Single coil

A pickup with one coil of wire around magnetic pole pieces, valued for its bright, open and articulate sound and its sensitivity to interference.

The single coil senses the string across a narrow area, so it preserves detail and dynamic response, and its low inductance puts the resonant peak high in the spectrum, which is why it sounds clear and glassy rather than thick. It also acts as an aerial and picks up mains hum, which the humbucker was invented to cancel, and it loses high frequencies into a long cable more noticeably. It remains the standard sound of the earliest electric guitars.

Example: a stratocaster bridge single coil played clean has a bite and clarity that a humbucker in the same position cannot produce.

Single coil

See also