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Whether you are planning to buy a guitar pickup for the first time or checking for a replacement, you have stumbled on the place to find the best guitar pickup. Some advertisements on these products may only leave you more confused. You might also end up being at crossroads trying to find the product that fends for your needs without breaking the bank. As a guitarist constantly on the quest for better sound, it is best to explore the world of pickups. This write-up provides information on these products to aid your search and influence your choice to your best advantage in a very straightforward way. In addition to a list of our top picks, we've put together a detailed buying guide to help you through this tricky quest for good sound. Follow carefully for the specific equipment that appeals to you.
The Zakk Wylde guitar pickup is typical for the production of Zakk’s signature sound. This pickup set is known to enhance aggressive tone and sustain. It also possesses long volume and tone controls for guitars similar to Zakk’s Bullseye Les Paul.
A unique feature that makes the ZW a great guitar pickup is its reliance on the EMG 81/85 signature humbucker set to create his traditional scorching sound pattern. It also functions with two quick-connect cables, four 25k long split-shaft volume/tone pots, screws, and springs. In addition, it comes with one removable Zakk Wylde postcard on the box, a collectible guitar pickup with EMGs (Zakk-signature). This pickup set is remarkable as its models are adequately designed to fit most standard instruments.
The Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates guitar pickup is remarkable for producing a warm vintage tone with a slightly hotter output. If you desire a sweet-sounding and slightly aggressive sound combination, this pickup suits your purpose perfectly. It conveys a good sustain and high pitches that are harmonious.
This pickup is recommended for brighter-toned guitar instruments, and it functions well with maple or ebony fingerboards and hollow or semi-hollow body guitars. It is also perfectly suitable for blues, hard rock, classic rock, jam, and southern rock. It consists of a four-conductor hookup cable, D.C. resistance: 7.3k-neck, 8.35k-bridge, and more! Lastly, it has six strings, is worth around $240, and we absolutely love it!
The Seymour Duncan Hot Rodded guitar pickup is notable for its lovely classic sound available for the past 30 years. This product is fantastic for creating sounds from heavy blues to heavy metal. In addition, it produces a laudable amount of output by adding sustain, harmonics, and distortion in the right proportion; without sacrificing tone.
The SH-4 is also excellent in producing warm and sweet tones as it is not limited to only heavy and aggressive tones and sounds. The SH-2 jazz model is significant for making sounds that go further on from the traditional jazz sound. They include; country, blues, funk, heavy rock!
The LR Baggs M80 acoustic guitar pickup possesses the perfect combo of strings and body in a soundhole. As the award description suggests, it reproduces the natural sound of your guitar’s body on stage. Also, the M80 picks up both vibrations of your guitar and your string sound to create a sweet but not very bright sound.
Installation of this device is a piece of cake as it has a pre-wired strap jack harness. In addition, you can take control of full sound as an advantage of the M80’s built-In volume controls. The beauty of this product is its lifelike and natural sweet tone!
Last but not least, the original ‘57/’62 Stratocaster pickup set from fender is typical of the authentic vintage sound, vibe, and feel. This feature exists because the pickup is a recreation of the actual 1963 Strat model.
The structure and composition of this product are designed to produce the harmonic highs and warm lows of a typical vintage pickup. It consists of period-correct Alnico V magnets with Formvar-coated wire, fiber bobbins, cloth-covered lead wires, etc. It also possesses installation hardware that makes it easy to be set up!
For staunch guitar players, the sound is everything. So, we are constantly on an exciting and sometimes frustrating adventure of acquiring the perfect tone. We experiment, try out varied equipment like amps and pedals, and replace our old strings with the new ones rumored to give that edge to our overall sound output. Then there are the daredevils who take a step further to refurbish their guitars by utilizing pickups.
A good number of guitarists tremble at the idea of disassembling their precious guitar just for a pickup, but the truth is for those who do, the benefits can be overwhelming. Guitar pickups serve as the foundation for producing a richly reverberating sound, capable of filling up the room and the heart.
This guide covers all you need to know about guitar pickups and how to make an excellent choice regardless of your style of play and guitar type.
Simply put, a guitar pickup typically comprises one or more magnets wrapped a couple of thousand times in copper coils which transmit the vibrations to your amplifier. These signals eventually come out as whole and enthralling sounds.
Depending on preference and style of music, guitarists (casual or professional) can pick between basically two types of pickup setups, namely the single coils and the double coils, commonly known as humbuckers. Single coil pickups sound crisp and bright, with an intricate and somewhat tangy definition, suitable for blues, country, and alternative genres. The humbuckers have a deeper, thicker, smoother, and raunchy rhythm that sounds incredible with intense styles like metal and classic to hard rock.
Coming back to the original question - if you're planning to reap the above-mentioned sound benefits, then you do need a guitar pickup! Contrary to the intuitive concept, it's absolutely no rocket science to buy one either, let's help you narrow that down.
Both types of guitar pickups we’ve discussed above have their distinctive sound benefits. Despite that fact, virtually any sound can be achieved from any pickup, given the right tweaks! We have put together a list of things to assess to help you fish out the best guitar pickup alternatives in the market.
Realistically speaking, no brand of guitar pickups is exclusively developed for a specific music genre. Even so, certain pickups deliver better with certain tones. Therefore, your choice of pickups will significantly determine the level of tonal output. Lower outputs serve well for crisp, clean sounds, while a higher output is perfect for full, deep, and heavy sounds. Single coils work for the former, and the latter is best achieved with a humbucker.
In this context, compatibility simply means finding what fits. Regardless of whether your guitar’s packed with single coils or humbuckers, its cavity is more than likely shaped to house a specific type of pickup.
Compatibility usually is not much of a dilemma unless you want to transition from one pickup type to another. Fortunately, these days there are now humbuckers shaped like single-coils and the other way round. Stacks, reverse-wound single coils, and rail humbuckers are good choices for single-coil cavities. For humbucker cavities, you can get the single-coil effect from either coil-split humbuckers, coil-tapped humbuckers, or single coils placed in a humbucker-sized casing.
If you have no idea where to start, adopting the sound you like from your favorite artist eliminates more than half the problem. With a bit of homework, you can quickly discover what pickups they use for which songs and act accordingly.
Until a few decades ago, all guitar pickups were passive, and most guitar players today still prefer passive pickups. Ironically, active pickups stack up more advantages relative to passive from an objective point of view.
Moreover, active pickups give more tonal clarity and consistency at varied volumes, clearer signal over a wide frequency range, and don’t need strong magnets like their passive counterparts. Bass players mainly can’t get enough of active pickups as it suits their sound best. In the end, it all boils down to a player’s taste.
Your type of pickup, be it passive or active, determines the kind of sound produced, and its magnetic configuration plays a more significant role than you might think. The magnet types used in guitar pickups are limited, and knowing about them can help you reckon which one works best for the sound you’re after. Pickup magnets range from the Alnico III to the Alnico VIII. The former is common and has the weakest magnetic pull. On the other hand, the latter is remarkable and has the power of a ceramic magnet and the same harmonics as Alnico V.
Then there’s the real gem, the more modern ceramic magnets. Ceramic-fitted pickups have a higher output compared to their Alnico counterparts. As a result, they are pretty powerful and sound especially fierce around mid to upper midrange.
Fitting a pickup into an electric guitar is a piece of cake. Even if you don’t have the expertise, finding a specialist or a reliable YouTube video isn't a problem nowadays.
The real challenge, however, is amplifying an acoustic guitar. The beauty of an acoustic piece is in its sound, without the use of an amplifier or pickup. When strummed, the acoustic guitar resonates from within, creating the most beautiful sounds. Using a pickup nevertheless could work if done right. The most common type of acoustic guitar pickup is the Piezo, which gives off a noticeable phony tone that some find bearable while others simply can’t abide by!
A: Your choice of guitar pickups hinges on your style of play and the tone you’re after. This reason is why some guitarists will pick one type, say active, over passive, while others will stick with passive pickups any day because each individual’s style favors one pickup type over the other. The most surefire way to know which one suits you best is to experiment and make comparisons.
A: The simple answer is yes. It is possible to replace an active pickup with a passive one or, conversely, a passive pickup with an active guitar. It is even possible to have active and passive pickups within the same guitar (very few guitarists possess the know-how). Easier said than done, though. A professional needs to do a little refurbishment and in the cavity of your guitar from scratch to make it work.
A: Yes, active pickups need batteries to function. Active pickups commonly use 9V batteries, and they can either be rechargeable or disposable variations. One way to tell if a guitar is designed to work with active pickups is if it has a battery compartment behind it. This just shows how essential batteries are when using active pickups.