Guitar question here...do pickups produce different sounds?

Not sure how much detail you are looking for. Obviously the most popular pups are humbuckers, standard single coils and P90s. Humbuckers have two single coils side by side and wound in opposing direction to cancel noise (buzz). They also have a fatter sound.

A standard single coil pup tends to be more articulate sounding than a humbucker, just not quite as full. A P90 is a single coil with lots of winds. So it has more noise (buzz), but also has a thicker, fuller sound than a standard single coil. P90's have a great blues and classic rock tone and really scream through a cranked tube amp.

So one thing you want to look at is how "hot" you want the pup to be. More winds means a hooter pup. Hotter is not always better though. many Les Paul players like a lower output pup similar to the old PAF pickups. So in a nutshell you need to decide which of those 3 types you want. Then decide how hot of a pup you want. For metal you would want a humbucker and maybe even an active humbucker.

That's a fairly just right query. I am good aware of the differences between tones however in no way notion of why that is if the pickups are the equal. You already answered a component to your possess query with the fact that different pickups are made for different positions. However tons of guitars have the certain equal pickups all around. The one thing i can come up with is the difference within the wood tonal traits, being closer or extra from the neck. In spite of whether or not it's the identical kind, that pickup will have to be getting the sound vibrations of the strings from the subject it's positioned. Being closer to the neck seems to deliver a deeper tone at the same time additional away brings a sharper tone. I've customized DiMarzio pickups in my Ibanez and the neck and bride humbuckers are as extraordinary as night and day. The neck pickup is very deep and wealthy even as the bride humbucker cuts like a knife. They're each Steve Vai signature pickups but the neck is a Breed and the bridge is an Evolution. Versatility is the intent for trying extraordinary tones out of your pickups. If all of them sounded the identical there would be no want for specific pickups, and there are guitars with one pickup.

They all sound different, and handle distortion differently.