Will there ever be anything else?

[AniML]

In terms of size and shape there are a very limited number of electric guitar pickups in use and in production today.

Most Popular:
Humbuckers
Strat single coils
Tele neck / bridge
P90s

Less Popular:
Minihums
Filtertrons, etc
Repros of Dano lipsticks, Dearmonds, toasters, and other earlier designs

Given the enormous popularity and success of the first group, will there ever be new pickup designs that are so significant that it will drive guitar manufacturers and designers to adopt new pickup form factors into their instruments?

And except for the manufacturing process, the technology hasn't changed that much in 50 years either.

Are guitar pickups just one of those things where the physical design has for the most part been perfected and completely standardized?

[Mephis]

There's optical pickups, piezos, and lots of other things...

I doubt there will be any newly invented pickups that will ever catch on, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

[AniML]

There's optical pickups, piezos, and lots of other things...

I doubt there will be any newly invented pickups that will ever catch on, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

Sorry, I meant in the world of electro-magnetic pickups

[darnright]

Who knows, but I can see someone designing some kind of neck/fretboard pickups. These would activate as your fingers touch the fretboard. I can see strings going away on some guitars, with only fretboard pickups to make sound. Very touch sensitive for volume and pitch, using an active pick wired to guitar, whole new realms of music could open up. Who knows?
-dave

[Kosh Naranek]

Interesting topic.

We've gotten used to the way an electric guitar should sound. And electromagnetic pickups are part of what makes that sound. Les Paul once talked about how in the future, he foresaw the use of new pickup technologies that would capture a more full range sound. But most guitarists now wouldn't even want that. We don't even like the cellophane high end of a guitar recorded direct without a speaker or speaker simulator.

There are various non-mainstream styles where non-mainstream guitar tones would work. Some of Buckethead's ambient/experimental stuff uses some fairly unconventional guitar tones. Guitarists looking for new and unconventional tones may embrace new pickup technologies. In the past, it was jazz and prog rock musicians who first embraced technologies like guitar synthesis. Perhaps some of them will be open to new pickup technologies as well. I can see Adrian Belew or John Abercrombie using a new pickup design in some of their work.

Actually, Seymour Duncan attempted to revolutionize pickup design with the Parallel Axis Trembuckers. He was quoted in an interview as saying "Pickups are designed all wrong". Trembuckers were an effort to correct some of the design shortcomings of conventional pickups that Seymour believed decreased sustain robbed tone. And Parallel Axis Trembuckers are still with us because they sound great, but aren't popular with everyone, and haven't become the new "typical" pickup design. Most pickups are still built the old way, because we guitarists voted with our wallets and we're content with them being designed as they are.

[Kosh Naranek]

Who knows, but I can see someone designing some kind of neck/fretboard pickups. These would activate as your fingers touch the fretboard.

REmember the Bunker touch guitar, back in the 80's? I have no idea how it worked. It had wierd looking pickups. I saw one at a guitar show last year.