A budget of $50 gives enough room to buy a good quality guitar pickup. However, the market is flooded with many pickup brands that claim to be the best in class but only a few of them are good enough to buy. In this post, I’m going to mention some of the best guitar pickups under $50 that will work completely fine for you. Not only for guitar but also you can use these pickups with mandolin, violin, and other lovable instruments.
Best Guitar Pickups Under $50
1. Luvay Acoustic Guitar Pickup
The Luvay acoustic is one of the best guitar pickups under $50. It helps musicians and guitarists to get a balanced and clear sound in both highs and lows. It is a clip-on style pickup that doesn’t require any modification in your guitar. You can install it in two ways – Embedded installation and Quick connect installation.
For complete peace of mind, you can just embed the endpin jack through the body of the guitar or simply hang the endpin jack out of the bottom of your guitar for quick and easy installation. However, I recommend you follow embedded installation as it will hide the cord and endpin that looks way better.
It has two knobs that allow you to easily control the volume and tone of the guitar. On the downside, you have to adjust the tone and volume from your amp to get suitable sound quality. Overall it’s totally worth the price and highly recommend by me.
What We Like
- Superb sound quality
- Best for steel strings
- Easy installation
- Value for money
- No battery required
2. FOXNOVO Professional Sealed Humbucker Pickups
The Foxnovo professional humbucker pickups are specially designed for the neck and bridge positions. It offers a classic warm sound without compromising the output. It is made from durable copper and hard plastic and is dipped with vacuum-sealed make reduce unwanted noise and feedback.
If you’re looking for a fast cheap replacement for an old broken pickup then there is great value. For the price, the Foxnovo professional is best if you do not expect too much.
What We Like
- Suitable with Gibson Epiphone Les Paul guitars
- Amazing sound quality
- Budget-friendly
- No battery required
3. Kmise Zebra Faced Humbucker Double Coil Pickups
Kmise is a well-known brand in the music industry. All their products are made of high-quality materials and offer amazing reliability. The Kmise Zebra-faced humbucker pickup is an ideal pick-up for your guitar. The box contains two pickups- One for the neck other for the bridge. These pickups come with ceramic magnets that allow you to easily install them with your guitar.
Undoubtedly these are best for rehearsals and practicing at home. In terms of sound quality, you will get very loud and crispy and if you play gently then it sounds warm and miky. The only thing which I don’t like is its pole screws which can get loose. Overall I can say that it’s best for overdrive players.
What We Like
- Sounds amazing
- Decent build quality
- Fairly priced
4. Fishman Neo D Single Coil Magnetic Soundhole Pickup
The Fishman Neo pickup uses a neodymium magnet structure that offers a balanced and clear sound all the time. Its fits in the soundhole easily with no alteration. You won’t even feel that you’re using a pickup with your guitar. The Neo D is the upgraded version of the previous model. In this updated model you will get a much better treble response and sound quality.
Now comes to the design, you just need to put in the guitar and plug it with an amplifier. For the price, it’s totally worth buying a guitar pickup. The build quality is also very solid and thanks to its low current circuitry you will get accurate and pure signals. If you’re looking for a pure and natural tone then without any doubt go with this pickup.
What We Like
- Fits in smaller soundholes too.
- Pre-wired output jack can be mounted in both hidden and quick position
- Offers an authentic and natural tone.
- Can be used with other instruments as well.
5. AMUMU SP30 Woody Magnetic Soundhole Pickup
The Amumu SP30 is another great pickup under $50. It can be fit from a soundhole between 3.88 inches to 3.94-inch diameter. To get a clear and balanced sound Amumu used a single coil in this pickup. Thanks to its lossless audio cable that provides better transmission with 99% original signal. The SP30 uses a 10 feet instrument cable to connect the pickup with the amplifier which is great. However, it is a magnetic pickup that works with steel strings guitar and does not work with nylon string guitars.
One more thing to mention about this pickup is that it’s a passive pickup and doesn’t require any battery. It will work with guitar amplifiers that come with a built-in preamp. Also, this pickup looks like it’s a part of the guitar because of its wood color. You don’t even feel that you’re using a pickup in your guitar.
The installation is also very easy as you don’t even need to loosen the strings for installation. However, if your guitar soundhole is small then I recommend loosening the strings before putting the pickup in its place.
What we Like
- You can connect this to a loop pedal
- The sound is very neat with no humming
- Fairly priced
- Comes with Rare Earth Neodymium Magnet
6. Donner Acoustic Guitar Pickup, DSS-3 Guitar Pickups
Last but not the least, the Donner DSS-3 guitar pickup is a unique pickup that comes with a transducer pickup system. It features a 3 transducer pickup system and each transducer picks up sound from 2 strings which output a very balanced and rich sound. The design is so eye-catching people will surely ask about these if they haven’t aware of this type of pickup.
You can place the transducer at any location in the guitar to get the desired sound. The cable length is 30cm which is more than enough. The best thing about this pickup is that you can use this on various instruments, like acoustic guitar, classical guitar, ukulele, banjo, mandolin, wood bass, cello, violin, fiddle, Dobro, dulcimer, steel drums, etc. In fact, no other brand offers such type of amazing sound quality at such a price. It has a nice rich tone and really sounds very well.
On the downside, it would be great if Donner provides volume or some kind of tone control in this pickup.
What We Like
- Passive so no batteries required
- Offers warm and rich sound
- Easy installation
Active vs Passive Pickups
All the mentioned pickups come under two categories: active and passive. Now you might think what are active pickups and passive pickups. Both pickups work differently and have different tones as well. In order to get the desired tone, you should know the difference between active and passive pickup.
Active Pickup
Active pickups contain circuitry in their board that required some power to operate. Usually, active pickups work with a 9V battery that has to embedded into the guitar itself. The benefit of active pickups is that they boost your signal and because of this you will get a higher amount of output. It also allows you to boosts frequencies such as bass and treble from your instruments.
Passive Pickups
A passive pickup doesn’t boost the guitar signal. These pickups offer you a warm and organic tone and are suitable for everything. However passive pickups are not good at high levels of distortion.
Conclusion
So it was the post about the best guitar pickup under $50. All the mentioned pickups listed above are well known for producing high-quality sound on a low-cost budget. You can pick any of them and I’m pretty sure you won’t regret it at all. Apart from this if you have any suggestions or queries regarding this post then feel free to ask us in the comment section.
