Humbucker - Other Noise-reducing Pickup Designs

Other Noise-reducing Pickup Designs

While the original humbucker remains the most common noise-reducing pickup design, inventors have tried many other approaches to reducing noise in guitar pickups.

Many instruments will use a combination of separate single coil pickups in a hum reducing configuration, where the magnetic polarity is different and the coils are electrically reversed. This arrangement is similar to that of a humbucking pickup and noise is effectively reduced. Some examples of this are the Fender Jazz Bass, introduced in 1960, which has used a pair of single coil pickups, one near the bridge and another one about half way between the bridge and the neck, and many Stratocaster style guitars, which often have 3 pickups with the middle one reversed electrically and magnetically. The (usually) 5-way selector switch allows 2 humbucking settings, where the reversed middle pickup is used in parallel with either the bridge or neck pickup.

In 1957, Fender introduced a split pickup to its Precision Bass, which was wired in humbucking fashion, with one coil serving the E and A strings, the other the D and G strings. Both coils pick up the same noise, but since each string is only served by one coil, a single-coil sound is provided. The concept of this later expanded to G&L's Z-coil pickup, which is used for standard guitars.

In 1985, Lace Music Products introduced the Lace Sensor pickups, which utilize a proprietary hum-screening technique to eliminate noise while preserving single-coil tone.

In 1996, Kinman Guitar Electrix introduced replacement pickups for Stratocaster and Telecaster based on a differential coil technology, essentially a stacked humbucker where the lower pickup coil functions solely as a noise sensing coil, while only the upper pickup coil is able to sense the string vibrations. This was achieved by the use of magnetic shields augmented by differential coils. These pickups are of the single pole type often referred to as single coils. In mid 2011 Kinman released a range of innovative side-by-side humbuckers which incorporate new Patent Applied For technology. Kinman claim their new humbuckers have greater dynamic range and increased clarity compared to conventional humbuckers.