How Guitar Pickups Work - 5 Myths Busted 

I love how you always tell it like it is. You are a true asset to the guitar player and pickup builder communities.

The Jello Magnets - great name for a band

"And now for myth number five!" "Three, sir!" "Myth number three!"

Something about an electric guitar I always found interesting, yet it's only spoken of in academic circles: when speaking of an electric guitar as an "instrument", one is speaking about the guitar and amp. The "instrument" is both items. On it's own, the electric guitar is only part of an instrument.

This video is great. You could argue that the plastics and other miscellaneous bits of the pickup that aren't metal could be factors depending on the potting process of the pickup and how microphonic it is, but about 95% of people that play solid electric guitars want their pickups minimally microphonic anyway. I mean there are pickups that are designed to be more microphonic than other more conventional designs and even the most epoxy caked shielded designed pickups can become microphonic depending on what environment and conditions they're subjected to, but like... There were people out there that seriously flipped out when they found out the Seymour Duncan JB switched away from the maple spacer and got angry when they heard them advertise that it's been made the same way since its conception. It's a freakin spacer dude. It keeps a thing from touching a thing. They made them out of wood back in the day because it was cheaper and easier to use scrap maple than manufacturing more plastic in another specific shape. You might as well whine about the knobs on a guitar being different ruining it.

You're saying that it's physics and not Voodoo??

"Relax and play guitar"......well, that says it all right there.

Wow... just wow.... Dude, amazing information! I was getting all lost on my single coil pickup research and this video has clarified all my doubts and put me on the right track. You sir, are amazing!

That's it. I'll name my next pickup model ”jello“. Consider this name now trademarked. :D

This is exactly the video I was looking for. I feel like I just asked a super knowledgeable person I was hanging out with about something I'm super curious about, and got that "I'm about to nerd out on you and blow your mind" answer I was hoping for. The electric guitar is such a rad piece of technology that can teach us all a lot. You're clearly passionate about this subject and it makes for quality content. Thanks!

I had a great pickup called Antiquity. I read the DC resistance and it was low. I made the mistake of selling it before I realized that that measurement is only one of many things that make up the tone and operations of the electronics. I now know that the quality of the poles and copper wires are very important.

The jelly analogy is not stupid, it's perfect.

That is interesting - the point about the resonance. Studies with violins show the ones people consider good have 4 resonances on top of each string's frequency. They call those "resonances" formands or modes. It's like a frequency filter with a low Q.

You got me interested in making my own pickups. I wonder how many different ways people have tried to make them over the years? There's gotta be constant research being done to create a new concept in pickups.

I build electric cigar box guitars. In some of my CBG's I've installed flat wound 4k pickups, in others, I've put in 6k, 9k, & 18k coil wound pickups. Incredibly, each one of them sounds absolutely fabulous in their own way. I'm not sure why. But, they all sound great. Thanks for this very informative video. I love to learn.

you are correct, people are missing the wood for the trees.

I am more of a "I have a bucket of salvaged Chinese pick ups that sound good by accident so polish it up and stick it in" kind of chap 🧐👍

G'Day Dylan... I AM learning ! and... You have a talent for explaining so a 'layperson' like myself can learn... Thanks ! ...☘...

🎸Dylan. Yes, you’re absolutely right, the sound and tone is a conjugation of MANY elements put together …. But little attention is put to amplification. Once I heard someone say “the electric guitar (or bass) is only half the instrument, the other half is the amplifier that gives voice to all the elements in the guitar.” Very true! And for all our geeking about about our guitars and basses, there a LOT that contributes to the sound and tone in the amplifier and a whole set of knobs to hone our tone with.

I get what you’re saying. I used to be in the “none of it matters” school. “I can stick an EMG in any guitar & sound the same”. But, I’ve learned as I got older, that’s not quite the truth. It does become “the Law of diminishing returns” to how much things will effect your sound, but many things have an effect. 1. You can tell me that the pickup only transfers the energy from the string. However, that doesn’t explain why my Gibson 355 & Gibson 356 sound quite different? Both are custom shop guitars built the same year, semi-hollow, same bridge, nut, & fretboard material, with the Gibson classic 57’ pickup, mounted into the solid part of the guitar the same way. The 355 sounds like a 335. The 356 sounds more like a Les Paul. The 355 laminated construction & size, vs the 356 carved from one piece of mahogany body, with a solid maple cap, are the main construction differences. This isn’t confirmation bias on my part, because when I bought the 356, I was expecting it to sound like a 335, & it didn’t. It still sounded amazing, but more like a Les Paul than a 335. 2. The resonance in the body has to have some transfer through the pickup. Anyone who’s ever owned a fully hollow body guitar(Gretsch & Casino for me) & had a cranked amp created the squealing feedback loop, even when you are muting any vibration in the strings, knows what I’m saying. Once again, I used to think all of that was BS & the pickup & player was 99% of the sound of the guitar.

I love your videos, they are always so informative. Keep up the good work. Greetings from Germany

Great video. I would like to know which single coil and humbuckers are more conducive to midrange and high frequencies.

Seymour Duncan claims that the string is magnetized and then vibrates over the coil creating the sound - not the string "disturbing the magnetic field". I've read up on it and apparently you can test it by putting another pickup on top (upside down) with no magnets and it will sound exactly the same as the pickup in the guitar magnetizing the string.. SD talk about this all the way back in the 70s.

You're the best Dylan ! Chill from France !

I've been loving your videos! Question (possibly a myth) does a higher output pickup (e.g. a pickup with stronger magnets) reduce the length of time that a guitar will sustain for assuming all other factors are equal (same strings, same pickup height, same guitar, etc)

well, great video ! I would just argue that from The physicists perspective and Seth Lover himself, it's the way the string moves being megnetized that matters. you can magnet a string and not magnetize a pickup and it will work perfectly. some sites demo it very well. pup magnet is used to magnetize locally the string. In the end it's all the same but technically, you have to move a magnet on a coil to generate current and tension, not to move metal on a magnetized coil. Sure you know that already but it can be counter intuitive for the whole.

There are ways you can wind chokes in radios that limit their internal capacitance, but that's another whole system. And by the way that winding style is used mostly in the MHz RF region and would likely not fit in a pickup bobbin anyway. As always many thanks.

This video was made almost 2 years ago, so I doubt you'll even see this but just in case (or someone else might know the answer)... I understand the difference between a microphone and a guitar pickup. I have also read about why people started making solid guitar bodies instead of hollow guitar bodies. My question is: since a pickup doesn't pick up "audio" (what we hear with our ears), why do so many pro guitar players say that they can tell how a guitar will sound like by playing it unplugged and why do they say that the louder a guitar is (unplugged), the better it will sound when plugged in? If a guitar vibrates (or is resonant, as they say), that means that some of the energy produced by the strings is being transferred into the body of the guitar. Wouldn't it be better if the strings would keep all of the energy, meaning that the body would barely vibrate? One answer that I got to this question is that the vibration of the body is being transferred back into the strings, amplifying the overtones and harmonics...but I'm not sure if I'm convinced that this is true. Do you know the answer to this?

You are right - more guitar players need to understand what you just described. I gotta say, I thought you were going to go down the "tonewood" rabbit hole when you mentioned peak frequencies. I would love to hear your thoughts on the influence the neck could possibly have on the strings vibrations between the end nodes. - do you have an episode on that craziness? Thanks :)

Idk, my SG standard is pretty resonant unplugged. That could be because it's a 90s batwing that has a much bigger route than the small pickguard ones.

And ... don't forget the pots and caps are part of the guitar system and push that pickup around. I used to swap pickups until I figured out how much effect those other components have. Pots alone have 20% tolerance range.... that's why players know to "run the racks to find a good one!", there is so much variation.

I get what you're saying about the way how pickups work is rudimentary and ancient technology yes, but the physics involving that single fact of the string creating voltage by interrupting a certain magnet field is waaaaaay more complicated to understand because we can't explain really why without involving quantic physics and string theory and all that, it's a simple question that lead to a very complicated and intricate answer, if you want to understand exactly what is going on

zoom out, zone out, and play guitar ! I must go get that on a shirt !!

Thanks for another great video.

Dude I love you. Subbed.

New to your channel. I'm always looking to learn new things.

Thank you! Gear snobs kind of irritate me and telling me that a $35 PU can't be as good as a Duncan or Dimarzio really torks me off man. I have medium high end guitars that don't sound as good as some of the cheap guitars with inexpensive PU's that I have. When you find your sound or PU's you like... You know where to get more.

Where was Dylan during the Great Tonewood War? Stupendous shattering of superstition with science and reason...how dare he!

Sage words bro. Cheers.

Thanks for the info, I was not sure if pickups had any microphonic capability, but from what I understand from this video, they only pickup variations in their electromagnetic field caused by string vibrations. However, one big difference in tone is what type of strings are used, for example, flatwounds versus roundwounds. While both types are generally made of different alloys and are note necessarily the same gage, can I deduce that a given flatwound string set that would be made of the same alloy, with the same exact size and tension for each string, to that of a given roundwound string set would sound exactly the same? If so, why don't string manufacturers make them?

Jellobucker. Make it happen 🤣

... 03/20/2020: Seems like the Schecter Guitar Research PT Fastback IIB Electric Guitar Metallic Red Black Pickguard a great guitar. Three questions: (1) What is the battery box used for? (2) Can the guitar paly without a battery in the battery box? (3) I do not know much about pickups, so why do these pickups have three pole screws to one side of the pickup, and on the other pickup it has three screw poles to the other side?

Your intro looks like you're standing in my backyard. lol.

Zooming out has resulted in me zooming in pedals, amps, speakers, and even plugs and solders.

Greetings, Wouldn't the material of the strings be a bigger factor? Given that steel "wiggles the jello" differently than, say, nickel, wouldn't nickel strings change tone far more than a different pickup? Also, how a string is put together (flat wound for example) contributes far more to sustain than any pickup, no?

if the nonmetalic details that you mention do not matter, then why is it that pickups in low priced guitars can sound pretty bad, so what is it about inexpensive pickups that is wrong and makes them sound bad,

I would have liked to believe scatter-wound is better than machine-wound, because I don't own the machine.

Do a video with 3 pickups on tele and different wiring techniques

Do you use an oscilloscope to measure the reasonant peak of your pickups? If yes, can you make a video of the process?

Resonant peak.impedence. capacitive and inductive reactance.. let's get our learnin' on! :)

I have seen a couple of old pictures of Danny Gatton playing his old 295. P90 equipped. He has the screws in the p90 backed out to different degrees under every string. Some as nuch as a third of the way up. I have spacers made for my p90 guitars to help balance them and get them close enough to the strings. I would be very afraid to mess with those screws for fear of wrecking the oickup. Nobody ever talks about those screws. What is your take?

You would be a great 1st year Ohm's law teacher.

Thank you. Question: How does the voltage created in the coil travel to the output wires?

Is that last one like saying I like Do ME Baby by Melisa Morgan more than Prince's but Prince's is better?

Alnico 5 magnets are a graded product. That goes for other grades also. It's just a magnet that the manufacturer has produced that fits a specific "grade." That is similar to saying a Corvette is a sports car.......and a Cadillac is a luxury car. Why buy one to try to make it into the other? Just drive the car.

I am from Hyderabad, India. I had an electric guitar with single coil pickups and I became very familiar with the tone from it. Then I got a Fender American Special SSS strat, and its pickups sound completely different. Why is this so? Thanks for your erudite reply in advance.

Hi again with one more question, as you mentioned the baseplates: what effect does it have on the sound anyway? Like if you have a baseplate made from brass like on the cheap Chinese humbuckers against steel (or whatever it is), used on more expensive brand name ones? I noticed for example Schaller having changed from brass in their old pickups to steel in their newer ones. So there has to be something to it, which I couldn't really figure out as yet.

you forgot the quality of the winding wire , the nickle to copper content etc. Nice videos though. I had a ceramic pick up in guitar I built that was out of this world, the most beautiful tone, a one of a kind instrument.

Does this gentleman Dylan build and sale pickups and if so is there a place to get accurate sound samples and comparisons with popular pickups on the market.

By pure magic obviously

11:32 I really thought he was going to say "Chances are... you are gonna suck anyway."

Hi Dylan , if the sound on an electric guitar isn’t about the wood or shape of the guitar , but the pickup only, why do Gibson Les Pauls go to all that trouble of shaping the guitar he way they do and using the wood they use ? Have I missed something ?

“Relax and play your guitar!” 👍

I only use maple spacers when making "vintage style" pickups. Otherwise I use plastic

But I gotta have... I'd love to know what makes a difference in tone because pickup are remarkably different in tone and it all seems very simple. You have bobbins, wire, magnets. Lock it in to just single coils, they sound different but they all have magnets, bobbins, wires and maybe a cover. Maybe they are hand wound or maybe machine, different strengths of magnets, somewhere you have a capacitor. One is $200 and another is$20. Sheesh...

hahahahaha. this one hitt meg XD

I have a request that for some reason has nothing about it anywhere...I've been doing alot of building the last couple years and everything has come out great. I have made a few pickups from other pickups laying around with no real specs to aim for. But now I wanna make some humbuckers with a specific goal in mind....humbuckers built for heavy metal. I have looked everywhere from the Seymour pages, blogs, youtube, google etc. Theres not 1 friggin bit of advice or specs, nothing. I find it baffling that nobody has tackled this. Granted there are obviously some range involved in metal sound. Theres a billion different combinations of parts and winding techniques. But I'm looking for something with some punchy heavy hitting low end with a warm clear highs and no real need for mids considering I pretty much have them scooped out . kinda-ish like Dimebag Darrells if he used a 7 string. I'm putting these in a baritone 7 string with a 28.625in scale (yeah shes a beast lol) I'm tuned to A to a G sharp. I love brutal lowland but I also play tons of leads, solos and lots of pinch harmonics and squeals. I just need to know what I should get for parts (magnets, plates, poles, ceramic or alknico etc.) And the best method to wind to achieve this particular sound. I have 43g copper wire already from when I bought it to make the other pickups. But I would greatly appreciate some advice cuz I cant find anything out there. I ran into this channel while looking around and you clearly know what you're doing. I'm not doing this to take business or anything it's just an almost bucket list type of thing. I can die happy knowing I made some badass pickups I can be proud of. But any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thx

Hello Dylan! I have a question concerning the effect of wire gauge on the effective output of the pickup, which is kind of a thought experiment: Say we have a humbucker pickup, which is machine wound with AWG 42 to say 8,00 kOhms with relatively full bobbins. Now we (in thought) stretch the AWG 42 wire from that pickup to AWG 43 and rewind the same pickup with the exact same wire, using machine winds (the same like before). The resistance of the pickups might end up increasing to roughly around 13,50 kOhm that way. The mass of wire on the pickup will be exacly the same either way. It's clear that we will end up with considerably more winds on the bobbins, resulting in a diminished treble response. But in which way will this have an effect on the overall output of the pickup, when everything else stays the same? Will it be effectively be the same output, as there is the same amount (mass) of wire on the bobbins? Will it be more, as there are more winds on the bobbins? Or will it be less? And what else will effectively change when every other factor stays the same?

Great

I love it when people say " it doesn't make that much of a difference" . Of course it doesn't. A 500k les paul only sounds maybe 3- 5% different than a 3k but it that % that we as guitar players chase. Things like wood density/ material, cap size/ material, even neck size and feet board material all make small differences to tone. So now for me to take your advice on anything you'll have to prove all that wrong and it's been tried time and time again on you tube and graphs don't lie.

So I have a question concerning a certain type of pickup that I have heard in a few videos that really sound good. Should I send you an email for a more in depth discussion?

You also need to talk about planting some trees, Dude! (Ignore this if you are also running a turf business from your back yard)

This is not quite right. Moving a piece of metal through a magnetic field won't do much of anything. The only way to create an electric current is to move the magnet itself. So what actually happens is that the magnets in the pickups magnetize the string which turns them into effective magnets, and vibrating the strings will then induce a current which gets picked up by the pole pieces. As a matter of fact you can remove the magnets from the pickups completely, and as long as you find another way of magnetizing the strings you will still get a signal.

what color jello do you need LOL

I have somehing I'm curious of. Have you ever thought about coppers diamagnetic and aluminiums paramagnetic properties? Because the direction of the induced current by a changing em field on copper vs ally is opposite. I was wondering if you layered copper and aluminium together would they have a counteracting/dampening effect on the em field through the materials. Its probably not worth doing it if technically makes sense. I'm not sure if if does however. Perhaps it would just oppose the magnetic field.

The thing here is people ignore physics during school ( or drop it) and then put some kinda religion on every place where science should be.

I can solve a statistical problem for 2 standard deviations. I can solve an algebraic formula for X. But I cannot understand how a pick up works, no matter how many videos I see.

I appreciate your videos and your perspective. But you were wrong on some of your early statements in this video. If you stand 10 feet away from someone playing an unamplified electric guitar, what you're hearing is mostly the guitar's body resonating, not the string itself. All the "nut material"," bridge design", "guitar wood", and "guitar construction" chatter definitely overemphasizes this, but the overall resonance of an instrument is a legit component of how it sounds. If you put the exact same pickups in a strat and a 335, they will sound different.

agree... just have question..if you take 2 pickups, and match EQ line, so that all freq are at same dbs, why does it still sound different?

Eric Johnson and his kind gave this thumbs down. "Arm me with harmony...You down wit' OCD?...Yeah you know me!".

If that "magnetic field thing" is true, you should be able to use an electric motor or dynamo as a pickup.... Tested, myth confirmed

I’m sorry but for me…you’re wrong about how a pickup work. Strings not perturb a core magnetic field. The magnetic field is present on Each string, magnetized by magnet.

Gauss = "Gowss"

I tried to have this same exact type of conversation on tone, etc.. a few years ago with a local builder, because I wanted to have a guitar built, he just started laughing, after I started to describe and get into details, he did not take me seriously, and after the first time I called, I could tell that this was going nowhere, never called him back. Seems these days people absolutely refuse to have any kind of adult intelligent in depth conversation about anything. They just instantly default to "google it". There is even a pedal guy here in this city, I went to his shop, asked him stuff about some pedals, he told me directly in a childish snarky 3rd grader voice.. "I am not going to answer your questions, google it" I will not spend one dime with that sorry bastard! The ego and rudeness of these fuckers is astounding! You would think if they wanted to make some money they would help the customers, NO they expect to fully bypass any human element and go straight for the max cash and thats all! I cant stand it! Thankfully Dylan is here instead of those jackoffs. Finally a guy that will teach us some stuff!

Talk about active pick ups

Bro, you're cool. But you can't make people look at the fence for 15 minutes :)

Now I'm more confused.

I can "geek out" about the physics of pickups, guitar material, etc... and back it up with _real physics_ that don't involve a whiteboard, salt, and shady business/personal practices on a 7th grade level...ahem... And the best advice I could possible give when choosing a pickup is still _Trial and Error_ .Because there are so many variables that go into chasing a desired tone, that those killer (sometimes expensive?) pickups that made one guitar sound perfect...can sound like perfect crap in another guitar of the same make and model (all relative terms, of course.). You have to match the pickups to the guitar. ...or just make do with what you've got and have a great time.

Gibson Les Paul

Good advice Dylan, zoom out and play guitar 😀.

A conversation with the pickup builder? Can I have a conversation with Seymour Duncan? Or do you refer to a one man business? Where in the most cases that person itself believes in all of this voodoo bullshit and is going to tell you exactly that crap.

There are too many goof balls out there that are trying to copy another guy's sound. Whole YT channels devoted to trying to nail Kurt Cobain's sound on Pennyroyal Tea down to the exact speakers, effects, guitars, pickups, etc...Give it up, and create your own sound with what you got!!!! There's a guy out there with a cheap Squire Strat with some cheap effect pedals that could have the next ground breaking single. This is why I don't buy into the Klon overdrive craze. You're wasting your money! Especially if the Klon malfunctions....Good luck finding a guy that can get through all that black goop to repair an electrolytic cap, or whatever....$10 grand down the drain!

GOD thank you. I'm so sick of the cork sniffing "tonewood" people with solidbody electrics. I always ask, how does the resonating frequencies of the wood get into those tiny magnetic fields in the poles? ESPECIALLY the fretboard wood. Gimme a break! "ROSEWOOD IS DARKER!" "MAPLE IS BRIGHTER!" Again, HOW does the material of the board get into the dang magnets? Acoustics on the other hand, people don't care ENOUGH about the wood sourced in their instruments. Get as nice a piece of spruce and as nice a Rosewood set as you can!

He looks like a darker glenn fricker.

My take away from this vid is "relax and just play the guitar."

Subbbbbbbed

7:14 oh c'mon Dylan!.... it's not "gauze" It's "Gauss" as in Carl Friedrich Gauss it rhymes with "house" .... If you're going to talk about the science of magnetism, get his name right!

First!