Pickup

Pickup, Pick up or Pick-up may refer to:

Technology

Music

Film

Pickup (film)

Pickup is a 1951 American film noir written and directed by Czech actor and filmmaker Hugo Haas. It was the first American film by Haas, a refugee from Nazi Europe, who went on to make a series of gloomy noirs about doomed middle-aged men led astray by younger femmes fatales. Haas also starred in the film, alongside Beverly Michaels and Allan Nixon.

Plot

Low-budget, and showing it, Pickup contains a plot that is similar to that of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), but according to Larry Langman "a poor man's version".

Haas plays Jan "Hunky" Horak, a hard-of-hearing railroad dispatcher who lives in a poor neighborhood by the railroad tracks and is seduced by Betty (Michaels), who is after his money. After they marry, Betty and her lover Steve Kowalski (Nixon) scheme to murder him by running him over but Steve has a last-minute change of heart and swerves, lessening the impact. Jan's hearing improves following the accident, and he uncovers their infidelity.

Critical response

Pickup (music technology)

A pickup device is a transducer that captures mechanical vibrations from stringed instruments such as the electric guitar, electric bass guitar, Chapman Stick, or electric violin, and converts them to an electrical signal that is amplified, recorded, or broadcast.

Magnetic pickups

A magnetic pickup consists of a permanent magnet with a core of material such as alnico or ferrite, wrapped with a coil of several thousand turns of fine enameled copper wire. The pickup is most often mounted on the body of the instrument, but can be attached to the bridge, neck or pickguard, as on many electro-acoustic archtop jazz guitars and string basses. The permanent magnet creates a magnetic field; the motion of the vibrating steel strings disturbs the field, and the changing magnetic flux induces a voltage in the coil. This signal is then carried to amplification or recording equipment via a cable. There may also be an internal preamplifier stage between the pickup and cable.