Single Coils

The single coil pickup was designed by Leo Fender and are the pickup types found on a Stratocaster and many other guitars. The single coil consists of 6 magnetic poles each wrapped with copper wire thousands of turns. There are 6 individual pole pieces instead of a bar magnet as this method allows each ‘pole’ to be adjusted in height individually therefore equalising the volume for all 6 pickups. The single coil pickup sounds clear and they have an emphasis on the treble frequencies. Originally one drawback with the single coil pickup was the amount of interference or background noise the single coil produced when used with an amplifier dialled up with high gain (distortion/overdrive).