Many sellers won’t know how to measure this, so you may have to rely on a subjective value. Some of the later ‘60s Japanese pickups get up into the 9 to 10kΩ region and pack plenty of punch. In the early ‘60s, Japanese pickups generally didn’t have a lot of oomph, often measuring in the 3k to 4kΩ region.Īs the decade went on, the coils got bigger and started to pack more oomph. It also lets you know if the coil is damaged or not.Ī good starting point is to try and look for guitars that have coils in the 5kΩ region or more which is generally in the territory of the pickup resistance on a ‘57 Strat.
Magnet strength, coil inductance, and bobbin geometry also play a large part, but DC resistance is the thing generally measured by people looking at pickups. Coils with more resistance tend to have a “hotter” sound and drive your signal harder. DC resistance of the coil has become a sort of shorthand for a pickup’s output, but the two aren't always correlated. There are two things you want to look for: do the pickups have enough oomph to make the guitar worthwhile and are the pickups microphonic? Pickup OutputĪ pickup’s output can be measured in oomph (that’s a technical term). Even ones that look like humbuckers are generally just single coils inside a humbucker–like cover. Just about all vintage ‘60s Japanese pickups are single coils.
