electric guitar wiring harness
Electric Guitar Clinic: Would you like single coils or humbuckers with it?
In this article we take a look at some of the differences between humbucker pickups and Single Coil pickups, both technically and tonally. Many think, "Is not it a Humbucker just two single coils side by side?" The answer is both yes and no, since they both give a completely different tone and technical characteristics. There have been many attempts to exploit both the sounds of a guitar or pickup, but the general consensus is that a guitar is either a humbucker guitar or a Single Coil. As they say, you can not have your cake and eat it too.
Such a pickup works
To start off, let's talk a little about how a pickup works. A guitar pickup is basically a magnet that generates a magnetic field just above the pickup. The magnet picks up the vibrations of the strings and sends the signal to your amp to be amplified. Most pickups in electric guitars are passive, meaning that they do not have any pre-amp, and it's amplifiers task is to boost the signal. Contrastingly, an active pickup using weaker magnets than passive pickups but has a pre-amp to increase the signal to a reasonable level. Active pickups are the most common in acoustic guitars, but can be found in a few electric guitars as well.
Single Reels: The First Transport
Single Coils were the first pickups. The first single coil guitar pickups came in the late 1920's. A single coil pickup, as the name implies, consists of a single coil of wire wrapped in one direction (either clockwise or counterclockwise) around the pole pieces. The pole pieces are circular metal pieces under each string. One of the problems in early single coil pickups was that they took a lot of electromagnetic interference from other electrical machinery, radio waves, which caused a buzz or hum
Why Humbuckers were invented
Humbuckers were invented to neutralize the electromagnetic interference. They use two coils which are wrapped in both directions to allow each coil opposite polarity. It would eliminate the electromagnetic interference, and help get rid of hum, thus creating a "hum-bending jumps" pickup. Humbuckers not start showing up in guitars until the mid 1950's. When it comes to tonal differences, it becomes a little harder to explain and really comes down to personal opinions and preferences.
Common Misconceptions About Humbackers
Many people think humbuckers are for distortion and overdrive, and single coils are clean patches. This is not necessarily the case because many guitarists use single coils for high gain distortion and other uses humbuckers only for pure tone. Humbuckers tend to be hotter pickups because they use two coils, which makes them easier to distort. But many jazz box guitars have humbuckers and is almost always a clean patch. They produce a thicker and darker pure tone than single coils do. The pure from a single broadband is a more ebullient high pure type, often associated with country or "Eric Clapton Style Blues. They also are not so quick to exaggerate as humbuckers. When a single broadband is played through a smooth tube overdrive, you can still hear the clean comes through when it gets lost with a humbucker.
Typical guitars that use Humbuckers
Typical guitar that uses humbuckers are Gibson Les Paul, Gibson SG, most PRS models, most Ibanez guitars, and almost all hollow body Guild's and Gretchen's. The most common single coil guitars are Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster.
Increased Versatility of Both
Over year, each style of pickup will be more versatile. Some humbuckers have the opportunity to fast break down or knock. This is the ability to essentially shut down one of the coils in the pickup that can give a fairly good representation of a single coil pickup. Single coils have gotten much better about electromagnetic interference, and there are several "noiseless" single coil pickups available. But this does not solve the single coil vs humbucker mystery because you only get a solid emulation.
The "Fat Start"
Monitor has attempted to solve this problem by creating "Fat Start", which uses a humbucker pickup at the bridge and two single coil pickups in the usual Stratocaster location. It makes thicker sound using the humbucker, but there is no possibility to run two humbuckers together as you can in a Gibson Les Paul or SG to an really saturated overdrive. The guitar also lose some ability to get the really twangy bridge sound you can achieve with the single coil pickup.
Single broadband and humbuckers are very different animals, and if you want both sounds, you need two guitars. If you should choose a guitar, the best way to go about it is to go play several different guitars with different pickups through different amps and choose the one you like best.
About the Author
Matt Griffith, born and raised in Western Colorado, made the leap to move to Nashville 5 months ago to pursue a career in music along with the thousands of other hopefuls that call Music City home. Matt loves electric guitars and is currently playing lead guitar for the band Brookline. He writes electric guitar reviews for Music Gear Review.
TV Jones Wiring Harness – Part Two
The first step in learning the guitar is to determine your skill level. Beginners and intermediates should find a resource designed for them, and leave advanced guitar lessons for later as they become more proficient. It is wise to start with something designed for your skill level, which makes guitar instruction more fun. Click Here For A Learn To Play Guitar Product Review