Guitar Pickups buying guide. Every musician/guitar player want their riffs, solos and strums to sound as clean, crisp and powerful as possible. An excellent guitar pickup helps you achieve that goal. Whether you play acoustic, electric, 12-string or bass, a guitar pickup will make your instrument sing. You can choose from several different types of guitar pickups, depending on what you’re trying to achieve. Whether you place your guitar pickup on the neck or bridge, or if you choose to pair multiple pickups together, one thing is certain – your music will immediately start sounding even better thanks to this small accessory.
Introduction: Why You Need a Pickup (aka Pup)
Most guitars have inbuilt pickups nowadays (its better to pick one that has). However, some guitars may not come with any electronics, in order to keep the cost down. While some other expensive guitar manufacturers do not provide pickups in their guitars because they are aware that some players prefer to choose and install their own type of pick-up to suit particular styles and situations.
Do you think there is something wrong with the sound produced by your guitar when heard over amps? It could be the Pickups; these devices capture vibrations produced by the instrument and impacts the quality of the sound produced. This is especially true for classical guitars, as the sound produced depends a lot on the strings compared to the other guitar parts.
If you’re a beginner acoustic guitar player, you may be wondering how you can make your guitar sound louder so that you can play for an audience?
You can use a mic but if you’re also going to sing, you don’t want the guitar sound to be loud and too overbearing, besides its always best to have more control over the sound.
The best way is to setup a pickup on your guitar, so that you can connect your guitar to an amplifier. Once the pick-up is installed on the guitar, it can be cabled to an amp, headphones, or to a PA.
Here’s a comprehensive guide to help you figure out which pickup is right for your guitar. Avoid hums, buzzes and poor tone by avoiding the cheapest pickups. Here we have put together a great selection of to quality pickup options.
Electric Guitar Pickup/s
Fishman Fluence Modern Electric Guitar Pickup Set: Great replacement for your standard humbucker pickups. You will have no hum, noise and inductance issues.
Bass Pickup/s
EMG David Ellefson Bass Guitar Pickup Set: For rich and aggressive tone. Ceramic & steel neck pickup, and a dual-coil for the bridge.
Classical / Acoustic Guitar Pickup/s
Fishman SBT-C Classical Guitar Soundboard Transducer Pickup: Mountable on any acoustic stringed instrument (nylon string, steel-string) with a flat soundboard, produces a clear and natural tone.
Types of Pickups
You get different types of pickups: Soundboard transducer, Undersaddle transducer, Sound hole pick ups, etc. The type of music you like to play (strum, flatpick or finger style) will largely determine the pick up you need.
Soundboard transducers are best for flatpicking, undersaddle transducers for finger style and sound hole pickups for other music like rock acoustic, solo performances and small venues.
Magnetic Pickups are attached to the body of the instrument with the aid of a bridge. The vibrations of the strings are then amplified via cable wires. These pickups use magnets wrapped with layers of copper wires. The output however is comparatively lower, and that is why these are used in most budget guitars, used by beginner students.
Magnetic and microphone pickups come in single or double coil designs. The single coil guitar pickup is bright and punchy and helps you cut through the sound of your band. Double coil pickups offer a fat and beefy mid-range sound and provide a better bass response. Then there’s the piezoelectric guitar pickup that amplifies the natural sound of an acoustic guitar and cancels out feedback noise.
Humbuckers were originally introduced to remove the notable hum produced by single coil pickups. Used by experienced players, humbuckers and Piezoelectrics (or multi transducer) pickups enable you to produce complicated tunes.
Here are the main types of guitar pickups:
Piezo
- These are placed under your bridge. They produce a bright tone, useful for playing in a band.
- Requires you to modify your guitar.
- These sound okay and are generally inexpensive
- Less likely to generate feedback
Soundhole
- The simplest and least expensive way to go is with a sound hole pickup.
- These are are basically electric guitar pickups mounted on an acoustic guitar. These easily slip across your sound hole, and can also be removed after the performance. The more expensive ones, on the other hand, can be permanently installed.
- Produce clear and balanced sound, higher-end soundhole pickups tend to sound lot better
- More resistant to feedback though more likely to feedback compared to a piezo pickup.
Transducer/Contact
These are the most natural sounding pickups. Also known as contact pickups, they’re also the most prone to feedback.
In-Guitar Microphone/Blended Pickup
- While microphones are not pickups, some guitars combine one of the above pickups with a small microphone
- You can blend the two different sounds. At lower volumes, you can use more of the mic sound, which will give you a more natural tone. At higher volumes, you can dial in more of the pickup so that your guitar won’t feedback as easily.
- These are much more expensive than the other options, but gives you more flexibility.
You can use combination of different guitar pickup designs too.
Best Guitar Pickups (Pups)
Pickups for Stratocasters, Telecasters, Les Pauls, SGs, Basses, Acoustic and more! Whether you’re looking at improving your tone or just need a quick spare you can buy these at cheap prices with brands such as Fender, EMG, Lace and Seymour Duncan!
- For Electric Guitars you can choose from a big range of p’ups from different manufacturers.
- For Acoustic Guitars, you get pickups that you put over the sound hole of the guitar. These pick ups sound great and are very easy to install!
- For Bass Guitars, you can choose from a wide range for P-Bass and Jazz Bass styles, and more!
LR Braggs Anthem Tru-Mic Acoustic Microphone/Piezo Pickup System combines 2 great sounds to make one extraordinary pickup. This system blends a piezo pickup and noise-canceling mic to capture the warmth and personality of your acoustic guitar.
Looking for a magnetic guitar pickup, you might want to consider the Seymour Duncan APH-2s Alnico II Pro Slash Humbucker Electric Guitar Pickup set, it produces a warm, fuller sound with incredible sustain.
Another nice option is the EMG –DG20 David Gilmore Pre-Wired Pickguard/Pickup Set. Alnico magnets provide a full, round tone with a heightened mid-range.
Best Acoustic Guitar Pickups
Acoustic guitar pickups provide an easy and convenient way to boost your instrument’s volume, a requirement when playing in larger or noisy venues.
Here are some more recommendations!
LR Baggs M80
Active or passive option. Lacks low end response. Adjustable pole pieces that let you define your preferred tonal response. Battery check option to ensure your pickup is alive and well before any gig. The cream color blends with most woods.
Seymour Duncan Woody Hum Canceller (SA-3HC)
Easily mountable. No volume controls. Focuses more on the mid and treble frequencies (than on the bass), creating a brighter soundscape. Comes in three wood-mimicking colors.
Fishman Rare Earth Blend
Low-noise, discrete circuitry design. Volume control knobs placed at the sound hole. High resolution signal/ Temporary or permanent installation. The humbucking design utilizes a twice-coiled magnetic pickup paired with a high quality condenser microphone. The improved microphone and quality electronics offer a warmer, more natural acoustic tone.
Fishman’s magnetic soundhole pickups offer guitar players an easy, non-invasive way to be heard.
Classical Guitar Pickups
When it comes to classical guitar, pickups are usually categorized as follows:
- Single Coil
Magnetic pickups are usually single coil, where just a single coil is used to produce vintage sounds.
- Humbuckers
These produce strong sounds and are ideal for heavy blues or loud metals. There is a wide range of pickups to choose from when it comes to humbuckers.
- Other Acoustic varieties
These increase the sound overall but do not do much to the quality of the tone. What you choose depends entirely on your choice and skills.
Depending on your budget and what style of music you want to play, you can choose a suitable Classical Guitar Pickup.
Best Gibson Guitar Pickups
Gibson Guitar pickups. If you own a Gibson or Epiphone guitar and wish to upgrade its tone, you will need one of these Gibson guitar pickups.
Gibson is one of the most popular, recognizable and respected brands in the world of music gear. Gibson introduced its first solid-body electric guitar (the legendary Les Paul) in the early 1950s and by 1957 they released their first humbucking pickup. Gibson guitar pickups are preferred by countless amateur and professional guitarists for their unique tone. Today, Gibson makes a wide range of pickup models for their guitars, the humbuckers being the most popular.
Usually, electric guitars come with one, two (or even three) pickups, but its common for pro guitarists to customize their axes to use five or six pickups between the bridge and neck, and some (such as the great six-string innovator Fred Frith) even attached pickups at the nut.
Like any other pickup, the pickup that you will choose for your Gibson guitar will depend on a few factors:
Kind of guitar sound you wish to produce. For chunky tone that sounds well-rounded even at high volumes, a humbucker is preferred.
Best Gibson Humbucker Pickups
- 498T Alnico Humbucker: Great for playing solos, great mid-range, extra high-end power and vintage sustain.
- ’57 Classic 4-Conductor Humbucker Pickup: 4-conductor version of the Gibson ’57, produces classic, retro sound.
Pickups for Bright/Sharp Sounds
If you’re looking for bright and sharp sound, the single-coil P-90 (also known as a “soapbar” pickup) is a great option. Pete Townshend, Johnny Thunders, are some of the musicians who have used this pickup in the past. Use this pickup on your axe and you’ll have no problem cutting through any band mix.
Gibson (Les Paul) P90 Pickup
The P-90 is a single coil electric guitar pickup, which was first produced by Gibson in the 1950s. Since then, it has still been in production, with several companies making replacement versions.
Though these are excellent sounding guitars, the P90’s aren’t really suited for high gain applications. So, you really need to evaluate what kind of music you intend to play, before you think of buying this one. You could use it to play a pop song but then these are more suited for rock/blues, as they lack the versatility needed for an all-round pop song guitar (such as Fender Stratocaster).
Being a single-coil design, the tone of a P-90 is somewhat brighter and more transparent than a humbucker, though not quite as crisp and snappy as Fender’s single-coil pickups.
Popular guitars, that use/have the option of using P-90s are the Gibson SG, Gibson Les Paul, Ernie Ball Axis series and the Epiphone Casino.
Most guitar players confuse the Fender Jazzmaster pickups with P-90, but they look similar only in appearance; they do have significant electrical differences.
It’s a known fact that there’s some amount of “HUM” with the P90’s but several experienced guitar players have managed to keep the ‘hum’ under control by using these techniques:
- Using a good quality cable
- Staying away neon lamps, light-dimmers (in general), computers, monitors, etc. that can interfere with the sound.
- Quickly turning down the volume, once a song is completed.
Once you’re looking for guitars in the $1000+ range, it’s not always necessary that a $1500 or even a $2000 one is always going to be better than the $800 Gibson (that is a few years old). There are many who don’t prefer a used instrument, but the fact is that a lot of money goes to make those fancy finishes and inlays, so you can actually buy an inexpensive one with simple finishing that really doesn’t sound much different from the more expensive ones. It’s different with cheaper brands however (less than 500 bucks) as the different woods and construction style means the sound will be a little different (if not worse).
What Amps to Use?
Can you use a general purpose electric guitar amp for your acoustic guitar? You may, but it can introduce control and sound problems, so an amp designed for acoustics is better.
The cord that goes to the amp may make you a bit uncomfortable initially, especially if you are not used to such setups. So if it comes in the way, just let it hang down a little, tuck it between your strap and guitar, and you’re good to go. You should get used to it eventually!
Also Read:
Summary
All pickups sound different to one another due to a number of reasons. Some factors that make them sound different are the magnets used and the number of coils of wire that are wrapped around. You may have heard of over wound and under wound pickups; well this relates to the amount of copper wire coils surrounding the magnet in your pickup. Different strength magnets can also yield a different sound. If you’re looking for more output and more bite with a replacement pick up then take a look at the high output pick ups. You also get more mellow pickups, pick up sets and signature pick ups. Changing the pickups on your guitar can be a difficult process so be sure to read up on how to do it and check the manufacturer’s instructions.
KeytarHQ editorial team includes musicians who write and review products for pianists, keyboardists, guitarists & other musicians. KeytarHQ is the best online resource for information on keyboards, pianos, synths, keytars, guitars and music gear for musicians of all abilities, ages and interests.
Leave a Reply