If you want to play metal on the guitar, which pickups are best for tone and overall sound quality – Humbuckers or Single Coil pickups? Let’s investigate…
If you’re not sure about the difference between humbuckers and single coil pickups, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you’re relatively new to guitar.
If that’s correct, it is probably worthwhile covering off a few things before we get into the differences between humbuckers and single pickups.
Let’s start with the absolute basics.
What is a Guitar Pickup & How Does It Work?
In order to make any noise whatsoever, your guitar HAS to have pickups. In its simplest form, a pickup – whatever the style – is a magnet with wire wrapped around it.
That’s the ELI5 version of how guitar pickups work. We could take a deep-dive into the science but that’d be boring.
If you’re anything like me, you neither care nor want to know more than that.
And that’s fine – as long as you know the basics, you can pretty much get away with most things.
OK, we know how a guitar pickup works (in a basic fashion), but there are actually more than two styles of pickup available – and they’re all slightly different.
You have single coil pickups, humbuckers, and P90 pickups – these are the most commonly used styles in modern electric guitars.
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