Single coil distortion!!

Gassage · March 2015

Comfortably Numb

/thread.

english_bob · March 2015

All the talk about disregarding stacked humbuckers. I thought the point of stacks- the kind Paul Gilbert and Yngwie are using at least- was to maintain the same single coil sound, but to use the second coil primarily for its hum cancelling properties while minimizing its influence on tone. I get that, say an SD Li'l 59 is a different ball game, but why such a strong objections to including hum-cancelling SCs here?

monquixote · March 2015

Moe_Zambeek said:

Bucket;566124" said:

ALL of this.

Eek! that sounds like TGP made flesh...
*shudders*

That's cos it's a Larry Carlton cover.

Their are far better examples of Jess Lewis which are a bit less "tasteful".

Neil · March 2015

CHRISB50 · March 2015

Mike McCready of Pearl Jam fame has a pretty nice single coil tone going on.

dogload · March 2015

My Bloody Valentine manage to get a bit of distortion going with single coils

And of course the first still shows a humbucker!

EdGrip · March 2015

White Stripes era Jack White is his fiberglass Airline guitar, whose pickups are single-coils despite being dressed up to look like those "humbucker" pickups in the upmarket Gibsons of the time.

You can never be sure what guitar was used on what record, but one of his Airline guitars makes it into this video, and this is one of my favourite cut-like-a-scalpel crunch tones on record.

jd0272 · March 2015

Bridge P90 through a small output valve amp with the mids boosted is what you want. Although you don't know it yet.

samzadgan · March 2015

Nothing sounds like a P90 with fuzz or distortion...they win at everything!

Dalefty · March 2015

Seriously nobody mentions Iron Maiden, I thought this was a U.K. based forum, what the fuck happened to you lots education? I mean come on they've only been going since the 70's and have about 20 albums, not to mention three lead guitarists.

DaLefty

stickyfiddle · March 2015

Dalefty said:

Seriously nobody mentions Iron Maiden, I thought this was a U.K. based forum, what the fuck happened to you lots education? I mean come on they've only been going since the 70's and have about 20 albums, not to mention three lead guitarists.

DaLefty

This is probably why...

http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/Product News/Guitar/dave-murray-strat-crop-630-80.jpg

stimpsonslostson · March 2015

stickyfiddle;567270" said:
Dalefty said:

Seriously nobody mentions Iron Maiden, I thought this was a U.K. based forum, what the fuck happened to you lots education? I mean come on they've only been going since the 70's and have about 20 albums, not to mention three lead guitarists.

DaLefty

This is probably why...

http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/Product News/Guitar/dave-murray-strat-crop-630-80.jpg

And I believe Adrian & Jannick both favour single coil sized HB's, which probably rules all three of them out.

IIRC Billy Corgan also uses HBs in his Strats.

stickyfiddle · March 2015

stimpsonslostson said:

stickyfiddle;567270" said:
Dalefty said:

Seriously nobody mentions Iron Maiden, I thought this was a U.K. based forum, what the fuck happened to you lots education? I mean come on they've only been going since the 70's and have about 20 albums, not to mention three lead guitarists.

DaLefty

This is probably why...

http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/Product News/Guitar/dave-murray-strat-crop-630-80.jpg
And I believe Adrian & Jannick both favour single coil sized HB's, which probably rules all three of them out.

IIRC Billy Corgan also uses HBs in his Strats.

Yup. They all did for a while, but either way, I'm not aware of a large amount of single coil use.

grungebob · March 2015

Placebo

Moe_Zambeek · March 2015

Bob Mould ftw!

OilCityPickups · March 2015

english_bob said: All the talk about disregarding stacked humbuckers. I thought the point of stacks- the kind Paul Gilbert and Yngwie are using at least- was to maintain the same single coil sound, but to use the second coil primarily for its hum cancelling properties while minimizing its influence on tone. I get that, say an SD Li'l 59 is a different ball game, but why such a strong objections to including hum-cancelling SCs here?

The problem with stack is that they are not single coils, and in general they don't sound quite as 'open' and ... well, single coilish! This is due to the loading of the secondary coil ... which is what makes them a humbucker:

To get a given output from a pickup you need a set number of turns ... lets say a Strat pickup of 6k needing about 8000 turns of 42awg wire. To make it humbucking (wherever you put the second coil) you need a secondary coil of a significant proportion, if not the full amount, of turns as the primary one 16000 for both coils ... that's 8000 turns of extra resistance filtering out the high harmonics for no extra power ... as the coil is too far from the strings to have a significant effect.

Now add to this the problem that to fit all this extra wire into the space required means that finer wire than 42awg has to be used ... yet more filtering of the sound ... this time by the 'skin effect' of fine wire.

Stacks are useful ... but the design is very inefficient and 'lossy' ... and requires all sorts of poking and prodding with shaped ferrous masses and bollocks to get it anywhere near right.

Neil · March 2015

^^^

And didn't Gibson try to hum cancel their P-90's by making a stacked version called the P100 which doesn't seem to garnish much praise. i.e people don't like 'em.

thomasross20 · March 2015

Ah, I do like Placebo!

I quite like a little bit of single coil hum

Never had it feeding back to the point where it's a problem - I imagine that's a pain!

ab2014 · March 2015

TheGuitarWeasel;567337" said:
english_bob said:

All the talk about disregarding stacked humbuckers. I thought the point of stacks- the kind Paul Gilbert and Yngwie are using at least- was to maintain the same single coil sound, but to use the second coil primarily for its hum cancelling properties while minimizing its influence on tone. I get that, say an SD Li'l 59 is a different ball game, but why such a strong objections to including hum-cancelling SCs here?

The problem with stack is that they are not single coils, and in general they don't sound quite as 'open' and ... well, single coilish! This is due to the loading of the secondary coil ... which is what makes them a humbucker: To get a given output from a pickup you need a set number of turns ... lets say a Strat pickup of 6k needing about 8000 turns of 42awg wire. To make it humbucking (wherever you put the second coil) you need a secondary coil of a significant proportion, if not the full amount, of turns as the primary one 16000 for both coils ... that's 8000 turns of extra resistance filtering out the high harmonics for no extra power ... as the coil is too far from the strings to have a significant effect.

Now add to this the problem that to fit all this extra wire into the space required means that finer wire than 42awg has to be used ... yet more filtering of the sound ... this time by the 'skin effect' of fine wire. Stacks are useful ... but the design is very inefficient and 'lossy' ... and requires all sorts of poking and prodding with shaped ferrous masses and bollocks to get it anywhere near right.

Why not use the fender elite model of an extra dummy coil? The singles would retain their character and be noise less?

meltedbuzzbox · March 2015

samzadgan said:

Nothing sounds like a P90 with fuzz or distortion...they win at everything!

apart from sparkly cleans :-P

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

In this Discussion

Become a Subscriber!

Single coil distortion!!

Comments