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Pickup (music technology)

A pickup is a transducer that captures or senses mechanical vibrations produced by musical instruments, particularly stringed instruments such as the electric guitar, and converts these to an electrical signal that is amplified using an instrument amplifier to produce musical sounds through a loudspeaker in a speaker enclosure. The signal from a pickup can also be recorded directly.

This article is about the instrument transducer. For the phonographic device, see Magnetic cartridge.

The first electrical string instrument with pickups, the "Frying Pan" slide guitar, was created by George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker around 1931.[1]


Most electric guitars and electric basses use magnetic pickups. Acoustic guitars, upright basses and fiddles often use a piezoelectric pickup.

Other transducers[edit]

Some pickup products are installed and used similarly to piezoelectric pickups, but use different underlying technology, for instance electret[14] or condenser microphone technology.[15]

Optical[edit]

Optical pickups are a fairly recent development that work by sensing the interruption of a light beam by a vibrating string. The light source is usually an LED, and the detector is a photodiode or phototransistor.[17] These pickups are completely resistant to magnetic or electric interference and also have a very broad and flat frequency response, unlike magnetic pickups.


Optical pickup guitars were first shown at the 1969 NAMM Convention in Chicago, by Ron Hoag.[18]


In 2000, Christopher Willcox, founder of LightWave Systems, unveiled a new beta technology for an optical pickup system using infrared light. In May 2001, LightWave Systems released their second generation pickup, dubbed the "S2."[19]

Brosnac, Donald (1980). Guitar Electronics: A Workbook. Ojai, CA: d.B. Music Co.  0-933224-02-8.

ISBN

Guitar Pickup Simulation

Properties of Magnetic Materials (chapter)

Basic Electric Guitar Circuits - Pickups

[1]

What Makes A Good Or Bad Guitar Pickup

How Guitar Cable Capacitance Affects the Tone of Guitar Pickups

How a pickup works from the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory