Standard Coil vs. Humbucker?

[GuitarGuillermo]

I am an accoustic guy hoping to buy an electric soon. anyway, the electrics i've been looking at seem to have two different kinds of pickups, Single Coil and Humbucker, and i would like to know what the difference is and what are the strenghts or weaknesses of each.

[ESP_Viper]

Single coil pickups were the first design of pickups. A single coil will give you less bass in your sound than a humbucker. It will also have a lot more noise than a humbucker. Generally speaking, humbuckers are higher output than single coils. I prefer humbuckers over single coils for the most part. My humbuckers in my ESP have 4 conductors, so they can have split-coil operation. Which means you short out one of the coils in it to sound like a single coil pickup. So a 4 conductor pickup is like 2 single coils that you can select (w/ special wiring). There is also lots of other possibilities w/ 4 conductor wiring but they are confusing kinda. If you like I can explain the other modes you can use w/ lots of confusing wiring.

[captaintaco]

Giullermo. Single coils have an inherent hum to them. It's very slight and actually part of the single coil sound. They have a brighter sound than humbuckers.

Humbuckers are actually two single coils next to each other with opposite polarity. This opposite polarity cancels out the hum produced by a single coil. Hence the name 'humbucker'. A humbucking pickup has a warmer tone than a single coil.

I would suggest going to a music shop and sitting down with a few guitars with single coil pickups. Spend about an hour riffing there, if they let ya. You'll know what a single coil sound is after that. It's kind of thin and twangy...but in a good way. Then grab something with a humbucker or two and riff on that thing for about an hour. You'll notice right away that the humbucker has a much warmer, mellower tone to it.

Hope that info helps.

[Coffee]

Depends what your looking for in sound. Pickup type and quality are also affected by position of the pickups and even the composition of the guitar body. Don't decide on either a single coil or humbucker, decide on the guitar and its sound and what your looking for.

Personally, I bought a Yamaha AEX 502. It's a Garfield orange with two really ugly looking P-90 single coil pickups but I love it. The sides of the body are hollow, making it much more comfortable to play standing since it's much lighter. Lot's of tone variance between the pickups. The other guitar I want to buy is a Texas Stratocaster which has two single coil pickups, one at the fingerboard, and one mid-body plus a Pearly Gates Humbucker at the Bridge. It's awesome, but they're double the price of the Yamaha. (About a grand U.S.)

If you've never had the opportunity to fool around with an electric before, here's some tips for varying the sound.

Take a look at a fender strat. It has a five position slide switch on it. When the switch is pushed all the way back, it is the back pickup only. Next click forward is back pickup and mid combined. Next click is the middle pickup. Next is middle and neck pickup and furthest forward is neck only. This arrangement is pretty much standard on all electrics. A two pickup guitar will normally have a three position switch which switches between front and back and middle position will be both. When checking what they sound like, ask the clerk to set up the amp for clean sound. Go through all the pickup switch positions with tone at one on the guitar, then at five and then at 10. This will give you an idea of the guitars true clean sound.

Then ask the clerk to set up the amp with some distortion and try it all again. It also might be a good idea to take a friend who plays electric and have him go through it this way for you. He's less likely to be selfconcious about the sounds he's making. Playing through an amp is pretty exposing and if your not used to that kind of projection it can be tough but when you think you've narrowed it down to a couple of guitars, try it yourself, you may not like the feel.

I always swore that one day I'd own a Guild hollowbody electric guitar. They're a beautiful looking machine. I used to own a Guild D55 accoustic and you couldn't ask for a nicer guitar for jazz or most other styles that lend themselves to an accoustic sound. I'd take another D55 in a flash if I could justify the cash. Anyway, I sat down with a guild hollowbody electric about a month ago and was totally disgusted with it. It had great sound but it had a problem. I like playing leads quite high up the neck. The guitar had a cut-away neck design so you could play up the neck but the tenon (the part of the neck that attaches to the guitar body, was the same as on the accoustics which meant while you had a cutaway design, much of the high neck area was unavailable due to the thickness of the neck. It required a whole different hand position. I put it back on the rack disappointed. If you look at the Yamaha necks (I think they're all bolt ons) you'll see how much less neck is in the way for playing high.

One last thought. When you think you've got the guitar, try a few different amps. Their tonal qualities are different as well. If you currently have an amp, fine, be happy with it until you're used to the guitar. If it's not a great amp and you decide to buy a different one, take your own guitar with you to try out the amps. This puts something in your hands that your sure of and you are then looking for the amp that compliments your guitar.

[steve]

So basically if you're playing a heavy metal kinda sound you'd have the humbucker on during the heavy verse (since you'd be probably playing power chords)and then switch to the single coil during the solo???

[ESP_Viper]

Not neccissarily. It's all in the sound you want. The humbucker will give you more crunch and a fatter tone. THe single coil will give you a more mellow tone. It's just what tone you want. I prefer my bridge pickup in humbucker mode for most things.