still, single-coil and humbucking pickups can dramatically differ in tone depending on their design, which is why we’ll single out the single-coil P-90 as a sonic outlier.

Single-coil Pickups

Most commonly found on Fender-style guitars and vintage-style Gibsons, single-coil pickups are favored for their balance, articulation, and snappy tonality. They’re also (in)famous for their inherent hum — a byproduct of the single-coil pickup’s tendency to act like an antenna, sucking up stray magnetic fields from RFI and 60-cycle hum.

Why do guitarists still use single-coil pickups if there are hum-canceling alternatives available? The answer, like always, is tone. From the twang of a Telecaster bridge pickup to the near-mythical jangle of a Rickenbacker Hi-gain, single-coil pickups provide some of the most foundational 6-string tones in music history. Country, classic rock, funk, indie, alternative, and countless other guitar styles heavily rely on the spanky sound of the single-coil, and if you want to cop the classic tones of those genres, then a little bit of hum is a small price to pay.

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Most guitarists are well aware of the mighty Stratocaster and Telecaster single-coil pickups, but the truth is that there’s a world of tone to explore if you’re willing to venture off onto the road less traveled. From the fuller-bodied response of the Jazzmaster pickup (it’s not a P-90!) to the thin, jangly tone produced by Danelectro‘s iconic lipstick-tube pickups, single-coils come in countless different variations.

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Hunting for a sparkling single-coil sound free from hum? Check out Sweetwater’s selection of noiseless single-coil pickups. While these pickups aren’t single-coils in the truest sense (they’re often humbuckers in disguise), they’re the closest a single-coil fanatic can get to a hum-canceling playing experience.

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Humbucker Pickups

What happens when you cram two single-coil pickups together? You get a humbucker — a dual-coil pickup initially designed to “buck” the hum of the single-coil. The two coils are usually wired in series, with the second coil’s pole pieces inverted to have the south pole pieces facing upward. This puts the two coils out of phase with each other, which has the wonderful side effect of canceling out hum and noise interference! Furthermore, the series wiring found on the vast majority of humbuckers results in a dramatic boost in output, along with a tone that’s often fuller, richer, and warmer than a straight single-coil.

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Because of their hotter output and natural resistance to hum, humbuckers are all but required for metal, hard rock, and genres that dive to the depths of high-gain saturation. However, humbuckers are just as revered when it comes to cleans — lower-output humbuckers, like the PAF (Patent Applied For) found on vintage-style Les Pauls and ES-335s, deliver some of the most sought-after clean tones in 6-string history.

The truth is that you’re just as likely to encounter a humbucker on a jazzer’s high-end hollowbody as a screaming shred machine, and many guitars combine a humbucker in the bridge position with a middle/neck position single-coil to achieve the best of both worlds on a single instrument.

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16 Humbucker Pickups Compared (Plus One) – Take a Listen

P-90 Pickups

While P-90s arefull-fledged single-coils in every technical respect, they occupy a sort of sonic middle ground between the single-coil and humbucker spectrum. So, what makes the P-90 so different that we opted to give it its own special category? Although P-90s sport all the 60-cycle hum that plagues single-coil models of all stripes, the P-90 produces a far deeper and fuller-range voice than your garden-variety single-coil pickup. P-90s are renowned for their midrange-focused “bite,” thumping lows, and significantly higher output than most other single-coils. Frankly, they are one of the most tonally flexible pickups you can buy and are found in every style, from rockabilly to hard rock to ultra-clean jazz.

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Ode to the P-90 Pickup

Active vs. Passive Pickups

If you’ve spent any time gazing at Sweetwater’s myriad modern metal guitars, then you’ve no doubt encountered the term “active pickup.” But what makes a pickup active or, on the other end of the spectrum, passive?

Passive Pickups

This one’s easy — passive pickups are pickups that require no additional power. This includes the overwhelming majority of pickup designs — it’s safe to assume that any given pickup is passive until you’re told otherwise.

Active Pickups

By contrast, active pickups require an onboard amplifier that needs an external power source, usually consisting of a 9-volt battery or a built-in rechargeable battery. What’s with the battery? Well, active pickups are essentially very, very low-output magnetic pickups (of either the humbucking or single-coil variety) enhanced with a powered preamp. If you’re after a deeper look into the world of active versus passive, then check out Nick Bowcott‘s “Active vs. Passive Pickups: What’s the Difference? Which Is Best?” article. For our purposes, we can simplify things slightly to better aid you in your pickup purchasing pursuits.

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Because they come with an active preamp, active pickups put out a far stronger signal than standard magnetic pickups, in addition to far less noise. They tend to deliver clarity in the extreme with a hi-fi feel and can drive super-long cable runs without even a hint of tone suck. Guitars with active pickups also offer far greater built-in tone-shaping possibilities than any passive pickup — an active preamp frequently offers EQ so you can cut and boost frequencies, while a passive pickup’s tone controls can only cut.

Oddly enough, this combination of qualities endears active pickups to the extremes of the 6-string spectrum: ultra-clean players and metalheads seeking the most brutal, hard-hitting high-gain tones possible. Moreover, cutting-edge pickup manufacturers like Fishman are reimagining the basic design of active pickups to produce the multiple voices of the Fishman Fluence series.

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Magnet Types: Alnico vs. Ceramic

Another instrumental element in a pickup’s construction is the type of magnet utilized. From alnico to ceramic and beyond, magnet types are by no means locked into a certain style of pickup, but you’ll be quick to notice a few tonal trends — high-output metal and rock pickups favor ceramic magnets, vintage-style pickups opt for lower-output alnico magnets, and so on and so forth. Here’s a quick primer on the magnets you’ll be most likely to encounter while perusing Sweetwater’s 6-string offerings.

Alnico II

As much as the guitar marketing world loves to throw around the word “vintage,” it’s fair to say that most players will agree that Alnico II–equipped pickups have a particularly vintage-sounding, smooth, and warm character. Alnico II is the second weakest of all alnico pickups commonly used in guitars, with a rather open-sounding bass response and rounded-over highs.

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Alnico III

Boasting glassy highs, airy lows, and rich, full mids, Alnico III is the weakest of alnico magnets. It displays much of the same “vintage” qualities as Alnico II but grants a far sharper and brighter high-end chime. You’re not likely to find Alnico III in any pickup that markets itself as “modern-sounding,” and it’s particularly prudent to point out that Gibson opted for Alnico III when designing its Gibson Accessories Custombucker humbucker pickups — arguably Gibson’s most tonally accurate take on the legendary PAF humbucker since it was first launched back in the 1950s.

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Alnico V

Of all alnico’s variations, Alnico V is arguably the most popular. Alnico V is frequently found in both single-coil and humbucker designs, providing players with a firm bass, even midrange, exceptional high-end clarity, and a higher output than almost any other alnico magnet. Alnico’s hotter output makes it particularly suited for bridge-position pickups, although Sweetwater carries plenty of top-quality Alnico V neck pickups. Note that while “modern”-voiced pickup designs tend to sport Alnico V magnets, Alnico V has been commonly used by Fender, Gibson, and many other historic guitar makers since the late 1950s / early 1960s.

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Alnico VIII

Frankly, it’s a rare treat to find a guitar pickup equipped with Alnico VIII magnets. When it comes to output, Alnico VIII reigns supreme, merging the power of a ceramic magnet with the warm, dynamic flavor so sought-after among alnico enthusiasts. You’ll generally find Alnico VIII magnets in modern metal, shred, and other high-gain applications, although we’d argue that this magnet’s powerful punch will only grow in popularity as more makers experiment with it.

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Ceramic

At times maligned by the most ardent alnico enthusiasts, ceramic magnets are just as vital and viable as any old-school alnico magnet. In fact, ceramic magnet pickups are often the optimal choice for metal, hard-rock, and shred players — the DiMarzio Super Distortion is a veritable tonal institution at this point, and most of EMG‘s active offerings sport high-output ceramic magnets. As far as tone is concerned, ceramic magnet pickups tend to provide a tight bass response, fierce midrange, and just about the hottest output you can get without going active.

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Acoustic Guitar Pickups

When you’re shopping for an acoustic-electric, there are two basic categories you should be aware of: magnetic soundhole pickups and transducer pickups.

Magnetic Soundhole Pickups

It’s time again to refer back to our old friend — electromagnetic induction. Magnetic soundhole pickups are functionally the same as electric guitar pickups, and they can come in both single-coil and humbucking varieties. One important point to remember is that any magnetic pickup requires strings with steel cores to function — a magnetic soundhole pickup isn’t going to be of much use on a nylon-string guitar! While magnetic soundhole pickups can usually be easily fitted onto any acoustic guitar with no permanent modification, they supply a tone that many guitarists find closer to an electric guitar than an unplugged acoustic.

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Transducer Pickups

Commonly known as piezo pickups, transducer pickups are generally seated beneath your guitar’s saddle or placed on the underside of your guitar’s top. Transducer pickups convert the physical vibrations of your acoustic guitar into electrical signals, offering tone that many guitarists find more organic-sounding than magnetic pickups.

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Soundboard Transducers

Yes, this is also a piezo pickup, but instead of mounting inside the guitar, these attach to the top of the guitar. They produce a rich, warm tone and can be added or removed from your guitar.

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Microphone Pickups

Using a microphone to pick up the sound of an acoustic guitar? Seems like an obvious choice. Many high-end transducer pickups come paired with a built-in mic to achieve the most authentic-sounding acoustic-electric tones possible. On the plus side, they sound great. But, like any microphone, they pick up every sound, which can result in feedback.

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Best Pickups for Acoustic Guitars

Shop All Electric Guitar Pickups

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Shop Sweetwater’s Plethora of Electric Guitar Pickups

Whether you’re shopping for an all-new 6-string or looking to upgrade your guitar, picking out the perfect pair of pickups is no easy task! Single-coils, humbuckers, active pickups — even once you decide on a type, it can be tough to narrow down which model or manufacturer best suits your fine tonal tastes. Luckily, a quick call to your Sweetwater Sales Engineer at (800) 222-4700 is all you need to get the best advice in the biz on pickups, guitars, amps, and every other gear-related question you could ever have!
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