Thoughts On Guitar Pickups

[capmaster]

Recently I read in a post about pickups one would recommend a particular humbucker to a jazz player only. Since this went about a very popular model I know very well and I often play through, it made me thinking and caused me to post the following thoughts on guitar pickups.

 

In my humble opinion, the sound of every guitar pickup should be seen in the context of its development. As far as I know, the Gibson P90 and PAF pickups were made in collaboration with jazz and blues guitarists of that time. They usually played flatwound strings, and so the transducers had to match their tonal spectrum and were evaluated this way by players. As a conclusion, they emphasize fundamentals and midrange which are the strengths of flatwounds. Since they do the same when playing roundwounds, they provide the fat tone desired by many guitarists, and made popular especially in the mid 1960s when more and more guitarists changed to playing roundwounds. These pickups emphasize the longer sustain of roundwounds, too, which perhaps is the most popular reason for their popularity. Coil split options allow for switching to brilliant sounds with rich attack and clear treble.

 

Fender is a different story however. Letting special developments like the Jazzmaster pickups aside, the typical Fender pickups had to meet the requirements of guitarists playing country music who preferred round wound strings. These produce a richer treble range, especially when reacting to string attack, and this resulted in pickups with a strong treble projection. Since from the view of the strings preferred by musicians there wasn't a change through the decades with respect to those used for development, there wasn't such a revolution in the mid 1960s as around the late 1950s Gibson solidbodies. The only remarkable change that time resulted from players using and demanding the "inbetween" pickup selections on Stratocasters although Leo Fender kept on rejecting to provide five-position switches. In the recent past, additional options ("S1 switch") are offered to provide amongst other features a fat tone via serial circuitries.

 

Finally, since every magnetic pickup just can transduce the part of transversal string vibration which is perpendicular to its coil(s) and provided at its mounting position, a natural string tone can't be obtained by magnetic transducing. To catch the true string vibration, it must be captured at the point where the magnitude becomes zero. The entire oscillating energy appears at the bridge as longitudinal vibration of diminishing magnitude but with the very force that really can shake a guitar top. Piezo transducers work nicely there. To come close to the sound of a hollowbody guitar, there is severe EQing needed, regardless if used on a hollow, semi-hollow or massive guitar. This is since every acoustic guitar body reacts as a bandpass filter aborting low and high frequencies, and shows a ripple within its passband which is characteristic for its sizes, shapes, woods, and construction. The transient treble frequencies are radiated by the strings themselves, not by the guitar body, although they appear at the bridge, and therefore in the piezo signal, too.

 

Just half a year ago I bought my Alex Lifeson Les Paul Axcess which was the first of my piezo-equipped solidbodies. Since that day I am a real fan of piezos in solidbodies blown through acoustic amps. Sometimes I wonder if maybe this is what electrical amplification of guitars originally was intended to be but could be accomplished not before sixty years later.

 

Finally, I just can't help - I love them all...