Pick Up Selectors

From my previous entry, pickups plays an important role in shaping the tone of the guitar. This entry is purely just general knowledge for beginners to guide them a bit about tone choices. Below is a picture of where the pickups and pickup selector (pickup switch) are usually placed.

Fig. A: Pickups and Pickup Selector

From the picture, the guitar has 2 Pickups. Such guitar typically has only 3 selectors to let the guitarist choose which kinds of tones that he/she wants. The bridge pickup (the one further away from the neck) has more bite on the sound produced. So the sound is usually suitable for playing rock/metal songs. The neck pickup (the one nearer to the neck) usually has more warmth, great for mellow, ballad, clean songs.

If you put your selector to the centre, you'll be combining both pickup sound, thus producing a different sound from both of them altogether.

Some guitars have about 3 pickups while some even have 4 pickups on it. Guitars that have 3 pickups usually have 5 selectors. That is because they can combine and form 2 more different pickup sound. So guitars like that have more tone choices.

I think that's about it for guitar pickups. Hope you guys are well informed about this.