Divided Pickup

A term used by some manufacturers (notably Roland and Yamaha) for a guitar or bass pickup assembly that actually contains a separate pickup and discrete output for each string. This type of pickup may be used to obtain a hexaphonic (6-string guitar) or quadraphonic (4-string bass) output for feeding a pitch-to-MIDI converter that in turn drives a synthesizer, for driving a modeling processor – such as one of Roland’s VG series of products – or for routing the separate output from each string to individual processors, amps, or mixer/DAW channels.