Do you need humbuckers for distortion?

Question

really do you? or will it matter?

Answer 1

Humbuckers work by adding slight amounts of inverse polarized and phase-matched 60 cycle sine wave to cancel out such interference picked up by sound equipment input cables from the nearby power lines. A sensitive voltmeter reads this stray 60 cycle airborne signal as perhaps as much as 15 volts! The humbuckers only work if the picked up signal is clean sine wave. If it is ragged, such as from a bad power line insulator putting ragged edges on the otherwise sinusoidally pure interference, you're pretty much screwed for fixing it with a humbucker. If it sounds ragged, call the power company and say it is violating FCC regs, and you want it fixed right away, before it starts a fire or causes an outage. If they refuse, complain to the police that a dangerous situation exists from the bad insulator, and provide accurate maps of the exact location, which you can determine with an AM transistor radio used as a strength and direction finder, turning it about, practicing on a weak station first, to develop your technique. Lotsa fun! Regards, Larry.

Answer 2

no way, humbuckers are just more powerful, but they have nothing to do with how distorted you can make your guitar sound ( im assuming that you're talking about an electric guitar and not a bass )

it depends a lot on how powerful the amp is, not so much on the quality of the pickups.

also if you want distortion that you can really mess with, get an effects pedal, or a distortion pedal, they're only like 30 bucks.

Answer 3

You don't. But humbuckers will have a fuller sound.