Coil-swap

Replacing or repositioning one coil within a pickup assembly, or, in common loose usage, simply having the pickups in a guitar changed.

As a modification it usually means fitting a different coil into a hybrid pickup to alter its voice, or reversing a coil for a different hum-cancelling relationship. In casual use the phrase covers any pickup change made to chase a sound: a hotter bridge, a brighter neck, or a different magnet and winding entirely. Either way the mounting and the wiring are the fiddly parts, since a swapped pickup must still fit the cavity and match the switching already in the guitar.

Example: changing a bright ceramic bridge pickup for a lower-output alnico one is the same job in practice, whatever the terminology used to describe it.

Coil-swap

See also