Humbucker pickups?

Question:

Humbucker pickups?

what ecactly do they do i just bought a les paul and they don't seam special

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: This is my nephew....Seymour Duncan his humbucker is his pride, he's now working with Fender, and also does work for Gibson....he's from South Jersey....he's worked for many years trying to prefect his pickups... Van Halen uses them and so do a lot of other famous guitarist, they make your guitar sound as good as it's possible to sound....as far as I'm concerned there's no better pickup.... but of course I'm prejudice....ha ha....He lives in Santa Barbra now, and has a web site...so check it out ...and he'll tell you why his humbucker is so special....lots of study, hard work, experimenting, and working towards perfect in sound !!!!!!! Why don't you check with an expert or write to Seymour....maybe your not using the right one for your Les Paul....I'm going to tell him what you said, and when he gets back from Japan he'll email me and make a suggestion !!!! They provide a different tone from single coil pickups. Put your pickup selector on "bridge" and turn up your amp with your favorite distortion. You'll get the idea. They were developed in the late 50's to get rid of the electrical hum of single coils (have you ever played a Strat near a light dimmer switch?). They use 2 coils wired so that they cancel out the hum. The side effect was they lost some of the high end and have more output - that's why they sound different than a single coil, and can drive an amp into distortion easier. Some newer humbuckers have "coil tap" wiring so you can use just one of the coils like a single coil - it still doesn't sound the same though. Peavey is supposed to have a new pick-up that really sounds like a single coil when tapped - but I haven't heard it. As opposed to single coil pickups, Humbucking pickups have two coils wrapped in differing directions, thus, canceling the 60 cycle hum produced by most single coils. Many of the newer single coils have addressed this in one way or another so it isn't the problem it was in the early days of recording. HBs also have a "fatter" sound many Rock players prefer whereas SC pickups have more "bite" to their sound. The back pickup, when the tone knob is turned all the way up & plugged into a Fender amp with the bright switch in ON position & Treble turned to 10 has been known to cause children to be born naked with no teeth. - Look it up! Seriously though, it's all a matter of tast and those are the basic differences.

Just looked at above answers - Seymour Duncan is an old friend and THE most knowledgable guy in the world on pickups. You CASN NOT go wrong with him or his pickups!!!