Pickup Quality Question

[Thomas Malchodi]

So I'm completely new to making guitars, and was wondering about pickup quality. I am making my first guitar, and planning for a pretty standard 2 humbucker setup. However, I was wondering if someone could explain the difference in pickup quality. I have a hard time justifying buying a pair of $200+ name brand pickups, when I can get a no-name pair for $30 on ebay. I was wondering what the difference will be (quality, materials, wraps etc.), and whether it is actually worth it to spring for the expensive ones. I am a fairly novice guitarist, so the difference will have to be pretty noticeable for me to care. Thanks for any advice.

[G.S. Monroe]

Really the best answer to this question, like anything else you look to buy...
You get what you pay for.
You don't get $200 quality from a $30 pickup.

[Rodger Knox]

Pickups sound the way they do because of how they're made. More expensive usually means better quality control and therefore more consistency in the sound from one pickup to the next. There's no reason an expensive pickup should sound better than a cheap one of similiar design and construction. The difference is there's probably more variability in the sound of cheaper pickups, so they have to be evaluated individually.

It's similiar to inexpensive acoustic guitars. Every once in a while you run across one that sounds really good, better than others of the same make & model.

[Mark Swanson]

Different manufacturers scrimp in different ways. Magnet type is big with pickups, the cheaper ceramic magnets often are inferior sounding to good alnico magnets. I like the GuitarFetish pickups for value.

[Paul E Buerk]

There are much bigger things to consider than pickup choice when making your first guitar. If you later decide that you don't care for the particular pickups you've selected, they're easy enough to replace, especially humbuckers. You could do far worse than picking up a set of GuitarFetish GFS hummers. You could also do far better, but save the Lollars for subsequent instruments.

[Eric Schmitt]

I'll +1 the quality control. A good personal example I have, in my first couple of guitars I made I used Duncan Designed HB 102's which are used as stock pickups. None of them sound bad and they have good build quality but each set sounds a little different than the next. I'll also add that more R & D goes into the name brand pickups as they are trying to achieve specific tonal qualities to suit players more specific needs thus adding to the price. Where as ones designed by major manafactures used as stock pickups will have a more generic sound to cater to a broader range of players.

As Mark and Paul said GFS/GuitarFetish are good quality for a low cost, in general $50-$60 a set. I've used sever of their models and am happy with them. Another option to look into is browsing ebay and picking up a set of stock pickups designed by either Duncan, DiMarzio or EMG. (*note the EMG designed will most likely be active pickups). A I said before they would all have good build quality just a little more variation in their sound than their more expensive counterparts.

One last thing to note, stay away from anything that is no name brand cheepie pickups, they will have poor build quality and horrible sound.