Gibson and Fender are amongst two of the most iconic and renown guitar brands of all time and i have both of them in stock. Neither one is better than the other but differ in many ways and is down to a personal preference. 

The most common of the Gibson electric guitar range which is known and loved by many is the legendary solid body Gibson Les Paul which is known for its warm rich sound and powerful sustain.  

The first production year for Gibson Les Paul was 1952 which was the gold top model and 1958 for the Les Paul standard and used by many of the greats such as slash, jimmy page and Paul Kossof from the rock band free.

Key differences between Gibsons and fenders include the type of pickups, humbuckers or single coils (the heart of the instruments tone) and are routed in to the guitars body and wired up to the tone and volume controls aswell as the pickup selecter switch. 

There are other differences and factors that affect a guitars tone such as body shape and wood type, playing style, string gauge and material but the pickups are the biggest factor which affect tone.

Gibsons are well known for using humbucker type pickups whilst fenders use single coil style pickups and depending on what type of guitarist you are and who you want to sound like depends on the type of pickups you will use. 

Fender stratocasters come with 3 single coil pickups but the world famous fender telecaster usually comes with 2 single coil pickups. Both guitars are versatile but i would say you can do more with the telecaster, its also got that twang to it especially on the bridge pickup which is good for playing country music, an excellent example of this would be Danny Gatton

A lot of blues guitarists use fender stratocaster style guitars such as Eric Clapton, buddy guy and Robert cray which had single coils pickups in and guitarists such as Stevie Ray Vaughn used Texas special single coil pickups whilst Jimi Hendrix used custom wound Seymour Duncan single coil style pickups. Single coils are good for blues, funk, indie, pop or rock.

How pickups work – There are 6 strings on a guitar. If you was to take the the fibre plastic top plate off the pick up you will see six individual magnets (one for each string)  They are narrow cylinders with one end being the north pole and the other end being the south pole and refer to these magnets as poles, pole – pieces or slugs. 

There is a delicate thin wire coil wrapped round the magnets, the magnet causes a magnetic field to surround it and the wire coil. If you was to pluck the guitar string this would generate a small electrical current in the wire coil. 

When you strum a chord and provide energy in the form of a vibrating string the pickups then convert this to electrical energy which is then sent to your amplifier if your plugged in and turned in to bigger sound.

Humbuckers work in a similar way, they are bigger in size and is basically just two single coils put together in which one has reversed coil winding.