Gibson Guitar Pickups Information
Pickups are what make an electric guitar truly electric. They may lurk under the surface (or more specifically, under the strings), but their design truly defines the sound of electric guitars such as those made by Gibson Guitars. Models such as the Gibson Les Paul, ES-355 and L-5 have become iconic instruments of diverse music genres such as rock, blues and jazz music, and a great part of their appeal lies in their pickups.
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Understanding Pickups
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A pickup is essentially a big electromagnet that sits right beneath the strings where the player would strum or pick them. It consists of a magnet with several turns of copper wire wrapped around the magnet. On an average pickup, there are about 7,000 turns of wire looped around, according to "The Definitive Guitar Handbook." When the string vibrates, the pickup detects the vibrations and converts them into an electric current. The current then goes to an amplifier, which in turn gets sent to a speaker.
Single-Coil Pickups
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The guitar vibrations exert influence on the pickup's magnetic field, inducing an alternating current. Guitar designers can utilize stronger magnets or coil more copper wire to tweak with this process and achieve the sound they desire. Pickups are largely categorized between single-coil and double-coil. Single-coil pickups have a bright, clean sound popular in some music genres. However, it also picks up plenty of electromagnetic noise, which manifests as a "hum" sound on the amplifiers.
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Humbuckers
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Double-coil pickups, on the other hand, virtually eliminate the hum, resulting in the commonly used name of "humbucker." Gibson guitars made the humbucker pickup famous, and the Gibson Patent-Applied-For (P.A.F.) humbucker is the most sought after by players, according to the book "Guitar Electronics for Musicians." Humbucking pickups are usually more powerful than their single-coil equivalent, and produce the amount of distortion associated with the rock sound. The classic Les Paul model features two powerful humbuckers.
Mini-humbuckers
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There is a smaller version of the original humbucking pickup. Gibson used these pickups on many guitars, including late 1960s to early '70s Les Paul models as well as on Firebirds, according to the book "Electric Guitar Construction." It also has a bit less output than the standard humbucker, and its sound resembles that of single-coil pickups because of its smaller size.
P-90 Pickups
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Gibson also produced single-coil pickups, and the P-90 was its most popular. In fact, many consider the P-90 to be one of the "big three" Gibson pickups, alongside the humbucker and the mini-humbucker, according to Arlen Roth's Blog at Gibson. Noted for its pronounced mid-range sound, the P-90 distinguished itself from other common single-coil pickups such as those used by Fender guitars. The P-90 has been a fixture of guitar models like the ES-550 as well as on some Les Paul models.
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References
- Photo Credit guitar player image by bright from Fotolia.com
