Electric Guitar Pickups

To produce sound, an electric guitar senses the vibrations of the strings electronically and routes an electronic signal to an amplifier and speaker. The sensing occurs in a magnetic pickup mounted under the strings on the guitar's body. A simple magnetic pickup looks like this:

A vibrating string cuts through the field of a bar magnet in the pickup, producing a signal in the pickup's coil.

This pickup consists of a bar magnet wrapped with as many as 7,000 turns of fine wire. f you have read !ow "lectromagnets #ork, then you know that coils and magnets can turn electrical energy into motion. n the same way, they can turn motion into electrical energy. n the case of an electric guitar, the vibrating steel strings produce a corresponding vibration in the magnet's magnetic field and therefore a vibrating current in the coil. There are many different types of pickups. $or e%ample, some pickups e%tend a single magnet bar under all si% strings. &thers have a separate polepiece for each string, like this:

'ome pickups use screws for polepieces so that the height of each polepiece can be ad(usted. The closer the polepiece is to the string, the stronger the signal. The pickup's coil sends its signals through a very simple circuit on most guitars. The circuit looks something like this:

The upper variable resistor ad(usts the tone. The resistor )typically *00 kilo+ohms ma%, and capacitor )0.0- microfarads, form a simple low+pass filter. The filter cuts out higher fre.uencies. /y ad(usting the resistor you control the fre.uencies that get cut out. The second resistor )typically *00 kilo+ohms ma%, controls the amplitude )volume, of the signal that reaches the (ack. $rom the (ack, the signal runs to an amplifier, which drives a speaker.

0hoto courtesy 1ibson 1uitars

The body of this Gibson Gary oore !ignature electric guitar has multiple pickups.

2any electric guitars have two or three different pickups located at different points on the body. "ach pickup will have a distinctive sound, and multiple pickups can be paired, either in+phase or out, to produce additional variations. 3e%t, we'll look at the role of the amplifier.