Pickup resistance

[TheGreek]

When I look at replacement pickups the stats will list "resistance " and a number. 

 

The definition online doesn't help. 

 

Do I want pickups with high or low resistance?

[Sparky Mark]

For any given pickup design the more winds increases resistance because the wire is longer. However, other factors will affect the sound such as the tightness of the wind and if it's scatter wound or very neatly machine wound. If you search for how the number and type of winds affects pickup tone that should be helpful rather than just resistance. 

I think I remember that fewer winds give brighter tone at lower output, more winds gives higher bassier output but less dynamics.

Edited January 15, 2023 by Sparky Mark

[Dad3353]

24 minutes ago, TheGreek said:

...Do I want pickups with high or low resistance?

 

Short answer : Yes.

 

...

 

A bit more serious...
 

Seymour Duncan on guitar pick-ups ...

 

'...What is guitar pickup resistance?
Many believe that a pickup’s resistance directly correlates to its output. The higher the number, the hotter the pickup, right? Not necessarily. A pickup’s resistance is actually a measure of how hard the current has to work to get through the wire coils. But more windings (which usually means higher output) also means higher resistance. Therefore, people often equate the two.

In reality, it’s not that simple. A host of variables determines a pickup’s output. These include magnet material, gauss (magnet strength), wire material, and the number of coil winds. So, a pickup with a strong magnet can still have lower resistance and plenty of output. Likewise, another will deliver low output, yet yield a higher resistance.

A pickup’s resistance is only important when considering all these other factors. Therefore, measuring a pickup’s resistance is a diagnostic tool to help confirm your pickup’s health. It does not solely determine its performance characteristics and output.
...'

[TheGreek]

Thanks guys but still not much wiser.

[Sparky Mark]

3 minutes ago, TheGreek said:

Thanks guys but still not much wiser.

If you can expand on the reason for your question you might get more specific advice. 

[Dad3353]

1 minute ago, TheGreek said:

Thanks guys but still not much wiser.

 

Wisdom..? You want wisdom, too..? You're a hard one to please.

 

In theory, and as a general 'rule of thumb', the higher the resistance of a pick-up, the 'hotter' the output, but, as SD states in the link above, it's not that simple. Electrically, the longer the wire used for the coils (equates to number of winds...), the higher the resistance, and the thinner the wire (no way of knowing what gauge the wire is, generally...), the greater the resistance, for the same length. Soooooo... Thin wire with few winds could be high resistance; thicker wire with fewer winds could be the same resistance. The output would be different, however. The resistance, as a measure, and on its own, does not, therefore, tell us much. It could be useful when testing two pick-ups from the same maker, but even then, only as a guide.
What is the real reason for the question, though..? Are you looking at any specific pick-up related issue..? 

[Paolo85]

1 hour ago, TheGreek said:

Thanks guys but still not much wiser.

 

as a person that does not really know how pickups work, the way I understand it is that at the end of the day you do not chose the pickup based on that. You want pickups that you like the sound of, or people say you'd like the sound of. That's all 😁

[pfretrock]

We got ths far without mentioning  inductance.

[Skybone]

In the guitar world, the lower resistance the pickup, the more "mellow" it's sound (especially combined with the softer magnets).

 

The higher the pickup resistance, the more signal was sent to the preamp. More signal going to the preamp meant that a more distorted sound could be achieved at lower gain levels (though this didn't stop guitarists wanting more gain). I always found that the more gain used, the harsher the distortion anyway, and the signal tended to "mush" sooner, loosing loads of string definition.

 

Bass-wise, I would say that low-mid-ish resistance pickups would be best (circa 7-10k Ohms?), enough to get a decent signal into the preamp, but not enough to distort it. The last thing you'd want is to loose string definition and loads of "mush" with a bass.

 

Just my opinion.

[TheGreek]

Lots of choice out there, I would like to be able to eliminate some in a systematic way. 

I thought resistance might be a good starting point. 

 

Clearly not as simple as I would have thought.  I still hope to get something from the thread (free knowledge eh @Dad3353) 

[Maude]

20 minutes ago, pfretrock said:

We got ths far without mentioning  inductance.

From reading the Warman website I seem to remember that inductance (Henries) is as, or more, useful a measurement as resistance to estimating a pickups tone, but I can't remember why. 

As far as I'm concerned electricity is witchcraft. 

[Dad3353]

24 minutes ago, TheGreek said:

...I still hope to get something from the thread...

 

Here you go; fill your boots...

 

Seymour Duncan Pick-up comparison chart ...

 

Other p/u makers exist... 

[Dad3353]

2 minutes ago, Maude said:

From reading the Warman website I seem to remember that inductance (Henries) is as, or more, useful a measurement as resistance to estimating a pickups tone, but I can't remember why. 

As far as I'm concerned electricity is witchcraft. 

 

That's probably not quite as useless as resistance (or impedance..?) on its own, but I still think that the best choice is made with the ears. Sometimes it takes a few goes to get that choice right, of course; it's what we call, technically, 'experience', which is something that can never be taught, nor transferred. Just sayin'. 

[Conan]

12 minutes ago, Maude said:

As far as I'm concerned electricity is witchcraft. 

I teach Physics, and agree with this 😬

[Aidan63]

Have you tried your less than satisfactory pickups at different heights or with different strings, these things can make a difference too

Manufacturers of instruments do R&D playing around with all the variables to arrive at a suitable compromise, the more high end companies hopefully don't factor cost into the mix too much but as we know there are plenty of budget instruments that sound just fine so there are ways of adjusting the variables (wire, magnet types, winding, pole pieces etc...) to arrive at reasonable sound and output when used with any particular mix of wood, build method, bridge, nut and strings mix

 

Aftermarket pickups are always advertised as better, louder, clearer, vintage, modern etc...but don't take into account the actual instrument they will be used with and how that will be set up, so are a bit of a lottery and why perhaps so many of them get sold on after being in fact no 'better' than the manufacturuers' fitted ones despite being so much (and so much £) 'better'er

[Nail Soup]

6 hours ago, Paolo85 said:

 

as a person that does not really know how pickups work, the way I understand it is that at the end of the day you do not chose the pickup based on that. You want pickups that you like the sound of, or people say you'd like the sound of. That's all 😁

Or , further, choose the pickups attached to the bass we like the sound of. 
Without even knowing how much the pickups contributed to that sound.

[Conan]

4 hours ago, Aidan63 said:

Have you tried your less than satisfactory pickups at different heights or with different strings, these things can make a difference too

Manufacturers of instruments do R&D playing around with all the variables to arrive at a suitable compromise, the more high end companies hopefully don't factor cost into the mix too much but as we know there are plenty of budget instruments that sound just fine so there are ways of adjusting the variables (wire, magnet types, winding, pole pieces etc...) to arrive at reasonable sound and output when used with any particular mix of wood, build method, bridge, nut and strings mix

 

Aftermarket pickups are always advertised as better, louder, clearer, vintage, modern etc...but don't take into account the actual instrument they will be used with and how that will be set up, so are a bit of a lottery and why perhaps so many of them get sold on after being in fact no 'better' than the manufacturuers' fitted ones despite being so much (and so much £) 'better'er

And the award for "Sensible post of the Month" goes to Aidan63 😎

[Sparky Mark]

7 hours ago, TheGreek said:

Lots of choice out there, I would like to be able to eliminate some in a systematic way. 

I thought resistance might be a good starting point. 

 

Clearly not as simple as I would have thought.  I still hope to get something from the thread (free knowledge eh @Dad3353) 

As has been referenced above, resistance is next to useless as an indicator of how a pickup will sound. Most pickup manufacturers will offer a description of what the particular pickup's tonal goal is but many other variables will affect the final installed outcome.

You'd be better off describing what kind of tone you are looking for.

[Mykesbass]

I thought this was going to be a post about  trying to resist buying more pickups, but then saw who the OP was and realised that was highly unlikely 😎

[Doctor J]

17 hours ago, Skybone said:

In the guitar world, the lower resistance the pickup, the more "mellow" it's sound (especially combined with the softer magnets).

 

The higher the pickup resistance, the more signal was sent to the preamp. More signal going to the preamp meant that a more distorted sound could be achieved at lower gain levels (though this didn't stop guitarists wanting more gain). I always found that the more gain used, the harsher the distortion anyway, and the signal tended to "mush" sooner, loosing loads of string definition.

 

Bass-wise, I would say that low-mid-ish resistance pickups would be best (circa 7-10k Ohms?), enough to get a decent signal into the preamp, but not enough to distort it. The last thing you'd want is to loose string definition and loads of "mush" with a bass.

 

Just my opinion.

The alternate side to this is known to anyone who has G&L L series where it, by default, has too much of everything and the controls allow you to passively take away bass, treble or overall output in order to sculpt the sound into what you actually want to hear in a way not possible on an instrument with low output pickups. It's extremely versatile, moreso than having to boost what you're missing with a preamp or your amplifier input stage. You don't have to run high output pickups at maximum output. The extra stuff is there when you need it, but easy to remove when you don't.

 

There are rumours G&L will release Jazz sized MFD pickups this year. They will get my money if the do.

Edited January 16, 2023 by Doctor J

[BigRedX]

I've changed pickups twice. Once on a guitar that originally sounded terrible but I also replaced all the hardware at the same time it would be hard to define exactly what was down to the pickups and what was due to the other changes I made. The second time was on a fairly budget 5-string bass where I replaced the original (J-type) pickups and active circuit with a set of expensive active EMGs and their recommended passive controls, which cost about half the price of the bass. The resulting differences in sound were negligible.

 

When I came to choose pickups for my Sei bass Martin had me spend a couple of hours playing various instruments in The Gallery and noting my comments on which ones I liked the sound of.

 

As others have already said there's a lot more to a pickup than just it's resistance. And once you've taken all the electrical and magnetic factors into account, then you also have the consider the position of them in relation to the string length. In the end it really is just trial and error...

[TimR]

Resistance is futile.

 

I suspect it's DC resistance in the same way as speakers have DC resistance in 4, 8, 16 ohms etc.

 

Is there a frequency/impedance chart that shows how different frequencies give different outputs. That would be a good place to start.

[Skybone]

7 hours ago, Doctor J said:

The alternate side to this is known to anyone who has G&L L series where it, by default, has too much of everything and the controls allow you to passively take away bass, treble or overall output in order to sculpt the sound into what you actually want to hear in a way not possible on an instrument with low output pickups. It's extremely versatile, moreso than having to boost what you're missing with a preamp or your amplifier input stage. You don't have to run high output pickups at maximum output. The extra stuff is there when you need it, but easy to remove when you don't.

 

There are rumours G&L will release Jazz sized MFD pickups this year. They will get my money if the do.

 

Though to be fair, that is more down to the fact that the G&L L Series have active preamps on board. 

 

In the guitar world, there are very few guitars with on-board preamps (unlike the bass world), which is why there are a lot of high impedence pickups available. If they had active preamps, they'd not need them. The thought of guitars having on-board preamps would probably send them out of their minds.  

[Boodang]

EMG active pickups have so few windings their output needs boosting with a built in preamp (hence the active part and the need to power them). They do this because the fewer the windings (and thus less resistance) the greater the bandwidth. 

An active EMG pickup will have much stronger content above 3 to 4K than a passive pickup with enough windings to have a strong enough output to not need a preamp boost. 

This of course is a bit of a simplification, as mentioned before, there are many other factors involved not just the amount of windings.

Of course, having tons of bandwidth is not necessary a good thing, as it depends on the tone you want. I used to use EMG pickups and then use a lot of eq to get the tone I wanted... cut the treble, boost some high mids etc. Now I try to get the tone as close as I can at source, ie the pickup. Hence for my Jazz i got some custom single coil pickups made with alnico5 magnets for the neck (for more lows) and alnico2 for the bridge for more mids. For my Sei I got a Bartolini MM made. As a humbucker it has less highs but it's punchier in the lows. 

When I look for a pickup I'm less interested in the resistance than I am the magnet type, single coil vs humbucker, and series/parallel options.

Edited January 16, 2023 by Boodang

[Doctor J]

2 hours ago, Skybone said:

 

Though to be fair, that is more down to the fact that the G&L L Series have active preamps on board. 

 

In the guitar world, there are very few guitars with on-board preamps (unlike the bass world), which is why there are a lot of high impedence pickups available. If they had active preamps, they'd not need them. The thought of guitars having on-board preamps would probably send them out of their minds.  

Nope, the L1000 is fully passive. The L2000 has a preamp but I run my one passively. It's definitely not needed to give you more than you need. Those pickups are beastly without any help and cut-only controls are just as useful in passive mode.