Pickups... what's what and what for...

They come in various styles, sizes and output. At Artist Guitars they come on all of our ST & TC styled guitars. These single-coils are great for a variety of clean sounds, from blues, funk, country and right through vintage and modern rock. 

These are more varied in different types than any other guitar pickup in existence. With our guitars, they are found on some of our ST-styled guitars, our AG guitars, the TC59, LP59 variations and the LP60s. Humbuckers are TWO single-coil pickups wired together in series and out of phase so that that the two coils cancel the 60-cycle hum common to single coils, hence the name given to them by their inventor Seth Lover back at the Gibson factory in 1957, the 'Hum-bucker'.

Humbucker Pickup

Humbuckers have a fuller, more mid-range sound than their single-coil counterparts, plus with no hum, they are perfect for playing over driven and distorted guitar, regardless of style, whether your Jazz-fusion, Rock, Blues or Heavy Metal.

Neck humbuckers (the pickup next the fretboard) are lower in output due to the excessive string vibration in that area of the guitar, and most of the time they have an ALNICO 2, 4 or 5 magnet, and generally have a DC resistance of approximately 7-8 Ohms - which is pretty much what the original PAF's from the 1950's were. This all means that they have a great sweet throaty/fluty tone for solo's and a very nice round sound for clean/jazz.

Bridge Humbuckers (next to the bridge) come in many different types of configurations, different coil wire gauges, different magnets and differing pole piece/blade styles. This gives them greater output than the neck pickups and means they have a good drive and kick needed for Lead Solo's, rock and Heavy Metal. They do clean up nicely too, so try rolling off the guitar volume and tone controls to experiment.

Our Bridge Humbuckers have a very 70's classic Humbucker sound which have a nice crunchy mid-range with a solid pick attack for those palm-muted heavy metal rhythms, without the harshness that some ceramic magnet humbuckers out there on the market have.

 

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