Electric Guitar Clinic: Would you like single coils or humbuckers with that?

In this article we will take a look at some of theTo start out, let’s talk a little about how a
differences between Humbucking pickups and Singlepickup works. A guitar pickup is essentially a magnet
Coil pickups, both technically and tonally. Many think,that creates a magnetic field right above the pickup.
“Isn’t a Humbucker just two SingleThe magnet picks up the vibrations of the strings and
Coils side by side?” The answer is both yessends the signal to your amplifier to be amplified. Most
and no as they both yield quite different tonal andpickups in electric guitars are passive which means
technical characteristics. There have been manythat they don’t have any kind of pre-amp and
attempts to harness both sounds in one guitar orit is the amplifiers job to boost the signal. Contrastingly,
pickup, but the general consensus is that a guitar isan active pickup uses weaker magnets than passive
either a Humbucking guitar or a Single Coil. Like theypickups but has a pre-amp to boost the signal output
say, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.to a reasonable level.
How a Pickup Works