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Location: Keller, TX | A little off topic. What is a humbucker pickup? What does it do? What's the difference? |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | It's an electric pickup, invented by Seth Lover, employed by Gibson, in the 1940s. It was used on the Gibson Les Paul, and though associated with Gibson, it's used in all sorts of guitars by different manufacturers. Humbuckers are also known as dual-coil, double-coil, and hum-canceling pickups.
Magnetic pickups are generally divided into two types: single-coil and humbucking. All magnetic pickups are sensitive to electronic noise, emitted from everything from light bulbs to computer screens. This noise can be quite pronounced, and sounds like a constant hum or buzz, just like the one in my head.
Humbuckers get their name because they amplify LESS of this hum (they "buck the hum"), since they consist of two standard single-coil magnetic pickups, usually side by side, with opposing electric and magnetic polarity. (Sometimes mistakenly called "out of phase") Common-mode signals (electric hum) that radiate into both coils with equal amplitude, tend to cancel each other out when they travel through both coils.
Using two coils affects the tone of the guitar. The output to the amplifier is twice as powerful, but because the coils are at slightly different positions along the string some higher-frequency harmonics are diminished or cancelled out. Guitarists debate the merits of this "fat", "dark" tone versus the "bright", "clear" tone of single-coil pickups, used on guitars like the Strat.
Other approaches have been taken to reduce electrical noise in guitar pickups, but the humbucker design remains the most successful lower-noise design. Those who prefer the brighter sound of single-coil pickups often simply live with the extra hum and buzz in order to get the tone they prefer.
Some guitars which have humbucker pickups have coil taps, which allow the humbucker pickups to act as single coils. |
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Location: Latitude 39.56819, Longitude -105.080066 | wow Jeff....what book did you steal that information out of! |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | I have recently made the foray into electrics, and though I can't remember the specific source- -(I made, and edited, a cut and paste Word Doc from various sources for my reference)--I found it in the course of researching my own question about Humbuckers, namely, whether one could "switch off' one of the double coils to use it as a single coil pup. |
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| It's caslled coil splitting. When it works it's great, when it doesn't (mosy of the time) it sounds like a strat with a hernia. |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Originally posted by schroeder:
it sounds like a strat with a hernia. That's exactly how I would describe my new sound. |
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Location: Upper Left USA | TTen,
Look into the Phat Cat P90 sound from Seymour Duncan. |
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Posts: 648
Location: Florida | There's also hum cancelling single coils - the Pbass pickup is one example. Well there ARE two coils, but the coils are split under the strings, two strings per coil on a four string bass. Lindy Fralin is also doing this now for guitar pickups, three per coil, a sort of P90'ish toned hum reduction scheme. |
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Posts: 939
Location: Fort Worth, Texas | Well, while we are at it. What are the different Ovation pick-ups and what is the difference? At last years tour there was talk about going back to the original pick up....
My Viper bass has the Viper sytem. I'm not sure what that exactly means....
Thanks in advance! :confused: |
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| me too as in what type and what are the differences between the preacher pickups and the viper's??
God Bless,
Glenn |
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Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Originally posted by Glenn Hess:
me too as in what type and what are the differences between the preacher pickups and the viper's??
Vipers have two (or three) single coil and Preachers have 2 humbucking...
Generally speaking, Vipers will have a more wirey, clean Tele/Strat-like sound, Preachers sound more grungy like an Gibson SG, |
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Posts: 417
Location: Cicero, NY | Ok...exactly who are you and what did you do with the REAL Bongo Boy?
(And can you leave him there?) :D |
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Location: Latitude 39.56819, Longitude -105.080066 | Exactly....this "new and improved" bongo boy has me video taping all of my equipment and upping my insurance coverage.
My old security system (a shut door) may not be sophisticated enough to keep the new Bongo Boy out! |
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Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | I started a Vitamin B12 regimen...
I believe it was Thales, presocratic philosopher, who said (forgive my loose translation from the Ancient Greek) "The original source of all existing things, that from which a thing first comes-into-being and into which it is finally destroyed, the substance persisting but changing in its qualities, this it's declared is the element and first principle of an existing thing....
......and it was Bongo Boy who said, "I know you are, but what am I :p " |
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| I think your pharmacist doesn't have a licence. Nancy Reagan once warned me never to buy Vitamin B12 from a Double Y in Virginia. |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Jerry Garcia told me the exact opposite...
(who would you trust) |
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| We need a poll on that one. |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | ...up someone's arse, to be exact.
oh, sorry. you said POLL. |
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| Your english spelling is coming along a treat me old china. |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Early Bird, mate |
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| Send the book back - I don't know what Early Bird means. |
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Location: Midland, MI | It doesn't mean anything unless you're a ned or a bongoboy.
;)
Or, is that redundant? :eek: |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | "Early Bird"= "Word" ='merican urban slang for "that's the truth!"
Cruster, you been kinda quite lately. Nice to see ya round again.
Now, go home. ;) |
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Location: Midland, MI | Originally posted by Jeff W.:
...Cruster, you been kinda quite lately. Nice to see ya round again.
Now, go home. ;) Hrmm, such a friendly place. :) Just kidding...been busy with a bunch of stuff going on...tis the season for everyone to have a freaking birthday party, I guess. Put in a bunch of OT at the hospital last week doing the HACMP cluster dance. Finally found a way to get the curly cherry enclosure started (I have the wood, needed a planer and a dovetail jig) for the amp I built. Lots 'o projects. Then to top if all off, I've been jonesing for a Steinberger lately. Have a line on one, too. Which is scary. ;)
Anyway...carry on. ;) |
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| crusty old boy - where has your guitar list gone and did you know that the Cropper model has disappeared from the latest Peavey catalogue? |
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Posts: 2850
Location: Midland, MI | I took the list out. I figured I only had two Kaman quality guitars in there, and with the anticipated addition of the Steinberger I just couldn't keep abusing the good readers of this board with that kind of sub-par stuff.
As to the Cropper, yes, they discontinued it last year, I believe. The funny thing is that when I bought mine (last summer, NOS 1999 model) I did so because it was a tele-shape that put out some very nice jazz tones from the neck pup (and it was dirt freaking cheap). I didn't even realize that it was a 'Steve Cropper' thing. I guess he played a Peavey Generation for a while, then they did the Cropper Classic design with him, and now he's back to Fenders. The funniest part is that I'm not a fan of 'signature' guitars and if I had known that 'Cropper Classic' referred to him, I probably never would have tried it out in the first place.
Phew, that was a lot to type. ;) |
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OT: What's a humbucker??