Electronic Guitars: The Future of Electric Guitars?

Purists may scoff at the concept but are electronic guitars, with their 9-volt PP3 batteries and solid-state IC op-amps, the future of electric guitars?

By Ringo Bones

It all probably started with the 1998 era EMG DG-20, a prewired pickguard with onboard preamplifier and two active tone control circuits which back then costs 350 US dollars. It was marketed as the same set-up allegedly used by Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour and was squarely aimed at the modern guitar player who wants single coil pickups / Stratocaster-based sounds but isn’t afraid to forgo tradition in the interests of technology. Strange on how David Gilmour would use such a set-up given that he was busy hoarding pricy NOS Mullard EL34 vacuum tubes during the Ronald Reagan era vacuum tube shortage all the way through the 1990s.

Short of using a 1980s era “keytar” – i.e. keyboard guitar – one of the main advantage of using a 9-volt PP3 powered electronic guitar is the elimination of the need of string grounding for 60-cycle hum avoidance and thus no more nasty shocks onstage when you opt to play barefoot like Cindy Lauper. In contrast to the traditional passive roll-off low-to-high single-knob tone control, an electronic guitar’s two active EQ circuits let you boost predetermined frequencies. One lets you punch the midrange, while the second simultaneously increases the lows and highs for a huge, scooped tone.

Peculiar to this model, the EMG DG-20’s SA pickups have a flat bar magnet, so you can raise them close to your strings for an in-your-face sound. With their rod-magnet pole-pieces – and stronger magnetic field – standard Stratocaster pickups create damping and intonation problems when raised too close to the strings. This particular topic on Strat pole-pieces adjustment was discussed by Eric Clapton during his Guitar Player and Guitar World interviews during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Other obvious advantage of the electronic guitar set-up is the buffered preamplifier – powered by the 9-volt PP3 battery – removes electric guitar cord capacitance from the tone equation which allows you to run a 50-foot electric guitar cable with impunity. Sadly, electronic guitars, with their solid-state and integrated circuit (IC) op-amp based circuits are scoffed at by purist. Maybe EMG will make one with 12AX7 vacuum tubes or nuvistors powered by a beefy pack-of-gum-sized lithium-ion battery.

A (Not So) Brief History of Electric Guitar Pickups

Without pickups, electric guitars won’t make a sound, but do most of us guitar enthusiasts know the origins of this iconic invention?


By: Ringo Bones


The electric guitar pickup has been around for quite some time now that – believe it or not – it even was invented before the electric guitar! And unlike that fraudulent Wikipedia entry – reminiscent of that David Beckham being an 18th Century Chinese goalkeeper – single coil electric guitar pickups were not invented by Slash of Guns N’ Roses. The patent application for a single coil electric guitar pickup appeared as early as 1926. Although no particular person was credited in the single coil pickup’s invention; it was probably John Dopyera – a Slovak émigré to America and inventor of the dobro – probably invented the single coil electric guitar pickup. After a growing demand by Jazz guitarist at that time to find a six-string that can be played as loud as a grand piano, or loud enough not to be drowned out by a typical Big Band’s brass horn section. Which is kind of strange given that Richard Wagner would have been the most likely one to demand such an instrument to be played in his gigs at Bayreuth – or is it Gustav Mahler?

It wasn’t until the 1930s when single coil pickups began to be used in the musical instrument we now know today as the electric guitar. Rickenbacker International Corporation of Santa Ana, California – founded by Adolph Rickenbacher and George Beauchamp – were credited to be the first ones to make a production run of the electric guitar in 1932 utilizing those single coil pickups that were first patented in 1926. Although Les Paul was more famously known as the electric guitar’s inventor because he holds the most number of patents that enable us to play and appreciate more of the electric guitar. Like the multi track recording technique.

Single coil electric guitar pickups are renowned for their tonal sparkle and clarity, but are notorious for picking up noise signals - Particularly those from power transformers or motors operating from the 60-Hz alternating current. Worse still, single coil pickups propensity for stray EMF noise pickup gets worse when comes near to electrical devices reliant on “mangling” the 60-Hz sinusoidal waveform in order to supply them with a high-voltage DC - Like those Budweiser neon signs populating most club stage venues being lit up by solid-state multiplier circuits. Not to mention the 15.75-KHz horizontal sweep frequency generated by the fly-back transformer of CRT-based computer monitors - which makes single coil pickups buzz like a 10,000-strong hive of angry yellowjackets. More bad news to those recording their guitar tracks with a desktop PC-based hard disk recording system. All spell bad news to those who fell in love to the ping and shimmer of a vintage Fender Stratocaster.

Back in 1954, Seth E. Lover – a design engineer for both Fender and Gibson – designed what is now commonly known as the humbucking pick up. Humbucking pickups are composed of two single coil pickups connected in series and out-of-phase with each other. Or the end of winding terminal of one single coil pickup is connected to the end of winding terminal of another single coil pickup (or the start of winding terminal – whichever produces the loudest sound, better tonality, hum cancellation etc.). This pickup is simply a double-coil pickup interconnected so that the signals introduced by extraneous noise such as hum are cancelled out while retaining the signals introduced by vibrating strings. Although not perfect in canceling hum – though it is perfect for canceling that pesky 15.75-KHz horizontal sweep fly-back transformer noise of TV monitors – the performance in terms of signal-to-noise ratio improved significantly.

As a rule, single coil pickups are much louder than their humbucker counterparts. And although most – if not all – Fender Strats made from the late 1950s onwards has a dual-pickup setting where the reverse-wound / reverse-polarity middle pickup becomes a de facto humbucker pickup – with the requisite hum cancellation – by setting the switch to positions 2 and 4. It still can’t match the open tonality of the accompanying single coil pickups. Humbucking pickups produce a sound which most veteran guitarists describe as “phasoid” and has a midrange hump that can manifest itself as a honk when used with the requisite vintage tube-based amplification – not that there’s anything wrong with it though. Just ask those legions of Gibson Les Paul and Marshall Amplifier owners.

Fortunately, there had been advances in single coil pickup design since Seth E. Lover invented the humbucking pickup in 1954. Although most of it is primarily “tone-driven” not noise cancellation. Like those Lace Sensor pickups by Actodyne General Incorporated - which the company also holds patents for the US Patent # 4,809,578 with their Lace Micro-Matrix Comb technology. Made famous by the guitar legend Jeff Beck in his custom Fender Strat, Lace Sensors are revered by guitarists around the world as the Holy Grail of electric guitar single coil pickup technology - Although there are others who swear by Full-Frequency single coil pickups by Evans – which were made famous by Queensrÿche during the late 1980s and early 1990s. But for those who prefer “scientifically verifiable improvements”, they gravitate towards EMG pickups with their active electronics that prevents all of the harmful effects of external noise signals -although they are seen as anathema by those who grew up on vintage pickups sporting post-WW2 era Alnico magnets.

At present, electric guitar pickup designs that capitalize on hum and noise cancellation while retaining the vintage sound of Rock N’ Roll are touted as the most advanced pickups in the market today. Like the latest models of DiMarzio’s Virtual Vintage passive replacement pickups that uses transformer winding technology – probably from Nikola Tesla’s old notes – that damps noise signals while retaining that traditional Fender Stratocaster-style spank. But others still clung on to their real vintage pickups like those original Alnico magnet equipped Fender-style single coil pickups and P-90 pickups. Although none of today’s major electric guitar pickup manufacturers had offered solutions to minimize and eliminate noise coming from cellular phone / mobile phones and their transmitting towers (and Internet Modem noise?).