Pickups - os princípios... e alguns single-coil mods

(já passei uma noite a fazer um cabo RS-232 para um plotter e só passou a funcionar quando percebi que quem me estava a ajudar era daltónico)

Over-wound Pickups

I believe a pickup should NOT be thought of in terms of output, but rather of input. The function of a pickup is to sense the string and send as wide of a tone band as possible to your rig.

Contrary to the way pickups have been marketed for the past 20 years, a pickup is an input device, NOT an output device. Measuring, or rating a pickup in terms of output is like rating a mouse, in terms of screen resolution, or pixels per inch.
A pickup is a sensor and its job is to sense the strings vibration and send that signal to an output device, your amp. The objective of any sensor is to have the greatest dynamic range, and fidelity to capture what ever it is designed to sense. You can then decide, as the end user, to accentuate or eliminate elements at your discretion. But you can not post process and accentuate what your sensor did not pickup!

It is far better to think of a pickup more in terms of the input level for recording. Like with pickups, in recording there is a sweet spot you want to find where you are not restricting input volume and fidelity by having it to low, but you also do not want the input level so high that the needle is pegged in the red. Just like in recording if you make a pickup too hot you loose much of the dynamics, richness, and the fidelity, and you are stuck with a sound you can not ever recover from.
When you have a pickup in that sweet spot you can choose to saturate it and simulate the sound of having the record level high with a pedal or your amp. You also have the freedom choose to pull it back and have other tonal options. With an over wound pickup, you have NO ability to pull it back to any other tone options, and you are stuck with a "one trick pony" guitar. This drastically limits your tone possibilities.