Solving My Tone Identity Crisis (humbuckers Vs single coil)

#guitar #music #guitarist
yessir. finding a solution to my tone identity crisis by comparing two of the most iconic pickups of all time. dig it.

[pyro-ocoe]

both do amazing in their own areas, humbuckers obviously for heavier rock tones and beefy sounding tones, single coil for glassy/glimmery clean tones but i couldnt live without either of them

[selliantuttimusi]

To me the neck pickup of a strat IS the guitar sound. No other guitar/pickup combination has as much character IMO.

[Mike-rwnh]

My single coils identify as humbuckers. Anyone who says they can hear a humming will be charged with thought crimes.

[airworthy]

That's why I love HSS configuration, I love the warm sound of the Humbucker on the bridge for rock and the 4th position of the single coil for funk.

[danilobriz]

anyone with a few miles runned knows that both are amazing
I personally likes humbuckers to solo single note lines with some overdrive
single coils covers all the rest, chords, solos with harmonies in it
well, if i had to choose, i would stick with singles.

[JumboJimbo]

Strangely I liked the HB’s on the clean tone, because they sounded brighter to me. But the SC’s on the distorted, because they weren’t as low end heavy.

[Stretchwreckedem]

I've always wanted to try a Humbucker bridge and Single Coil neck configuration myself for a lot of higher gain guitar playing. I've found playing a single in the neck for lead work to be very entertaining and it really help accent my dynamics a lot better than a regular humbucker in the neck would.

[UltraZombie]

IMO single coils have really nice distortion but I prefer the clean of the Humbucker anyone else think this or am I just weird

[THE-CRT]

Fun fact the humbuckers he used, are actually wired to basically act like single coils, Scott and Tim mainly chose humbuckers because they though it looked cleaner than it would with a SSS layout

[theDragoonyaboiCJ]

you should have turned it into a hendrix considering you already have the reversed headstock. The reversed bridge strat really brings out those bass frequencies for that hendrix tone

[JonDeth]

*For those more daring, there are some simple and safe mods that you can explore first so you're not sacrificing the advantages of a single coil or spending an arm and a leg to get an upgrade so you have something pro level in at least this one regard.*

You can cut a steel plate from sheet metal and glue it to the back of your pickup's magnet. This reflects more of the magnetic field upward and you easily double to triple your output also effectively increasing sustain.
*After this mod, you can use passive R-C filters for low-pass, high-pass and bandpass schemes that normally consume too much power in passive systems, but aren't a problem at all with this mod.*
That means if you want a huge boost in mids to get a strat more like a Les Paul, it's easily achieved.

There's one more mod in this scheme which is increasing the volume pot to a 1-meg which takes output to an even crazier level that rivals an active set, but there is a noise risk when you roll the volume back and place a load on the pickup that can make 60-cycle or other atmosphere sources of RF worse.
I'm a formally educated amateur electrical/electronics engineer(no degree) and personally highly prone to converting every guitar I own into actives. With a simple Class-A design, your pickup sounds identical to before but with literally 20x the voltage output.

[kirkwahmmett]

I'm partial to an HSS configuration although I definitely prefer the all single coil look and I just have to say once again how great that sonic blue 60s style strat looks.

[Chillin]

Still waiting for the day they make a humbucker with atleast one strat single coil so you can split it and have a proper strat tone.

[OLDSACKS]

I have a Godin Radium and it fixes this problem. It has a HSH configuration with a t-style pickup and a push-pull knob.
You get most strat, tele and les paul tones all in one guitar. Only thing it cannot do is a HH middle position, middle position is for the tele twang.

[electrickittylikestea]

Ohhhh! Hahaha Im going through the same and it’s making me doubt about my whole identity 😂 thank you so much to let me know I’m not the only one haha

[Ottophil]

I like HSS for strat and a gibson sg with humbuckers that split. Those two are my favorite combos I have

[michaelp]

Single core vs humbuckers. There's really no fair comparison they both have their own place in music. I love the sound of the single core in My telecasters but the humbuckers in my Les Paul sound great too.

[tylerferrusi]

For what I've seen via your channel of your taste and style, I'd say singles for you even though I much prefer humbuckers personally. Here's the long answer, if you want one can do it all guitar, go ssh with a coil tap or if you like different guitars for different jobs, my preference, have an sss strat as your no. 1 and another with a humbucker in the bridge that feels right to you when you're in a distortion mood.

[actuallyasriel]

My 8-string has a coil split (only energizing one coil in each pickup) and I've been loving that for heavy rhythm tones, it's got a throat to it that almost feels like it's using some kind of mod pedal but it doesn't. Shockingly versatile.

[sairamr]

I loved playing the humbucker on my Yamaha PAC, but the neck pickup just grew on me. The glassy twangy throaty tone I got out of the neck single coil sounded so good in my mature years of guitar.