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Typical of Gibson type guitars is the humbucker type pickup. This was developed many years ago as a pickup, which would reject interference (hum,) but allow the signal from the guitar strings to get through. Really these are two pickups in one casing and rely on the orientations of the pickup magnets and coils to achieve this, the name "Humbucker" was also used in a 1930s loudspeaker design, which cancelled the hum by feeding a cancelling signal out of phase to the speaker – a detailed explanation of this and other electronic items is included in my free brochure. Humbuckers have a certain tone and resonant frequency which is different to the straightforward single coil pickup, a single coil will typically have a more trebly output. One method of extending the range of a guitar is to modify the wiring of humbuckers to enable them to work both as a single coil and as the original humbucker. Thus on a two pickup guitar the output from a standard humbucker may be mixed with the single coil pickup to give a variety of sounds. Modifying a pickup is a tricky job and must be done with care – wires used within a coil are thinner than a human hair and are easily damaged. Also quality pickups are expensive to replace. I offer two services in this area:
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