Pickups are the heart of your guitar. The right guitar pickups can bring a dead-sounding instrument to life. They can turn a good guitar into a great one. They might not transform a guitar that plays poorly into a magical instrument, but they will almost certainly deliver a huge sonic upgrade. If you’re after more output, more sustain, blooming harmonics, a more vintage sound, crystal clear cleans or raw crunch – changing your pickups will have a large impact to getting the sound you’re after.

Most importantly, they let you customize your instrument, creating a sound that’s perfectly and uniquely “you.”

Pickups, in short, are one of the key ingredients of your tone. There are many other factors, of course: the materials and workmanship of your instrument, your strings, your amp, your cables, and your playing style. But finding the right pickup is one of the fastest, most cost-effective, and exciting ways to upgrade the sound of your guitar or bass. And since pickups lie “upstream” from the rest of your gear, the right choice can actually make your pedals and amps sound better too.

Unlike changing the bridge, tuners, or neck profile, pickup changes are easily done and easily reversed. It’s a way of achieving a dramatic tonal improvement that you can do on your kitchen table, with very few tools, in a single sitting. We even have a diploma course you can follow to get you up to speed on the basics of guitar wiring in no time. And we have many wiring diagrams to cover almost any wiring scheme you can think up (and some you probably can’t). If you feel doing it yourself is still too daunting, most guitar stores will do the work for you for a small fee. Want more sustain? Stronger harmonics? A warmer or brighter tone? More distortion? Less? The right pickup will give you exactly what you want.