'nother pick up question

[GSR]

i was lookin at my warwick bass product mag (aka my bible) for the 1293856118795941th time this morning, and y'know they give a lil description of each bass under the pic and such, and some of them have 'humbucking pickups,' that apparently everyone loves. whats a humbucking pickup? and while we're on it, whats the difference between active passive and humbucking/which is better? thanks guys.

[Pickles]

theres humbuckers and single coils. single coils are for the clean sound (fender uses them a lot), while humbuckers are good for distortion. humbuckers can have coil taps which gives them a close to single coil sound.

[GSR]

cool, any difference in appearence/ can you tell what you have by looking at your guitar?

[Pickles]

not necessarily. theres many different styles of pickups as for how it looks.

humbuckers can look like 2 single coils put together. they can also just look like a thick block.

however, humbuckers can look like single coils. ive seen seymour duncan stacked humbuckers, which are pretty cool

[grock]

hum buckers do exactly what they sound like. they buck the hum. all electricity flows at 60Hz. which is that low hum you hear when you are getting feedback. so like playing under flourescent lights, a single coil will pick up on that frequency and produce a low hum.

the humbuckers have two single coils in opposite directions so that they cancel out the hum. this is why on a 3 pickup, 5 way switch guitar, you will notice a hum at 1,3,and5, but not at 2 and 4 because at 2 and 4 there are 2 coils in use and act as the humbuckers do.