How does an electric guitar pick up only sounds from the strings and not speech for an example?

Question

Edit: Thanks for all the answers <3

In: Technology

Answer 1

An electric guitar pickup is essentially thousands of turns of thin copper wire wound around a magnet. When a steel string vibrates near the pickup, it will disturb the magnetic field. This induces a small electric current in the copper wire, which is then amplified.

An electric guitar needs steel strings to work. Nylon strings will not work on an electric guitar.

Speech is just pressure changes in air, creating no disturbance in the magnetic field, so it will not be picked up. However, if a speaker (in a toy laser gun for example) is brought near the pickup, the guitar will pick up the signal because the speaker itself works using electromagnetism.