Pickup (music technology)

A pickup is an electronic device that converts energy from one form to another that captures or senses mechanical vibrations produced by musical instruments, particularly string instruments such as electric guitars, and converts these to an electrical signal that is amplified using an instrument amplifier to produce musical sounds through a loudspeaker in a speaker enclosure. The signal from a pickup can also be recorded directly.

Source: Wikipedia — Pickup (music technology) (CC BY-SA 4.0)