Single coil
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A single coil is a type of pickup for the electric guitar. As its name indicates, it is composed of wire wrapped in a single coil around a single bar magnet or several rod magnets.
Physical description
The Fender single coil is the simplest form of the pickup; guitar versions have six poles or rod magnets, one for each string. The traditional single coil design is the one found in guitars such as the Stratocaster. Because Fender mainly uses single-coils, they have come to be associated with Fender. Although these pickups have served guitar players well, there have always been shortcomings and flaws in their design. One such shortcoming is the presence of 50Hz or 60Hz noise in the signal, a problem not successfully solved until 1996 with a series of patented techniques by the Kinman company.
The Gibson company made an economical single coil for many years that was even simpler than the Fender type. It consisted of a single coil wound around a single Alnico bar magnet. It had several shortcomings; (1) it was microphonic and suffered from hi-gain feedback because of the flimsy construction and (2) there was no way to compensate the output from different strings. It was confined to Gibsons budget models.
Another type of single coil is the P-90 designed by the Gibson guitar company. The P-90 is immensly popular but is quite different to the single coils of the Fender genre. These pickups have a large flat coil with adjustable steel screws as pole pieces, and a pair of flat Alnico bar magnets lying under the coil bobbin. The adjustable screws collect and conduct the magnetism to the strings. The P-90 sounds like a cross between a side-by-side Gibson humbucker and a Fender single coil. Again, being a single coil the P-90 collects a lot of 60Hz noise (hum), more than Fender single coils because it has greater inductance. Despite this many guitar players love it but remain hopeful the problem of noise will one day be solved without sacrificing tone.
Sounds
The classic Fender single-coil tone is crispy, bright, and clear with an explosive quality, as distinct from the "fatter", darker sound of a humbucker. Classic examples of single-coil "twang" include "Brown Sugar" by The Rolling Stones, and Jimi Hendix's recording of "All Along the Watchtower" by Bob Dylan.
Single coils collect more 60Hz noise than humbuckers. They also are sensitive and dynamic and when played extremely loud produce a great feedback sound. These characteristics have been used to great effect by guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn.
Common designs
Stratocaster design
The traditional Stratocaster design guitar features three single-coils, as shown on the image. The guitarist can control what pickup or pickup combination to activate with a lever switch. They are usually referred to as the bridge, middle and neck pickups (left-to-right on the picture).
Stratocaster design pickups also usually involve the following:
- Pickup position, number of coil winds, wire types, magnets and other factors shape the tone. Pickups in the neck position usually give louder, mellower and warmer sound, while bridge pickup have lower output and give brighter, sharper and more harmonic-rich tone. The reason the neck pickup has the most output is the string vibration has more amplitude at the neck position. Thus, the bridge pickup has less output then the neck pickup. Some manufacturers overwind the bridge pickup for more output to compensate for this difference.
- Poles have different height. This staggering is done to compensate for the output of each string for two reasons. The first reason is because the fretboard has a camber (or radius) of between 7 and 12 inches. Naturally the strings will follow the radius of the fretboard and so must the magnets, generally speaking. The second reason is that some strings have naturally higher output, the plain or unwound G being the most obvious and this calls for these magnets to be further compensated, resulting in an apparent odd looking stagger. Fender Strat pickups to this day generally follow tradition and have the G magnet as high as the D but this causes the G string to overly dominate all the other strings because it has the most output of all. Traditionally in the 1950's and '1960's string sets came with a wound G string, but it was difficult to stretch across the fretboard in modern rock n roll and blues styles of mucic. In the 1970's string manufacturers introduced the unwound G string and that was easier to stretch. But the unwound G string was louder. In order for the G string to have the same output the G pole should be the further most from the string.
- The pickup selection switch has 5 positions. Positions 1, 3 and 5 activate only one pickup (bridge, middle or neck respectively), while positions 2 and 4 activate a combination of two pickups (bridge+middle or middle+neck respectively). Some pickup sets have a reverse wound and reverse polarity middle pickup that when in combination with the normal bridge or neck pickups will cancel 60Hz noise. Contrary to popular belief these positions are sonically inphase. The sonic effect of positions 2 and 4 is (erroneously) known as Quack and sometimes guitar notation includes directions to use such pickup combination. Classic example is a "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits which is played in position 2 (bridge+middle). Early Strats had a three way selector but innovative guitarists found they could get an interesting tone by carefully balancing the selector switch lever between positions 1 and 2 or between 2 and 3. Later in the 1980's Fender cottoned on and introduced the now standard 5 way selector switch.
Telecaster design
Fender Telecaster features two single-coils. Neck pickup produces mellower sound, while the bridge pickup produces an extremely twangy, sharp tone with exaggerated treble response, because bridge pickup is mounted on a steel plate. These design elements allow musicians to emulate steel guitar sounds, making it particularly useful in country music.
Pickups are selected with 3-position switch, two wiring schemes exist:
- Vintage: 1) neck pickup with treble cutoff for bassier sound; 2) only neck; 3) only bridge pickup.
- Modern: 1) only neck; 2) neck+bridge; 3) only bridge pickup.
Famous single-coil pickups
There are several well-known single-coil pickups that have a distinctive sound and are usually referred to some sort of standard:
- Gibson P-90 (1946)
- Danelectro Lipstick
- EMG active pickups which can best be heard on the introduction to "Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones
- Lace Sensor pickups (1987)
- Fender Vintage Noiseless pickups (1998)
- Kinman Hx 1997, revolutionary Patented new generation noiseless passive Fender type replacement pickups manufactured by Kinman Guitar Electrix.
See also
External links
- [How guitar pickups work] — an article by Tom Watson at Strat Collector.
- [Stratocaster pickup selector switch] — explains how the 5-position switch works (by John S. Atchley at GuitarNuts).
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