Customize Your Guitar With a Custom Guitar

Even if you have a pretty good idea what sound you want, finding the right guitar pickups can still be quite a struggle. The problem is that sound has so many variables. Let\'s say, for example, that you hear a cd and you love the sound of the guitarist and want to emulate it for yourself. You can buy the same guitar pickups that the lead guitarist uses, and it is still no guarantee that you\'ll be able to get the same sound. The sound is the kid did not only by the pickups, but by the guitar amp, the petals used, the way it is mixed, the way everything is wired, the sound and shape of the room, and of course the way the guitarist plays. This doesn\'t even go into the materials that the guitar is made out of or the strings used.

You see why customizing your guitar can be such a difficult problem? Now, I do not know anything about acoustic pickups, but for electric pickups there are two schools of thought. One of them – the most economical one, and the one that is used most often in rock music – is to get guitar pickups that produce the specific sound that you\'re going for. This means that if you want a fatter, my lower, and slightly cleaner sound, you can get some humbucking pickups. Gibson pickups are good choices. If, on the other hand, you want guitar pickups with a good attack and that sharp dirty sound that so many people love, you can get single coil pickups. Fender pickups are the best option.

The other school of thought is that the guitar pickup should gather the sound as cleanly as possible, and not introduce any distortion. People who think this way will get active pickups, and then use stomp boxes and effects processors to get whatever sound they want. Although in theory you can use clean pickups, combined with the latest of digital technology, to get any sound that you want, in practice it is much more difficult than simply using more traditional pickups. It costs a lot more money as well, which is why most guitarists will use humbucking guitar pickups. Unless you are playing jazz, in my opinion this is a good solution. For almost any form of popular music, you can get away with traditional pickups and do not need to get the active, more expensive kind.