Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Clean, Distortion and Pickups

This chapter will cover the basic theory behind pickup type, pickup selection, and how distortion figures into the equation. It is essential to know that pickups do not generate distortion. Distortion is a property of your amplification and pedals. However, sometimes, pickups can be described as pickups suitable for distortion. Pickups generate a clean signal, which will be a clean sound if not processed for distortion. You can get pickups that are described as suitable for clean playing. You will also find pickups that can work with both. Many guitars will have more than one pickup to select from. You have probably guessed this is a way to go from clean to distortion with a toggle switch. So, what is distortion?

Concerning the science of distortion, it is described as altering the waveform, and the most common one is called clipping. Clipping means part of the upper and or lower ranges of a soundwave are removed.

A clipped signal. The original signal with curves (dotted above the horizontal limits) is the clean signal. There is positive and negative clipping on opposite sides (top and bottom). Flattening at clipping points produces distortion. The curved flow becomes straighter and sharper angled.

Sound Clipping

There are degrees of clipping from soft to hard and various ways to get there. For example, a guitar amplifier does what is called soft clipping. So do some pedals. Only the most obscure pedals do hard clipping. Hard clipping is what happens when unintended limits are breached. It mostly happens when you are recording something and the signal going in is too hot. A mixer desk or USB audio interface usually indicates how strong the signal is going into the device. It is displayed as green bars that turn red if the signal is too hot, meaning reducing levels in the interface. The sound in the red is heard overly distorted. That is hard clipping. Hard clipping rarely sounds pleasing. Even the most thumping chainsaw-sounding heavy metal distortion is soft clipping.

Many amplifiers will clip when the volume exceeds what the system can handle. It happens from phone circuitry to televisions to amp valves. We already discussed this concept in the first chapter. You can even do it with your phone, Hi-Fi, car radio, whatever you can turn the volume up full on. You must dial it back at some point because the sound changes as much as you push toward maximum volume. That is usually why you never have your headphones on max volume or your phone (aside from the potential hearing damage). It isn’t just because it is too loud but also because it distorts and changes the music.

The discovery of guitar distortion is fascinating. One could even say that distorted sound was the original sound that sound engineers found in the early days and then tried to clean up the signal. However, there are ways of capturing some distortions that sound pretty gratifying, especially in music.

Single coil and humbuckers

The original pickup is any magnetic metal block that captures vibrations for conversion into frequencies and, therefore, electromagnetic signals. The first experimental magnetics were not mounted on musical instruments primarily because of their sizeable obtrusiveness and weight. The electric guitar pickup was born when they reached sizes that could be hammered onto the face of a guitar and strings stretched over it. Pickups whittled down to something less obtrusive as engineers got more interested in musical instrument mounting possibilities.

You can imagine that the journey of the discovery of electric guitar at the early stages was sporadic experimental bursts where no one knew if pushing designs more would result in anything practical. Finally, around the 1940s, applied research in this field designed pickups for clean signal processing.

As engineers and guitarists pushed the clean volume on their amps, their sound distorted. Some players liked the sound but had a problem with feedback at high volume levels. So, pickup designers came up with mechanisms to handle distortion better. It led to the humbucker design, and the previous type of pickup was called the single-coil to segregate these different pickups. Those designations are still retained today.

Despite this new musical technology, the 1940s is not a decade that provides the average guitar enthusiast with much to chew on when it comes to electric guitars. It took another decade for pickups to become popularized, the 50s and especially in the next decade of the 60s. During these twenty years, many artists set their amp volumes into these fully saturated regions of tone and distortion. Humbuckers captured their rig’s overdriven screaming tube sounds. Unfortunately, single coils have a “humming” problem when dealing with lots of distortion. So, the humbucker was designed to “buck the hum.”

A typical SSS Fender Stratocaster pickup set. Three single coils are the sound that made the Stratocaster famous. These are the 60s Vintera Strat pickups made by Fender. They are attached to the inside of the Stratocaster’s pickguard, and wires are soldered to the pots.

Fender Stratocaster with three single-coil pickups.

DiMarzio SuperDistortion found in the bridge position for 80s metal and more. Humbucker.

SuperStratocaster is identifiable by Strat shape but HSS configuration.

A Gibson humbucker with only one row of pins. Not all humbuckers have two rows of pins. Not a single coil. Sometimes called PAF (Patent Applied For) humbuckers.

SG-shaped guitar with two humbucker pickups with a single row of pins (PAF).

It is important to note that all those pickups you see are passive. That means they don’t require any powering. However, there is another type of pickup that does, called active pickups. A battery inside the guitar cavity powers them. EMGs are the most common type of active pickups you will come across. In general, active pickups are hot, but some need not be. That means you must give special attention to your volume control so you don’t overdo it because the tone you need is likely before max volume with these. You might not need a boost pedal with hot active pickups.

The ever-popular EMG 81/85 set is found in hundreds of metal guitar models requiring battery power. They are active pickups. These are also humbuckers.

There are also single-coil active pickups. This is the EMG SA.

Uncommon pickups like this passive humbucker require you to read the specifications to know what they are. It is not a single coil and is not active. The Seymour Duncan, hot rails pickup, is popularized by Fender Stratocaster, wielding metal players like Dave Murry from Iron Maiden.

A loaded pickguard. Some guitars can load in and out entire sets of pickups at once. Seymour Duncan hot rails pickups are in the bridge and neck positions. The middle pickup is another passive Seymour Duncan JB Jr.

Hot and Cold

This topic is not easy because hot and cold are relative, and the words don’t mean what they seem. Hotter means more reactive or responsive, not ‘warmer.’ Hot has nothing to do with the term ‘warmth’ used to describe sounds that are comfortable to hear and not at all sharp. Active and passive pickups can be hot or cold. It tends to be that actives are hotter because of the popularization of EMGs. On the other hand, plenty of passive humbuckers out there are hot and single coils. You can find them on guitars designed for hard rock and heavy metal. It just tends to be the case that single coils and many passive humbuckers aren’t as hot. So read about pickups before you settle on any. Sticking with tried and tested true for decades is not a bad idea if you are new to guitar.

What’s the point in all of these selections?

Single coils can do things humbuckers can’t, and humbuckers can do things single coils can’t. Hot can do things cold can’t, and cold can do things hot can’t.

Single coils are excellent for bells and chimes. Humbuckers for distortion. Hot for aggressive sounds, cold for more comfortable listening (which may be scribed as warm or organic).

As we said, active pickups are often hotter than passive pickups. Hotter means more reactive or responsive. It does not mean that single coils are cold and humbuckers hot. It is specific to each pickup and is learned by reading the specs.

Reactive and responsive indicate hot. Aren’t all pickups reactive and responsive? Yes, but this is comparative. Go to the manufacturer’s website and select passive or active pickups. Then, you are going to be selecting between single coils and humbuckers. You should find the manufacturer has a way to compare and contrast pickups.

DiMarzio uses a 4-band EQ range.

DiMarizo Air Norton humbuckers have a fairly medium and flat response curve. Neither hot nor cold. Goldilocks zone. Found in bridge and neck.

DiMarzio SuperDistortion curve. Slight slant from bass to high but retains the mids. Destined for the bridge position.

DiMarzio Fast Track 2 is a hot single coil. Despite the low treble, everything else burns red.

Again, these charts are comparative between different models of the same brand. A lot of pickup manufacturers have their own system of classification.

Seymour Duncan JB. BMT stands for Bass Mids and Trebs. It shows 3 bands on an EQ range. Nighthawk is a slanted version of the pickup. Trembucker is a pickup designed specifically for tailpieces with tremolos that require a trembucker type. The spacing between poles is wider. For most people the Bridger section on the left is what you want. The JB is middle ground despite the slight slant.

Seymour Duncan Distortion has the same slant but much higher values. This is a hot pickup.