Understanding Electric Guitar Pickups

In looking at all this classic rock and surrounding myself with people who value this sort of music, it's no surprise that the technical aspects of musical instruments comes up pretty often. This is something I know even less about when compared to "good music". So, here's something that's a bit off the usual beaten path.

Story time. Over the summer I was gifted a guitar.

This is Precious. She was a gift from a very generous friend, and I love her dearly. As I have recently joined a band, having a real nice electric guitar has been absolutely necessary. This particular guitar is a 2006 Elliot Easton model (The guy from The Cars) Gretsch, a solid body in the color of Cadillac green, with a Bigsby tailpiece (that's the whammy bar!) and Gretsch Humbucker pickups. When musician friends of mine see said guitar, the pickups are very often the first thing that get brought up. I know Humbucker = good. But why? What's the difference between them and any other kind of pickups? Don't they all do the same thing?

I did some research, and I'm gonna attempt to break this down in a way that makes sense to someone who has no idea what I'm talking about. Nobody ever explains this stuff to me without making me feel dumb or by using terminology I've never heard. So I'm gonna lay this out in total layman's terms, so that maybe someone else of  the less-formally-educated-but-still-musical group can understand what the heck is going on with pickups and why people play favorites.

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First things first: pickups. Sticking strictly with electric guitar (Acoustic is a whole other ball game), the pickups are what sit under the guitar strings and pick up their vibrations and turn them into sound. In the picture above, they're the two rectangular gold boxes with little black lines and gold dots in em. In a few words, there's a coil in there, and a magnet, which interacts with the strings on the guitar by vibrating and creates a voltage in the coil, which is translated into sound. (I still don't totally understand how this works. All that's important is pickup = sound interpreter.) The main difference between pickups is the sound they create, not surprisingly. And there are several different types.

Single Coil

My first electric guitar (a black Fender Squire that was also a gift and came from one of those $100 guitar/amp box sets, and looks a lot like the picture below) had single coil pickups. They look like this.

This was essentially the first type of pickup created, and is as it sounds; a single coil with two horseshoe shaped magnets in it under the plastic case. Characteristically, these pickups create a sound that is twangy, bright, and cutting. However, different variations on the single coil pickup have been created for different guitars. A Stratocaster guitar (the black guitar above is a Stratocaster) is the brightest and twangiest sounding, while a telecaster (below) style pickup is a bit rounder and warmer sounding, but punchier.

There are variations of these for other brands and guitars, but they all tend to fall somewhere between these two styles. The drawback to single coil is that they tend to make a bit of a buzzing sound; think of the hum you often hear when a guitar is plugged into an amp but not being played. Modern technology, however has helped to create "noiseless" versions of them. These pickups are most popular on Fender  brand guitars.

P90

A P90 pickup is very similar to a single coil. They often look like this:

From the outside, they're wider and are thicker than a single coil pickup, though it is just a single coil inside. This coil, however, is much wider. It allows the pickup to "hear" more, resulting in a bigger sound that isn't as bright or twangy. It can also produce a higher output, which means it can get louder, and boosts the mid-range tones of the guitar. This gives them a lot of versatility. They come in a couple different designs and colors, but they work just the same as a single coil. (A note: I don't see these used nearly as much as single coil or Humbuckers.)

 Humbuckers 

These bad boys look like the ones on Precious. But they can also look like this:

The difference here is that each pickup contains two coils instead of one. The two opposing coils are designed to "buck", or cancel, the pesky aforementioned "hum", hence the name. Aside from doing that, adding a second coil increases the output of the guitar, so it can get even louder, and really cuts back on some of the higher frequencies. Guitars with these pickups sound warm and powerful, which is exactly how one would like their guitar to sound on many occasions. The name humbucker has become the blanket term for all guitar pickups with two coils, though it is possible to have a double coil pickup with no humbucking action.

Which brings me to my next point. There are still a TON of other things that can effect the sound of the guitar. How many times the coil was wound, the type of magnet used, the placement of the pickup on the guitar, what company made the pickups and for which guitar they were made, the way the guitar was built, the kind of strings, whether the pickup covers are on or off, the brand of guitar, the amplifier, etc, etc. There are even distinctions between active and passive pickups, an active pickup having a battery powered circuit to create a "hotter" or louder sound, though most pickups are passive. People often create their own custom setups involving all of these parts. And it all comes down to what sounds good to a particular person. There are generic universal ideas about what sounds good, and then there are the needs of the individual musicians playing their guitars. Sometimes a guitarist is going to want a bright tone with a lot of treble. Sometimes a guitarist wants to be as loud and as powerful as possible. Most of the time, the guitarist wants to sound how they think is best, and that's usually somewhere in between all of these things. It's all about preference.

Hopefully I've shed some light on the subject at hand (I learned a ridiculous amount; the internet is a beautiful thing). I know it's a bit off topic from what I usually post, but I think it really adds to the knowledge base I'm acquiring here (hint: that means there will be more stuff like this, cause I liked doing it a lot).

I'll leave you with this, an awesome example of most of what I've just explained. Even a totally untrained ear can hear the differences, and it's not hard to see that both humbuckers and single coils have their place in the guitar world.