A humbucker, humbucking pickup, or double coil, is a guitar pickup that uses two wire coils to cancel out noisy interference from coil pickups. Humbucking coils are also used in dynamic microphones to cancel electromagnetic hum. Humbuckers are one of two main types of guitar pickups. The other is single coil.
"Open Coil" (uncovered) humbucker pickup
Covered humbucker pickup on a Les Paul copy
Humbuckers on a Gibson Invader
Fender "Split coil" hum canceling pickup on a Precision Bass
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.
Three magnetic pickups on a Peavey Raptor with the pickup configuration of a fat-strat (H-S-S). The bridge (right) pickup is a humbucker and the neck (left) and middle pickups are single coils.
Split pole pickups, Fender Jazz Bass
Single coil pickups, Fender Stratocaster (1963)
PRS's Dragon humbucker
