According to a guitar pickups guide, a guitar pickup is a device that is used for trapping vibrations made by guitar strings and then changing them into electronic signals that will be recorded and amplified. It is ordinarily used with acoustic-electric and galvanic bass and rhythm guitars and come in passive (multi-transducer and magnetic) and active (piezoelectric and optical) types.
Types to pick from
Piezoelectric
Magnetic: Magnetic guitar pickups are made from permanent magnets that are enclosed within thin coils of copper wire, and may whether be associated to a pickguard or neck (ideal for archtop acoustic-electric jazz guitars) or mounted on the body of the guitar. The voltages from magnetic string vibrations travel straight through radio transmissions or cables to be recorded or amplified. With outputs between 1 V rms to 100 mV rms, high-output models generate more flux straight through strong magnets while others improve voltage by increasing wire turns.
Piezoelectric: Piezoelectric guitar pickups are used as alternatives to magnetic ones. Also providing unique sounds and producing great yield impedance, they rarely pickup unnecessary fields like hums and feedback. They are also fitted with buffer amplifiers to avoid losing full frequency responses.
Multi-transducer: These guitar pickups furnish different outputs, with each one dedicated to a particular guitar string. Allowing independent amplification and processing, they may be built into guitars and synthesizers but they are still relatively uncommon.
Optical: optic guitar pickups function using Led light sources that give off light beams that are ordinarily interrupted by the strings. Using photodiode or phototransistor detectors, a guitar pickups guide will tell you that these guitar pickups are immune to magnetic and galvanic interferences.
Some things to remember
Semi-linear pre-amplifiers are great with piezoelectric guitar pickups because they prevent louder clippings from happening, and then makes whatever passes straight through less noticeable.
If you're finding to perform a wider range of sounds, then a piezoelectric guitar pickup will do this for you, over magnetic ones.
piezoelectric buzzer