Single pickup guitars????? any good?

[j2379]

Re: Single pickup guitars????? any good?

alot of things, try playing clean Jazz stuff with a bridge hum. or that clapton rolled down tone of cream just doesnt work with a bridge hum.
i have guitars with one hum & 1 vol, & for the most part they are one trick ponies, built to rock out. yes you can do other things but they just dont have the variety of tones, 2 or pickups have. & yes you can compensate with tone controls & EQ & pedals but for someone like me who plugs straight into an amp 90% of the time its just for ROCKIN OUT.

[charvelguy]

Re: Single pickup guitars????? any good?

..not to mention a funk rhythms.
I prefer a single coil in the neck slot, Hum in the Bridge with a coil tap. That gives me the most versatility needed for a variety of styles.

[straycat]

Re: Single pickup guitars????? any good?

I'm down with that CG [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Newc]

Re: Single pickup guitars????? any good?

Actually a humbucker in the neck with a coil tap on both bridge and neck would give the most tonal options on a 2-pickup guitar [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

As for the reason to have a neck pickup - I prefer a screaming bridge pickup like the Duncan Distortion, which has fairly poor cleans. A lower-ouput neck pickup like the JB, Custom, or Jazz is great for old Sabbath and such, as well as certain Iron Maiden solos.
You also open up a wider variety of lead and rhythm tones with a neck pickup that EQ simply cannot give, and that coming from an EQ nut [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Newc

[lerxstcat]

Re: Single pickup guitars????? any good?

If you have separate volumes for both pickups you can do that trick where you turn one volume off and quickly flip the toggle switch back and forth. Nice effect with a cranked dirty sound. Also,
try playing the intro of Sweet Child of Mine with a bridge pickup; it will sound like shit! That's just one example. I find sweeps sound nicer when using both pickups or just the neck; as said above, it smooths out the clams! [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

1-hum isn't too bad if you have a tone knob too, but without the tone control you are really stuck with one basic sound. You can get a deeper tone by picking closer to the neck, but the string tension will be floppier there and fast picking may suffer. You'd have to practice to compensate for that.

[No Use]

Re: Single pickup guitars????? any good?

eh, trust me, I love my 1 hum BC Gunslinger, but it doesn;t do eevrything. hence I have a strat to compensate for any other tones I play, for all the styles that don't rock to a single hum shred machine.

[Ninja Guitar]

Re: Single pickup guitars????? any good?

For metal, a bridge pickup is all I need. I hate the sound of a neck pickup into a heavily distorted amp. But a bridge pickup just doesn't cut it for mellow, jazzy clean sounds. So two humbucker guitars are a must for me.