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Guide to Magnetic Pickups

Published in SOS September 2008

Technique : Theory + Technical


Have you ever wondered how a guitar's pickups affect its sound? Well, everything about a pickup has some influence, but some factors are more important than others. To keep things brief, I'll focus on magnetic pickups, and not piezo bridge pickups, which are used mainly to produce a pseudo-acoustic sound.

A pickup is a type of electrical generator based on Faraday's laws, which state that a varying magnetic field will induce an electrical current into a conductor passing through that field. Magnetic pickups can only work with guitar strings made from a ferro-magnetic metal (iron, steel cobalt or nickel) because the strings must be able to disturb the magnetic field generated by the permanent magnet in the pickup, to induce a current in the coil that surrounds it.

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Published in SOS September 2008
Friday 21st November 2008
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