How Are Guitar Pickups Made

There is something special about the way a guitar pickup transforms the vibration of a string into the sound that either inspires or stagnates. It’s easy to take a guitar pickup for granted because it is small, sometimes hidden, and simple-looking from the outside. But the moment you start learning what is really going on inside it, and more importantly, how guitar pickups are made, you gain a whole new level of appreciation for your tone.

A guitar pickup is a little piece of engineering that feels almost magical. It listens to your strings and turns their movement into a signal your amp can bring to life. But as simple as that sounds, not all pickups work the same way. A single coil pickup has a noticeably different voice than a humbucker. Different magnets shape tone differently. Different wire choices influence output and clarity. The way a pickup is wound affects how bright or warm it sounds. Even the raw material choice of the cover, or no cover for that matter, creates subtle shifts in EQ and/or amplitude. There are so many variations that two electric guitars can be identical in every way except for the pickups inside them, and they will sound dramatically different.

That is why learning how guitar pickups are made is more than just a fun behind the scenes topic. It actually helps you understand your gear and your tone more deeply. The more you know about the design of a pickup, the more you can appreciate the craftsmanship behind it, and the easier it becomes to choose what fits your playing style. So today, I want to walk you through the full process, from the materials used to the building steps, to whether you can build one yourself at home. Think of this as your friendly, no question is a dumb question guide to understanding guitar pickups in a new way.

How Are Guitar Pickups Made

So let us get into the actual build process. When we talk about how guitar pickups are made, we are really talking about a carefully layered sequence of steps. Some builders use automated machines for consistency. Some wind completely by hand for a more organic and unique result. But the core stages remain the same no matter who builds the pickup. Below are the main steps that shape tone, performance, noise level, and output.

Step One: Creating the Bobbin Structure

The bobbin is the foundational structure of a guitar pickup. You can think of it as the skeleton. It is usually made of two flat plates, the top and bottom, which serve as the frame for the magnet or pole pieces and hold the coil in place. These plates can be made from fiberboard, plastic, or other non-ferrous (non-magnetic) materials that keep the coil stable and aligned. Traditional humbuckers use one-piece, injection-moulded bobbins that are very consistent in size. 

In a classic single coil pickup, the bobbin has six holes that hold the magnets or pole pieces, one under each guitar string. In humbuckers, the bobbin holds steel screws and slugs instead. The spacing and height of the bobbin matter more than you might expect. A bobbin that is slightly taller or shorter influences how the magnetic field spreads. A tall bobbin with a tight coil tends to be brighter and more focused (think Strat and Tele), while a short and wide coil often sounds rounder and fuller (think P90).

Choosing the “correct” bobbin is multi-faceted. There are compatibility requirements alongside the tonal qualities component. For example, a Tele bridge bobbin isn’t physically compatible with a humbucker baseplate or its cover, so we cannot simply wind a Tele bridge pickup into a humbucker-size mount without significantly altering multiple variables of its winding characteristics and other impactful components. 

Pro Tip: When you ask a pickup manufacturer, “I love your P90 pickup sound, but only have room for a mini humbucker. Can you put your P90 into that?” and they say YES??!! Run. An honest manufacturer will tell you which parameters are compatible with your context and provide the information you need to make an informed decision. Every part, procedure, dimension, etc is critical in pickup manufacturing, and very more often than not, simply re-housing a pickup into another form factor is inauthentic to the original design.

Step Two: Installing the Magnets or Pole Pieces

Now that we’ve laser-cut our bobbin material for a Tele bridge pickup, the next step is installing the pole pieces, magnets in our case, through the holes. These can be solid Alnico rods in a single coil, or steel slugs and/or screws in a humbucker bobbin that will later be energized by a bar magnet. 

Magnets are the engine of the pickup. Their strength, type, and finish determine how sensitive the pickup is to string vibration, how clear the highs are, and how pronounced the low frequencies become. Even the spacing of the magnets affects the tone because not all guitar strings vibrate in the same way. Some modern designs use ceramic or even neodymium magnets, which are extremely strong and produce a very different type of output. Since we specialize in clarity and dynamic range, we leave those magnets on the shelf and stick with more vintage-inspired magnet compounds. 

Bobbin design is multifaceted and not always a perfect universal product. The pole pieces need to be centered beneath each string to avoid significant volume drop or strange inconsistencies. A 50mm spacing vs a 54mm spacing makes a big difference with pole spacing, especially when the poles are individual magnets like in our Tele bridge bobbin example. It’s less of an issue with humbuckers, but we’ll discuss that later. A well-aligned magnet setup is what gives you balanced output across all strings.

Step Three: Winding the Copper Wire Coil

This is where the soul of the pickup is awakened. Winding the coil with extremely fine copper wire is one of the most delicate steps in making guitar pickups. The wire is usually around 42 or 43 gauge, which is about the thickness of a human hair. Boutique winders use specialty wire ranging from 41 to 44 gauge or thinner. The builder winds thousands of turns around the bobbin. A “typical single coil” might have anywhere from 7,000 to 8,000 turns, while humbuckers typically have two coils with around 5,000 turns each.

Note on a "typical single coil": These numbers are rough and generalized. Every winder has their own process and recipe. Let's think of baking for a second. You read the recipe for the best chocolate chip cookies in the world, but you choose to shop for butter at Trader Joe’s, eggs at a local farm stand, flour from Stop & Shop, chocolate chips from Costco, and the sweet nectar of Mexico, pure vanilla extract from a cruise you took last spring. The final product will be chocolate chip cookies. Warm, delicious, and hopefully a bit gooey if you're asking my cookie preference. The next day, your mother-in-law used the same freaking recipe you did, but used a different oven temp, silicon baking mats instead of parchment on cookie sheets, no fancy Mexican vanilla, and all other ingredients came from Walmart. Oh, and her house is 1,800 ft higher above sea level than you are. BOTH RESULTS ARE DELICIOUS CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES. Is this starting to make sense? 

How the wire is wound matters. A very tight, organized wind results in a precise, clear tone. A more scattered, looser wind often gives the pickup a slightly airy or open character. Every builder has their own approach. Some scatter wind intentionally, believing it adds musical complexity. Some wind with absolute precision for clarity and consistency.

As a rule of thumb in pickup winding, more turns of wire usually mean a hotter output and a darker, warmer tone. Fewer turns create a lower output and a brighter tone. This simple relationship is one of the core secrets of pickup design.

Step Four: Soldering the Coil to the Lead Wires

Once the coil is complete, the builder attaches the start and end of the copper coil to the pickup’s lead wires. These are the wires that eventually connect to your volume knob, tone controls, and switch. This step must be done carefully because the copper wire is fragile and easy to break. Accidentally snapping the finish wire isn’t a problem; you can unwind a couple of layers without impacting the final tone, but breaking the start wire is fatal to the coil, so extra care is taken when handling that side of the coil wire.

Good solder connections prevent noise, crackle, and dropouts. A bad solder joint can cause unpredictable or inconsistent tone, or, at worst, no output at all. Quality pickups always have clean, protected solder points with protective shielding to ensure reliability for decades.

Step Six: Assembly and Testing

Before wax potting, the builder will solder all internal connections depending on the design, insert a charged magnet(s) (humbuckers and P90’s) attach any covers, baseplates, screws, or protective tape, then tests the pickup for output, tone, balance, and noise levels. Some use test rigs. Some install the pickup into a guitar temporarily. Some measure frequency response or inductance. Whichever testing method is used should be done consistently and with documentation. You cannot manage what you cannot measure, so having data points comparing pickup set to pickup set is critical for a consistent and marketable product.

Builders also often check polarity and phase to make sure multiple pickups will work together without hum or tonal issues. Good testing is what separates a reliable pickup from one that might not work in the end users ideal context. 

An example of this is when someone has a traditional Tele pickup set that is reverse-wound-reverse-polarity to itself. Meaning you have a hum-cancelling and in phase middle position when you combine the neck and bridge pickup together. If someone decides to add a middle pickup to make a “Nashville Tele” style pickup configuration, you cannot just add a middle pickup and expect it to work nicely with its neighbors. The added middle pickup breaks up the harmonious RWRP neck and bridge pickup combo, and will work with either the neck or the bridge, but not both. This is because the the middle pickup, to be hum-canceling and in phase with both neck and bridge pickups means it has to be RWRP to both neck and bridge which it cannot be if the neck and bridge were already RWRP to itself. 

If you want to learn how to check your own pickups, you can read my post on how to test a guitar pickup which walks through simple ways to analyze performance.

Step Six: Wax Potting the Pickup

Wax potting is the process of submerging the entire pickup in melted wax to stabilize the coil. When a pickup is not potted, the coil windings can vibrate under high volume, turning the pickup “microphonic”, basically into a tiny microphone and creating ungodly squealing. Potting fills air gaps in the coil and keeps everything still. Most modern pickups are wax-potted for reliability, although a few vintage-style designs intentionally skip potting for a different tonal character, or perhaps because that’s just how they did it in those days.

Potting usually involves a blend of paraffin and beeswax. There are plenty of arguments *ahem* discussion online about importance of the synthesis of the wax, but the end result is what’s critical - a stabilized and protected coil from the environment. The builder heats the wax, dips the pickup, waits for air bubbles to escape, then lets it cool. This protects the coil and improves performance at higher gain settings.

What Are Guitar Pickups Made Of

Now that we have covered the build process, let us talk about a few of the ingredients. Guitar pickups are made from a handful of simple materials, but each one shapes the tone in a unique way.

Magnets

Magnets are the core of any magnetic guitar pickup. Their magnet field is what the strings disturb to create the tiny voltage within the wound coil. Common magnets include Alnico II, Alnico III, Alnico V, ceramic magnets, and occasionally neodymium magnets.

Alnico II magnets give a warmer and sweeter tone, great for vintage-sounding pickups. Alnico V magnets are stronger and produce more clarity, brightness, and punch. Ceramic magnets create an aggressive, high output tone and are common in modern rock and metal pickups. Neodymium magnets are much stronger than traditional magnets and can create very high output, but builders must use them carefully because their strength can interfere with note resonance and even tuning stability if not balanced properly.

The magnet type influences not only output but also note attack, sustain, clarity, and even the feel of the tone.

Copper Wire

The coil uses very fine copper wire. The amount of wire, its gauge, the tension of the wire, the coating of the wire, and its winding characteristic determine how sensitive the pickup is. This is one of the most important materials. If the wire is poor quality or inconsistently insulated, the pickup can be extra noisy. High-quality magnet wire ensures stability and longevity.

Bobbin Material

The bobbin holds the magnets and coil together. It can be made of plastic, fiberboard, wood, or modern composite materials. Although the bobbin does not directly affect magnetic response, it determines coil geometry. Tall bobbins with narrow coils sound different from short bobbins with wide coils. Consistency in bobbin shape means more consistency in tone from pickup to pickup. I’ll fight anyone that claims butryate bobbins sound more authentic than PE bobbins.

Covers and Baseplates

Metal covers can soften high frequencies slightly depending on their compound. Nickel silver covers preserve the most clarity, while brass covers can darken the tone. Plastic covers generally have no measurable tonal impact, but they protect the coil and shape the aesthetics.

Baseplates, like the copper-plated steel plate on a Tele bridge pickup, can influence low end response and magnetic focus.

Can You Make Your Own Guitar Pickups

Yes, you absolutely can, and many people start that way. Making your own pickup is very doable at home as long as you have patience, a steady hand, and the right materials. You do not need commercial machinery. You can wind a pickup using a hand crank, a drill, a sewing machine motor, or by hand while watching the directors cut version of Lord of the Rings. You can buy copper wire, magnets, and bobbin materials online from multiple retailers and for less than ~$50 USD you can create your very own unique pickup.

Your first pickup might not sound like a boutique masterpiece, but it will absolutely work, and you will learn a lot from the process. Many modern pickup builders began exactly this way, experimenting in a garage or spare room. I started Lambertones in my parents basement, graduating to a spare 10x12’ bedroom when I married my wife, and now we’re a full-scale production shop from raw material processing to packaging and fulfillment. You never know where it can take you!

If you enjoy tinkering or modding electric guitars, building your own pickup is one of the most rewarding projects you can take on.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Understanding how guitar pickups are made helps you appreciate just how much craftsmanship goes into your tone. These small components are far more complex than they appear from the outside, even thought their individual components are relatively simple. The next time you strum a chord on your guitar, think about how your pickup is translating everything you play, it’s pretty amazing isn’t it? Now you know the full story of how it does that. If you’re new to Lambertones, welcome to the family. Check out our best selling pickups here, and let us know if you have any questions.