A lot of the time we find mid-range price guitars are really well made but the pickups can leave a lot to be desired. Often neck pickups can sound too muddy or unusable, because, lets face it, there's not much you can do with a big boomy muffled neck pickup. You still need clarity when you flick that switch!

Our aim is to give you more options with your instrument. To learn more about pickups and how they work, visit our general info page to learn about the fundamentals.

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When changing your pickups, ask yourself these questions first:

• Do I want to swap like for like or try a different type of pickup?

• What do I want to achieve with my sound? Fatter, thinner or better quality?

• Will it fit? (eg swapping a single coil for a humbucker)

• Am I able to install it or will someone need to do it for me?

• Do you want to eliminate hum through your rig?

• Will changing the pickups give me the desired outcome or do I need to look deeper?

 

We can answer all those for you and hopefully get you on the road to a better sound with your guitar. Here's some handy things to keep in mind when browsing our store.

• Vintage spec pickups​ are usually brighter sounding

• Not all our pickups are wax potted as standard, so if you tend to play with a lot of distortion or overdrive, go for a pickup that's wax potted to avoid feedback. Alternatively, if you've got your heart set on something that doesn't come potted as standard, just let us know when you buy and we can do it free of charge.

• String spacing can play its part with pickups too. Our humbuckers string spacing differs depending on wether you are buying a neck or bridge pickup. On older models, the string spacing is often the same on the bridge and neck.

• Our bridge pickups are shipped as standard with 52.5mm spacing and neck pickups with 49.2mm spacing. If you require 49.2mm bridge spacing as with older models, please be sure to let us know when ordering. 

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Do I want my pickups RWRP?

When buying a set you may want to take into consideration RWRP which stands for 'reverse wound, reverse polarity'. This is a method of cancelling hum with two single coil pickups. Because single coil pickups are so good at picking up interference, a method was developed to put a stop to this, the humbucker. 

As humbuckers are two coils already 'selected' together, the hum is bucked/cancelled, the same can be achieved with two single coil pickups selected together, effectively creating a humbucker. The manufacture to achieve this is by wrapping one coil in one direction eg clockwise and the other counter-clockwise, then the two magnets are orientated with one facing north up and the other south. This sums the signal of the two coils and cancels out the noise of the two. 

This also gives the distinctive sound most popularly hear on Stratocasters in the 2 and 4 positions and the middle position on Telecasters.

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Overwinding

Another option available is overwinding. This is available with almost all our pickups. Most traditional pickups have a standard amount of winds which give us the sweet spot that we all know and love. If we add or take away from that, we can change the sound of the pickup and the inductance of the coil. For example; a Stratocaster pickup traditionally has around 8000 to 8200  winds. Fewer winds will give us a brighter sound and more will darken the sound. The more we add this will also affect the inductance of the coil as it gets larger, giving it a higher output, but again taking away the top end the more winds we add. 

We can also boost this effect by using thinner wire, enabling us to add extra winds. 8000 winds with 42AWG wire will not have the same effect as 8000 winds of 43AWG wire. The DC output will be greater but the coil itself will be smaller and here the variable game begins. Which do you trade to get your desired tone, your coil size or your tone?

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