Rickenbacker manufactures three distinct pickups for their current standard models: Hi-gain, Vintage Single Coil Toaster Top, and Humbucking. All three pickup designs share the same footprint, allowing them to retrofit into most current or vintage models.

Most models come with single-coil Hi-gain pickups as standard equipment. Many post-British invasion Rickenbacker players such as Peter Buck, Paul Weller, and Johnny Marr have used instruments with these pickups. Rickenbacker's humbucker/dual coil pickup has a similar tone to a Gibson P-90 pickup, and comes standard on the Rickenbacker 650 C. The pickup itself is also available for purchase at Rickenbacker's online boutique. Vintage reissue models, and some signature models, come with Toaster Top pickups, which resemble a classic two-slotted chrome toaster. Despite their slightly lower output, "Toasters" produce a brighter, cleaner sound, and are generally seen as key to obtaining the true British Invasion guitar tone, as they were original equipment of the era.

Within the Toasters, there are four subgroups based on impedance and time of release. The original pickups were used from approximately 1956 to 1968 (although 4001 models continued to use the Toaster for a neck pickup until around July 1973). Later came the Vintage Reissue pickups of the mid-1980s and 90s; with approximately 12 kilo-ohms of resistance, they had a similar impedance and sound to the high-gains, and are seen by many to be strictly for aesthetic purposes. In the late 1990s, more accurate, scatterwound pickups were made, with about 7.5 kilo-ohms of resistance, closer to the originals. The final group are found only on 325C58 models, and are designed to replicate the toasters of the 1950s, with about 5 kilo-ohms of resistance.

In addition to the standard pickups, some vintage reissue bass models are equipped with Horseshoe wrap-around style pickups, very similar to the pickups on the earliest Rickenbacker Frying Pan models.