Have you ever played with your guitar’s pickup selector switch and thought, “Wow, that’s a completely different sound”, well, you’re not alone. The electric guitar is a sonic playground, and one of its best-kept secrets lies in where those magnetic marvels - the pickups - are positioned.
Whether you’re playing a Strat, a Les Paul, a Tele, or just about any other guitar, pickup position isn’t just a design quirk - it’s a tone-shaping superpower. So, let’s get started and find out how pickup placement affects the tone of your favorite guitar…
Pickups - Tiny Tone Machines
Starting with the basics, what is a guitar pickup?
When you pluck a string, it vibrates. This vibration is ‘picked up’ by a magnetic field created by your pickup’s magnets. Wrapped around those magnets are coils of wire, and as the string moves, it induces a tiny electrical current. That current then goes through the electronics built-in to your guitar, down your cable, hits your amp, and we have… sound!
However, a pickup is like a microphone - move it around, and the sound/tone changes. The position of that pickup along the length of the string decides what it’s picking up, and that’s where the magic happens.
Most guitars have pickups in two or three hotspots - near the neck, near the bridge, and sometimes, such as on a Strat, smack in the middle. Each position has its own vibe and personality.
Vibration and Position
When you hit a note, your string creates a standing wave. This is a pattern of motion with nodes (dead spots) at the nut and bridge, and a big, juicy antinode near the middle of the length of the string. The wave contains more than just the core tone of the string, it also contains various harmonics. These are higher-pitched overtones that give a particular string its character.
Depending on its position, a pickup will ‘pick up’ a different section of the standing wave. So, let’s take a look at the most common guitar pickup positions and find out what those differences are and why they occur…
Bridge Pickup
Down by the bridge, the string is under a lot of tension only allowing minimal movement. This results in a lot of high harmonics that produce a bright, snappy, in-your-face tone.
Neck Pickup
Near the neck, the string is moving around a lot more. This produces a thicker fundamental tone with lots of lower harmonics resulting in a warm, round, and smooth tone.
Middle Pickup
In between the bridge and neck pickups, you get a combination of both. This results in a tone that is not too bright, and not too bassy - a middle ground in the middle position.
Battle of the Pickup Positions - Neck vs. Bridge vs. Middle
Now that you know why and how the position of your pickups affects the tone of your guitar, let’s find out what position is best for certain types of songs and playing styles, and for creating certain sonic effects…
The Sharp Shooter
If you want your guitar to bite, the bridge pickup is your go-to. It’s positioned in exactly the right place to accentuate all those lovely treble-heavy harmonics. This results in the crisp, punchy tone that is the backbone of the greatest riffs and the most memorable solos.
From the twang of a classic country lick played on a Tele to the grinding roar of a humbucker in your favorite metal riff, it's the bridge pickup flexing all the way.
It’s lean, mean, and articulate, but it can get very thin or shrill if you overdo it. Pair it with some distortion, fuzz, or overdrive, and it’s a lead player’s dream. If you’re shredding a solo and need to stand out in a heavy drum and bass mix, the clarity of the bridge pickup is the one for you.
The Soul Stirrer
Next, we have the neck pickup, a completely different beast. The position lets the strings breathe, allowing the pickup to capture the big, fat fundamental note vibrating above it. Warm and lush, it's perfect for jazz cats and their velvety chords or blues players bending soulful leads. From a fat rhythm sound to a super creamy lead, the neck pickup is your perfect musical partner.
On a Strat, the neck pickup is many players' go-to for clean, mellow vibes, on a Les Paul, it’s buttery smooth with a bit of overdrive. However, if you crank the gain too high, it can get muddy.
The Team Player
Sticking with Strats and a few other types of guitar, you might have the team player - a middle pickup. It sits halfway between the extremes, blending some neck warmth with bridge snap.
It’s bright and balanced when played alone, but when teamed up with another pickup (such as on classic Strat ‘in-between’ tones), it’s pure quack, the epitome of funky and chimey, and perfect for everything from clean arpeggios to funky chops
It’s not as in-your-face as the bridge or as gooey as the neck, it has a character all of its own.
More Than Just Tone - Volume
If pickups are left to their own devices, their position doesn’t just tweak the tone, it actually affects the output of your instrument. Near the neck, the string has a much wider vibration, therefore the pickup generates a hotter signal. At the bridge, the tighter motion means less vibration and therefore, a quieter signal.
However, guitar manufacturers compensate for this in the pickup design, producing bridge pickups that have more windings in the coil to produce the volume needed to match or even exceed the neck pickup. Adjustments can also be made when your guitar is being set up by varying the heights of pickups, therefore increasing or decreasing their volume relative to one another.
Weird and Wild Ideas
Most guitar manufacturers stick to the script - there is a good reason that the position of the neck, middle, and bridge pickups are where they are on classic designs - they sound superb.
However, various mad geniuses have pushed the envelope. Some of these have been quite subtle, such as the slightly slanted pickups on guitars such as the Telecaster. This allows the treble strings to get their bite from being close to the bridge while allowing the lower bass strings to keep some of their warmth by being positioned further from the bridge. It’s a tiny tweak that produces a lot of mojo.
Some manufacturers and luthiers have also produced guitars with moveable pickups, allowing you to position them wherever you like to get the precise tone you are looking for. Understandably, these designs have never really caught on because most people end up placing the pickup in the same position as on a regular guitar, making the invention a bit pointless. However, some of the designs are very interesting, such as the PB Guitar below:
Peter Bachmaier PB Guitars Orion Winter Green with movable pickups
Less is More
It’s wonderful to have the tonal variation of pickups in different positions, however, there is a downside. When you flick that faithful pickup selector switch, you are normally switching the electronics of one pickup off and switching another pickup on. However, even though you can no longer hear the pickup you’ve just deactivated, its magnets still affect how the string vibrates above them.
This means that when you are playing in the bridge position, the magnets of the neck position will still limit how much the strings can vibrate. This is why a number of guitar legends from Eddie Van Halen to Leslie West to Billie Joe Armstrong to Phil X favor guitars with a single pickup.
This is normally positioned in the bridge position but there are examples of guitars with a single neck pickup for either the same reason or because they were primarily used for Trad Jazz comping where the bridge pickup was hardly ever needed, such as this beautiful Gibson ES-175…
I’m also a big fan of single pickup guitars, especially Gibson Juniors, either Les Pauls or SGs, as well as one of the best tone-for-your-money guitars out there in my opinion… the highly underrated vintage Epiphone Coronet.
Wrapping It Up
Learning the intricacies of guitar pickup positions is a must for any aspiring guitarist. To get the most out of your instrument, you need to optimize the pickup position not only for every song but for every section of a song. For example, you might use the bridge for the in-your-face intro riff of a song before moving to the neck for the mellower verse. Then when the chorus hits, add a bit of overdrive to the neck pickup to help it push through. Turn the overdrive off for the second verse, then when it's time for the solo, kick in the overdrive again and go back to the bridge pickup for the soaring lead tone we all love so much!
It’s all there - bridge pickup for bite, neck for soul, middle for balance - just waiting to produce the tones you want. Whether you’re a bedroom strummer or a stage warrior, knowing what guitar pickup position best suits your style and the music you love playing lets you quickly and easily dial in your vibe.
