Below may be the best 3 minutes and 17 seconds of video you ever watch. Clyde Clark, President of Bartolini, explains in plain English (which is the best way to explain anything), how pickups work.
The most important thing to take from the video is that a pickup is part of an electrical circuit. Not the whole circuit. Just a part of it. And the reason it’s important to know that is because a pickup alone does not completely define the sound of an instrument. As said in the video, there are several other factors that come into play (ultimately ending with the amplifier).
Did Clyde get it right?
Watch the video below, and you tell us.
Incidentally, part of the reason we love carrying Bartolini products is because that company takes a very real-world approach to sound and how it matters to the player. You buy Bartolini, you’re buying good stuff. Truly.
That video and its second part are both very good. I wish they would have continued with the series.
Swapped the stock MECs in my Warwick for Barts – instantly gratified by the quality and improvements to the sound.
I thought that the string, which is conductive, vibrates the magnetic field produced by the magnet and induces the coil to produce electricity at the same frequency. He seemed to suggest that the air movement had something to do with the magnetic field. Then again I only watched it once.
It doesn’t mater if the string is *conductive*. It matters that the string is magnetic. Aluminum strings would be conductive, but produce no sound through the pickup. One way of looking at how a pickup operates is what’s called “variable reluctance.” Reluctance is the magnetic version of resistance. When the string disturbs the static magnetic field, it produces current in the coil. This is variable reluctance. But the strings also get magnetized by the magnets. So they are in turn tiny magnets moving over the coil. This is inductance.
There are lots of other factors; metal covers or baseplates, and even the pole pieces are affected by eddy currents, which are small swearling electrical currents that produce their own magnetic field which is counter to the magnet’s field. And the coil has mutual inductance from one turn of wire to the next, as well as capacitance.