Analyzing Single Coils Vs. Humbuckers for the purpose of the Individual Tone

[ptgold]

Hello Everyone

First Id like to point out that this is not to see which one is better as I love them and need them both in my life. However I have come to the following conclusions from having been playing both strats and les pauls for 12 years:

Single coils in my opinion give themselves more easily to pedals and effects which in turn make them much more moldable to a very unique sound that you may want to achieve. I for instance run my strat through a big muff, compressor, delay and a TS9....It gives me this nice thick yet middy sound...a very Gilmoury kind of tone

I barely ever if at all use effects with my LP. Just the wah, and sommeetimes the delay, and if I use the TS9 itll be as a boost. I believe that when you start mixing in too many pedals with a humbucker equipped guitar it just really hides the natural sound of the guitar.

Single coils however do keep that "stratty" sound when you start shaping the tone with effects.

My point is it has been much easier to conquer a unique tone with single coils than with humbuckers. The ironic thing about all this is that most of time I couldnt give a crap about having a unique tone since Im in love with the sound of my LP straight into my amp!

[Scooter2112]

There you go....

Reason #851 to buy a Les Paul. Simplify your life.

[5F6-A]

Lol!!

[Big John]

I think you're spot on, pt. The majority of an electric guitar's voice is the mids. Les Pauls have mids out the ying yang, that's a given. A standard strat hardly has any. Hell, anybody can see it just by plugging the guitars directly into a spectrum analyzer and using the peak-hold function. Because of the lack of mids with strats, using pedals that boost & grind the mid zone on strats is old school cool. Four popular players that come to mind are Hendrix/Fuzzface, Malmsteen/DOD250, Johnson/TubeDriver, Gilmour/BigMuff. Overdrive pedals and strats are 95% butter & 5% noise.

[ptgold]

Originally Posted by Scooter2112

There you go....

Reason #851 to buy a Les Paul. Simplify your life.

true that! Cant say I dont love my strats though

[richedie]

But I think there are times effects are good. I have a Boss Tuner and an ISP noise supressor on my board, they stay and don't move.

Next I have a Jauques chorus pedal because we play a lot of 80s rock, Rush, Van Halen, etc. I could just do without I guess?
I also have a Nova delay in the loop because we do a lot of 80s metal and I like the delay for leads.
Finally, I have a modified Boss EQ in the loop for leads. I love this pedal! Leads have never sounded better.

That's it....is that a lot?