Following up on my speaker article in Premier Guitar magazine’s July 2017 issue is this August 2017 article explaining how guitar pickups work, Guitar Pickups 101.
Pickups are based on the same basic principles as speakers – how coils of wire, placed in the vicinity of magnets, behave. The fundamental principles are 5th grade science stuff. However, the type of magnet, the copper windings on the coil, the effect of mirror-imaging two coils in some pickup designs to cancel unwanted hum, and the varied arrangements of the components in different pickup designs all make a difference in sound performance. As does the type of guitar strings.
Illustrations this time were relative easy – colorize (and color code) various pickup patent drawings.
