Guitar Pickups
The job of a pickup is to convert the vibrational energy of the string into an electrical signal. This is accomplished by vibrating the metal string within a magnetic field which comes from the magnet and coils in the pickup. It's actually a pretty simple concept, but with an enormous amount of room for variations.
The primary factors that will affect how your pickup sounds are the position of the pickup, the strength of the magents, the number of windings on the coil, and the number of coils. Single coil pickups sound extremely different from double coil, or humbucking pickups.
In the early days of the electric guitar, the exact same type of pickup was often used in the bridge, middle, and neck positions on the guitar. Therefore, the only thing that made them sound different was the position. On modern guitars, a lot of people put different combinations of pickups in the different positions to emphasize certain characteristics. One might use a higher output pickup in the bridge position to give a punch for leads, and a mellower pickup in the bridge position for those "sensitive" songs.
The strength of a pickup, often called how "hot" the pickup is, can be determined by either the strength of the magnet, or by the presence of an active signal booster attached to the pickup. The layman's definition of active versus passive circuitry is that active circuitry needs a battery. EMG pickups are probably the most famous active pickups on the market. They use a 9 volt battery to power a small internal preamp which increases the output and allows for active equalization that is impossible to do with passive circuitry. The pickps themselves are not high output, but after the preamp boosts them, they can be very high ouput. An additional feature of active pickups is that they have a very low impedance and can make long cable runs easily compared to passive pickups with a high output. One thing to be cautious of is that stronger passive pickups can interfere with the vibration of the string, and can actually cause odd "ghost notes" to be present. This can also happen if you set the pickup's pole pieces too close to the strings. I see this mostly on strat style guitars with high output single coil pickups like the Texas Specials.
Additional windings on the coil increases the output as well, but favors the midrange frequencies. Because of that, you can only go so far before the pickup start to sound muddy from not having enough high frequencies in it. In addition, additional windings, or heavier winding strings, increase pickup impedance which causes more signal loss over long cable runs.
Humbucking pickups sometimes look just like two single coil pickups stuck together, which is not far from the reality. The sound of the humbucker is generally "fatter" with more midrange. They also tend to be higher output than single coil pickups. You can't really get more different in sound than a single coil versus a humbucking pickup. As the name implies, humbucking pickups electrically cancel out hum which adds to their appeal when using a lot of distortion.
The shape of the magnetic field around the pickup will also affect how much of the string is "seen" by the pickup. The pole-pieces you see on strat single coil pickups are individual magnets and give a small, focused magnetic field, "seeing" only a small section of the string vibration. On the other hand, the screws often found on a humbucking pickup conduct the magnetic field from a magnet placed underneath the cap of the pickup. There is another set of magnets in the other coil, so the combined coils "see" a larger length of string.
The material that the magnets in a pickup are made of can also greatly affect the tone. Alnico II magnets are generally associated with sweet, vintage sound, while Alnico V magnets are stronger and give a brighter, sharper attack and tone. Ceramic magnets are the hardest, and are great for hard rock players due to their high output and aggressive sound.
Pickups have a lot to do with the sound of your guitar, some say as much as 50%, though it's hard to quantify. So good pickups are worth the money. Cheap pickups feeback easier (are microphonic) and aren't as clear sounding as well made pickups. A cheap or "okay" guitar can be made to sound really good with a good set of pickups. It's long been common practice to buy a Mexican made strat for about $300 - $400 and put a nice set of Seymour Duncan or Fender pickups in it for $200 and it will sound every bit as good as a $1000 strat to most people. The best sounding general purpose pickups tend to be labelled vintage or slightly hot. Really hot pickups are great for overdrive, but usually too midrange heavy on clean tones. Single coils are synonymous wit the "strat" sound, while humbuckers typeify the "Les Paul" sound. If you want to make your strat sound more like a Les Paul, sell it and buy a Les Paul, because you'll never get there. Even drilling out your strat and putting in humbuckers won't change the body woods and materials that make a Les Paul sound like a Les Paul and a Strat sound like a Strat.
Some of my favorite strat pickups are:
Seymour Duncan SH-PG1 Pearly Gates Pickup Black/Creme Neck One of my favorite Les Paul replacement pickups
Seymour Duncan JB Jr Pickup White Neck The JB Jr. is a great pickup for strat players who use a lot of overdrive and want more punch from their lead pickup
Fender Fat 50s Strat Pickup Set The best and most inexpensive way to turn your squire or overseas made strat into a killer strat.
There are many great pickups and manufacturers out there. I suggest you stick with the tried and true like Seymour Duncan, Gibson, Fender, Dimarzio, etc. Hopefully the information in this article will help you make an informed decision about your guitar pickups.
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