A bass guitar pickup consists of a magnet wrapped with copper wire. When vibrating bass strings disturb its magnetic field, which in turn produces small voltage fluctuations in its coil, which are detected by the bass amp and converted into sound. There are various kinds of pickups.
Types of Pickups
There is a wide selection of bass pickups to suit any playing style and environment. Each works by sensing vibrations from strings’ magnetic fields and translating them into electrical signals which are amplified and transformed into sound. Based on their construction, there are two primary types of bass guitar pickups – single-coil (sometimes known as J or P pickups) and double-coil (humbucker). Single-coil pickups – sometimes called J or P pickups – feature one coil wrapped around a magnet to produce a bright, clear tone. Single-coil pickups may pick up background noise and produce an annoying hum. To counteract this effect, two single-coil pickups can be combined together into a double-coil (humbucker) pickup that eliminates hum while providing players with greater signal strength and increased output.
Humbucker bass pickups have long been revered for their gritty power and versatile use in genres ranging from metal (AC/DC and Children of Bodom) to jazz (John Patitucci and Bernard Edwards), as well as mini-humbuckers, rail humbuckers, split coil humbuckers and covered/uncovered varieties that provide tones from classic rock through contemporary styles.
Single Coil Pickups
Single coil pickups convert string vibrations into an electrical signal that can be amplified. They produce bright and clear tones in clean tones, and excel at cutting through dense effects-laden environments. Players looking for blues/funk music with plenty of clucks/twangs are typically drawn towards these pickups because of their wide array of rich clucks/twangs/clucks while still excelling at expressive string bends and soulful licks can choose this style.
PAFs tend to produce 60 cycle hum more easily than other pickup types, which can become distracting if playing with high amounts of gain/distortion. Nonetheless, they remain an indispensable feature on rock guitars used for rock, metal, blues and folk genres, including those played by rock pioneers such as Buddy Guy or Jimi Hendrix himself.
Installing a single-coil pickup involves first pulling back the black wire’s covering (using wire strippers may help) until approximately 1/2″ of coil wire is exposed, then carefully feeding both white and black hookup wires through their respective eyelets on the bottom flatwork and soldering each of them to their coil wires. Next, slide the pickup cover over top of this flatwork while pushing down on its center tab so it fits into where two fine coil wires come up through eyelets from eyelets; once this has been completed use file or sandpaper to slightly round off fiber flatwork edges so they won’t catch on thin coil wire.
Humbucker Pickups
Humbucker pickups are popular with guitarists looking to add power and punch to their guitar tone. Boasting two coils wound in opposite directions, humbuckers help reduce noise and humming associated with single-coil pickups while offering richer midrange frequencies – often used with rock and metal styles but can also work for those preferring cleaner sounds.
Humbuckers come in various forms, from vintage designs with plain enamel wire for a mellow bluesy sound to modern ceramic types with aggressive attack for heavier styles. Some models even include coil taps to isolate one of their two coils for single coil-style tone.
Sweetwater offers an impressive selection of bass guitars featuring humbuckers from top manufacturers such as DiMarzio, Seymour Duncan and EMG. Our collection includes pickups designed specifically for 4-string basses as well as active mini and active humbuckers with multiple tones to offer maximum tone variation.
Split Coil Pickups
Split coil pickups offer the best of both worlds: their construction, wiring configurations, and tonal options make them highly adaptable to various genres and playing styles.
Split-coil pickups utilize physical separation of their coil into two distinct sections with its own set of pole pieces, creating an independent operation and producing an anti-hum effect. Depending on their combination of windings and magnet types, split-coil pickups can produce tones ranging from warm and thick to clear and articulate.
Bass players can further personalize their tone using switches or knobs to combine both coils. By changing their relative intensity, players can customize their sound. Lowering pickup height may provide warmer and rounder soundscape, while increasing distance between pickup and strings may increase brightness and attack.
Split-coil pickups offer bassists who specialize in playing diverse musical genres an ideal solution. Their versatile nature enables them to deliver clean tones with less distortion, crisp high mids that cut through a mix, enabling them to be heard above other instruments; plus they work great when applied with dense effects-laden tones like Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine.
Piezo Pickups
Piezo pickups are non-magnetic pickups that detect physical vibration from guitar strings and body of instrument itself. While typically found on acoustic guitars, these pickups can also be found on banjos with internal pickups or more unusual instruments like mandolins with built-in pickups.
A piezoelectric pickup works on the principle that certain crystal materials produce electricity when stressed or twisted, and uses this ability to sense vibrations from your strings and convert them to electrical signals for your amplifier to process. Here you can shape these signals through controls or adjust how they sound by making adjustments accordingly.
Piezo pickups provide several distinct advantages: one being their insensitivity to ambient noise or feedback – an issue commonly faced with microphones and pickups relying on magnets – as well as being able to accurately reproduce your guitar’s distinctive tone.
Piezo pickups are long, skinny devices designed to sit beneath the saddle of your guitar’s bridge (hence their name). They consist of an elongated metal housing with a conductor strip and piezoelectric material sandwiched inside, making up its core. Due to these rigid parts being in contact with one another, most undersaddle piezo pickups cannot bend easily and should only be bent minimally for banjo use (unless using them to play solo instruments like guitar). However, LR Baggs offers ribbon style piezo pickups which utilize less rigid conductor material so can bend quite flexibly fit snugly into slots or holes without hassle with its flat saddle bottom covered overhang.
Optical Pickups
Optic pickups utilize LED and phototransistor components to detect string vibration, unlike magnetic ones which rely solely on magnetic field disturbance. Vibration from strings near the sensor displaces an infra red field and interrupts lightwaves, creating a signal. A phototransistor then converts this interruption into voltage variations depending on frequency of vibration; making optical pickups highly responsive, capturing pitches much more quickly than their magnetic counterparts.
Optic pickups provide many advantages for bass players. First and foremost, they don’t interfere with the natural vibrations of your strings, allowing them to sustain naturally and fade out linearly without sudden stops or distortion. Furthermore, these sensitive pickups are capable of reading small vibrations that cannot even be felt with fingertips – an invaluable asset when seeking maximum sustain from their instrument.
One disadvantage of optical pickups is their susceptibility to ambient lighting, which may cause distortion to their signal and require protection from direct sunlight or stage lighting. To get optimal performance from optical pickups it’s essential that they remain free from ambient light sources like sun glare.
New technology is currently under development that could provide an answer by using sensors to filter out wavelengths of light that interfere with traditional pickups, providing a beautiful new sound for your instrument. Light4Sound recently used this technique to develop their oPik reflective mode pickup which provides unparalleled tonal flexibility while offering individual string volume adjustments.