What makes the good guitar pickup sound so good?

[teemuk]

Do you think that one could successfully affect the sound by adding external LC components? I think this might change the resonance frequency and quality.

Yes you can.

Here are some ballpark values: The winding capacitance is usually around 10 to 200 pF. The winding resistance for single coil pickups is normally about 6 to 8 kilo-ohms and with humbuckers around 8 to 22 kilo-ohms. The inductance is usually around 2 to 10 henries.

For example,
Generic Telecaster neck pickup: 2H5, 5K, 80pF
Generic Les Paul rhythm pickup: 6H6, 7K, 95pF

The typical component added to the equation is the additional parallel capacitance from the tone control's capacitor (and in lesser effect the capacitances of the guitar cord and amp's input stage). They will affect the resonant circuit and the resonant frequency. Various resistances in the circuit will provide some damping.

You can throw those values into a circuit simulator and play around with the typical tone control and input stage arrangements (include all capacitances you can imagine) and see what effects they have. It will be quite revealing and likely answer most of your questions.

And how about load impedance? Typically pickups are high-impedance loaded, like 500k potentiometer followed by high Z-in amplifier. Are there good reasons for that?

Yes. Too low input impedance will simply attenuate the high frequencies and hence also damp the effects of the resonant circuit. Since the characteristic tone of the pickup is greatly defined by its resonant characteristics you may want to preserve them.

[darkfenriz]

Wow, great response, that's what I wanted to hear. Thanks

[marcofry]

There are so many things that change a pickups sound...type of wood, bridge type,load from value of pots..

good or bad is subjective..

I have done a good bit of experimenting,by ear, as to what capacitors to use in the tone circuit of a guitar..

usual values are from .01mf to .047mf through a potentiometer ,usually 250k -500k, cutting highs to ground.

each increment of .01mf is another 1/4 turn at the end of the pot to my ear..I prefer .01

lately I have experimented with a push pull pot and a .003mf cap to make a high pass in one pos and a traditional tone pot in the other.

I liked it, it cleaned up a boomy neck pup...my brother hated it though....its all personal taste....

[marcofry]

oh, forgot to mention that 500k pots are used with humbucker pups and 250k are used with singles to dampen the highs..usually

there are some articles at seymourduncan.com and the forum is outstanding on guitar issues!!!!

[unclejed613]

another factor in how pickups sound, which is a very wide range variable, the STRINGS......

strings are available in a huge range of sizes (diameter ranges), finishes and most of all formulations of steel. i'm a bass player, and i used to play with primarily flatwound strings, and didn't really have much of an idea of how i liked my bass to sound. another bass player i knew had a habit of replacing his strings before every live gig, even if he had only practiced on them a few hours. he once gave me a used set of his Blue Steel strings. by this time i was using round wound strings because i was beginning to think more about the sound of my bass. these Blue Steel strings, even though they were not up to my friend's standards for a live gig, were like night and day from my old (probably about 6 months old with obvious fret marks) strings. the steel formulation is probably going to be the largest factor in how they sound through various types of pickups. some of this will be from how strong the pickup magnets are, since the magnetic attraction between the string and pickup can actually dampen string motion and change the string's balance of harmonics.

i like to simulate a lot of electronics, but coming up with a magnetic model of a string would have a LOT of variables to consider.

[fugazied]

Great pickups also sound so good because they have been tweaked to accent the right tones/frequencies from a particular guitar as well. A strat single coil pickup tuned to sound good on a strat etc. Throw it on your tele and it might be a bit ... off. There is certainly artistry to pickup design/tweaking!