Questions about high output pickups

[Béla]

In essence, what I want to know, is why would anyone need high output pickups at all?

As I understand it, the difference between a lower and a higher output pickup is in the number of turns of wire. The higher output pickup will have more turns, but this will also make it have a higher inductance, thus it will have a lower resonant frequency, and a "darker" tone.

I have noticed from experiments, that wiring a capacitor across a pickup will do just the same, it will lower the cutoff frequency.
Is this change in response different from having more turns? Wouldn't a high output pickup sound the same as a low output pickup with a correct "matching" capacitor (every other factor being identical, with matched levels)?

I've also read that higher output pickups are used to get more distortion.
I don't know about others, but I have never encountered an amplifier, or distortion stompbox that didn't have enough distortion when I turned the gain knob to 10. It's more like it was too much up there, even with lower output guitars.

If this logic is right, it is not the output that sets the limit of distortion, but other factors, namely mechanical microphonics, and noise level. A guitarist will keep turning up the gain until
a) it sounds right
b) the pickup squeals from microphonic feedback
c) the noise will be unbearable

So do high output pickups have better microphonic response then lower output pickups?
Do high output pickups have a better signal to noise ratio?


Am I missing something here? Or is "high output" just a marketing term used to sell bad sounding pickups?
(edit: okay, maybe not necessarily "bad sounding", but the high output pickup will still be less flexible)

[GlennW]

Why do some people feel the need for a 300+ HP engine to go to work?

Mostly marketing to me. Someone has a guitar with pickup A and someone else wants to sell pickup B, so the guy with B has to make up a reason for the guy with A to buy his.

I think a lot of weaker pickups sound better.

[dazzlindino]

isnt what a pickup actually does, is just move electrons?

[Béla]

isnt what a pickup actually does, is just move electrons?

The changing magnetic field moves the free electrons, but what are you trying to ask really?

[David Schwab]

Back when the first commercial replacement hot pickup came out, the DiMarzio Super Distortion humbucker, amps weren't like they are now. Now you have all these high gain amps (Mesa Boogie being one of the first). But back in the 70's you have to crank amps really loud to get a good overdrive, and they didn't all have master volumes. The hot pickups helped lower the overdrive threshold.

Some people wanted more output from their guitars. This is also why you see Strats with humbuckers. Originally it was people trying to get a better lead tone (like Jeff Beck with his original Duncn JB).

This was also why people took the covers off humbuckers... just to get more juice out of the pickup.

There wasn't even as many distortion boxes out then.

Now these days you don't need loud pickups, but they do sound different. The resonant peak is lower, so you get a thicker midrangy tone.

[David King]

Ask an uninformed person to compare any two pickups and the hotter one will win every time. Louder = better to most folks. if you are trying to sell a lot of pickups to people who already have perfectly good pickups, then the only way to go is louder. I think this lead to a lot of inflation over the years. Did I mention most guitar players are partially deaf anyway?

[dazzlindino]

I dont think I heard what you wrote right...could you type a little louder?

[GlennW]

I'm getting a high-output keyboard next week.

[dazzlindino]

Im gonna go into the shop here in a while and try an 8 then a 16 ohm pickup, with my decible meter and just see if one pickup is louder than the other...
will report back scientific findings shortly.

[David Schwab]

Louder = better to most folks.

My older brother who is a professor in photography always used to say to me "make it good, or make it red!" He was referring to the proliferation of color photos of sunsets at a photo exhibit once!

So, make your pickups loud and red, and you will have a winner!

[David Schwab]

Im gonna go into the shop here in a while and try an 8 then a 16 ohm pickup, with my decible meter and just see if one pickup is louder than the other...
will report back scientific findings shortly.

DC resistance doesn't always have a correlation on output. The number of turns does. Thinner wire is higher resistance per inch, so a pickup with 1000 turns of 45 AWG will be higher resistance than one made with 1000 turns of 42.

They will be roughly the same output, but one will be brighter.

So "hot" pickups are not only wound with more turns, but they use thinner wire, which also increases the resistance. But you can have a PAF output level pickup wound with thinner wire, and that will have a higher resistance than the PAF, but not necessarily more output.

Another factor is "hot" pickups often use ceramic magnets to counteract the loss of highs in all the turns of wire. Ceramic magnets will usually give you a brighter louder tone.

[David Schwab]

I'm getting a high-output keyboard next week.

JUST USE BIG RED LETTERS!

[dazzlindino]

under the most scientific setting known to mankind , note the following:

SD jazz neck 94 db
SD 59 bridge 94 db
SD JB bridge 94 db
Dimar SD bridge 94 db
Seth Lovers Mother: wheelchair 94 yo
different perceived tones: yes
different perceived volume: no

[Possum]

...

yeah but brighter pickups SOUND louder. I keep running into guys who have a vintage guitar and they say "yeah HOT pickups" , well they are wrong, 7.6K P90 in one, thats not a hot pickup. Eddie Van Halen ....HOT pickups, no medium output PAF. A really hot pickup is dark and doesn't sound loud at all. I don't quite understand the hot pickup thing, when the first Dimarzio's came out there WERE Fender amps with master volume controls and there were alot of fuzz boxes and booster gizmos so its not like that was the main deal there. I think SUSTAIN is what they were looking for. Most of those metal heads play 9 guage strings and need a hot pickup to get any kind of sustain out of weenie teenie strings. So I think thats the big deal. I had our jam host try a proto PAF set I was working on, the main thing I was trying to hit was clarity so the set was almost like a heavy formvar vibe, alot of clarity but not sustain, so you had to work for your leads and they wouldn't cover up your mistakes. He didn't like them at all. He preferred his stock 12-16k epiphone bridge pickup in his cheap LP and 8 or 9K neck pickup, probably both 43 gauge. Sustain and power is what they want and just enough clarity...

[bbsailor]

Yearning for the sounds of yesteryear

Do high output pickups have a better signal to noise ratio?

Interesting comments to Bela's initial question. Now let's talk about the S/N ratio as it relates to high impedance, high output voltage-based design (vice current-based design) pickups.

Guitar pickups, which are designed to detect vibrating metal strings, also make pretty good antennas to pickup 60Hz or 50 Hz noise and noise emitted from nearby computers. Just try recording near your computer to find out.

Over the years, the pickup form factors have been pretty much been standardized between the single coil (SC) style and the humbucking (HB) style. Even those who want less noise in a SC style can find a humbucking arrangement meant to fit the SC form factor or can fit a single coil P90 style in a humbucking form factor. So, tradition has pretty much defined the basic pickup form factors.

The physics of putting as much wire on a bobbin that fits a particular form factor basically sets the upper limit of turns and wire diameter. In fact people who use very hot pickups may also try to use 1 Meg volume pots to minimize the loading only to be affected by the capacitance of the guitar cable which acts like turning the tone pot down slightly due the the 300pf of cable capacitance that has a greater impact on high Z pickups.

Microphones have what is known as low impedance in the 150 to 250 ohms impedance range and are not affected (much) by cable length. There are even commercially available 500 ohm to 50K ohms matching transformers that convert (1 to 10 turns ratio) the low Z and low output mic output to something more aligned with a high Z amp input circuit.

If currently designed high Z pickups have their coil turns scaled back by a factor of 10 and their wire size increased to a wire size between AWG30 to AWG38, a new breed of pickups could be made in the same SC or HB form factors that could be mounted in a guitar with 2.5K to 5K pots (scale the impedance down by the square of the turns ratio or by 100).

The net result is that these pickups will pick up less noise, having a better S/N ratio and not be affected much by the capacitance of the guitar cable. The transformer would be mounted at the amp and convert the low impedance guitar pickup to a high Z at the amp, restoring high frequencies that have classically and traditionally been attenuated by the pronounced 12 dB slope that occurs after the pickup self resonant point in high Z pickups.

The Les Paul recording guitars tried this many years ago but they never caught on. Maybe this design should be revisited in light of increased noise environments and the known limitations of high Z guitar pickups in these environments? Capacitors can always be added to simulate the effects of high Z pickups for those who yearn for the sounds of yesteryear.

Joseph Rogowski