Dylan McKerchie — pickups

What does "Out of Phase" mean? This is of course another term that we hear often. Maybe we have replaced a pickup and experienced it... That quacky thin sound when we turn both pickups on at the same time. Most of the time it is not on purpose, although this tone does have it's place. What causes it? In electric guitar land the term "out of phase" refers to a cancellation of sounds that happens when two pickups that have either opposite winding direction, or opposite magnetic polarity are turned on at the same time. The video below will illustrate...

Why Pickup Height is Important If you feel like you are not getting the tone you want from your electric guitar, the first place to start is setup. It is possible that the current height of your pickups isn't letting you hear the tonal potential of your guitar. If you recall our blog post about how electric guitar pickups work, You will remember that correct placement of the string within the pickups magnetic field is important to your tone. Too close to the pickup and the string can literally "stick" to the pickup. Too far away and you can lose...

Coil Splitting Vs Coil Tapping.... These are two terms we often hear when discussing pickups and switching options on electric guitars. More commonly we hear the term "coil tapping", but it seems that most people use them interchangeably. What is coil splitting vs coil tapping and how do we use them? Let's start with coil splitting, because even though it is commonly mislabeled as "coil tapping", it is more often what we actually mean. Coil splitting is used on humbucking pickups to basically turn off one of the coils so that it acts as a single coil. This gives the...

How Electric Guitar Pickups Work... For some reason, this subject has a shroud of mystique surrounding it. The truth is, how electric guitar pickups work is very simple. An electric guitar pickup is a magnetic transducer. This means that it changes the motion of the string to an AC voltage that can be sent to the guitar amp to be amplified. How does it do this? The most common types of pickups consist of a magnetic core that has a very fine wire wound around it thousands of times.  Single coil pickups like those found in a Stratocaster or Telecaster...

The Battle... Stratocaster Vs. Telecaster Probably one of the oldest rivalries and most talked about on the internet is... Stratocaster Vs. Telecaster. There are as you may know, very strong opinions about which is best. One question always comes up... "Why do they sound so different even though the pickups look almost the same?" More adventurous people may even ask, "How can I make my Stratocaster sound more like a Telecaster?" Stratocaster Vs. Telecaster Pickups At first glance the bridge pickups seem to be very similar, but there are two major differences that give each it's character. First is size....