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Guitar pickups

Guitar pickup is in fact an electromagnetic coil. Guitar string, made of metal, a conductive material, vibrates in the pickup's magnetic field inducing electric current in the coil.

1) Single

Figure 1 illustrates construction of a single guitar pickup.

Pict. 1 Single guitar pickup stripped from insulation tape

Fig. 1 Construction of a single guitar pickup

Figure 2 illustrates single guitar pickup. It gives a natural, pleasant sound, it's susceptible to hum.

Fig. 2 Single guitar pickup

2) Humbucker

Figure 3 illustrates construction of a humbucking guitar pickup.

Pict. 2 Humbucking guitar pickup from the inside

Fig. 3 Construction of a humbucking guitar pickup

Figure 4 illustrates humbucking guitar pickup, which has the hum cancelling capability and sounds stronger and punchier. It's built from two singles connected in series. It lacks softness and can sound like a brickwall when trying to play clean tones.

Fig. 4 Humbucking guitar pickup

Pict. 3 Humbucking guitar pickup enclosed in plastic cover and filled with epoxy

3) Coil splitting

Figure 5 illustrates humbucking guitar pickup with coil splitter. It allows splitting the singles and connecting on of them to ground for a natural single tone. Push-pull type potentiometers and and additional two-way switches can be used for coil splitting, given of course that the humbuckers have 4-wire cables.

Fig. 5 Coil splitting in humbucker

4) Parallel connection

Figure 6 illustrates humbucking guitar pickup with it's singles connected in parallel. The tone is very much like the tone of two singles in a Strat type guitar, the difference is that the singles are very close to each other.

Fig. 6 Humbucker parallel connected

5) Out of phase connection

Figure 7 illustrates humbucking guitar pickup with singles connected out of phase. This rare connection gives a trebly tone with cancelled lows.

Fig. 7 Humbucker out of phase connected