Pickup 101

[Cazmarzak]

I'm kind new here so I hopw these don't sound like stupid questions.

1. Exactly how is a pickup made? I know there is a magnet and wires wound around some thing and then pole pieces, but how are they put together and besides the different kinds of magnet is the winding the only thing that gives the pickup its personality?

2. What makes a pickup sound good and clean when you roll back the volume knob, but some pickups just sound like crap when you do that.

My Fullshred sounds great rolled back, but my Breed sounds like CRAP! My Super Distortiions didn't sound that good either.

[theboatcandream]

Breeds and Superdistortions aren't meant to sound good clean.... they're designed for overdriven tones. I have a superdistortion in the bridge of one of my guitars. The guitar isn't naturally thin and the superdistortion adds a lot of lower end to it which it doesn't need, and I don't play with a lot of bass anyway. But yeah, clean it's no good unless you're heavily proceessing the signal.

[jeremy]

for a single coil pup, basically there is a bobbin which the wire is wrapped around and the pole pieces are the magnets at least if they are alnico. a bucker is basically two bobbins with a bar magnet stuck between the two sets of pole pieces