If you play mostly rock / heavy rock....

digitalscream

I have a Tele made by Jaden - two Strat-sized single coil spaces. I use Red and Blue Lace Sensors, and they're the best pickups I've ever encountered for heavy rock. They've got the bite and attack of single coils, but the balls of humbuckers.

I have another Tele with a Tele-bridge-packaged P90 from Oil City, and it's...overpowered, even for what I'm doing.

So...yeah, it can be done.

HerrMetal

Ritchie Blackmore (treble booster), Gary Moore (Boss DS1), Bernie Torme (Big Muff), Brian Robertson (?). It was very common in late 70's early 80's. All personally witnessed using SSS Strats live. I mean Tony Iommi notably had one, Randy Rhoads had one, KK Downing had one - people you associate with other guitars, although I never saw them use them live.

And for a slightly strange one look at the Motorhead TOTP appearance performing (miming) "Louie Louie". The Fast Eddie strat still has a single coil in the bridge position at this point but there is a humbucker in the middle. It's more famous as an HSS configuration.

NelsonP

Honestly I probably don't need any more guitars but that doesn't stop me looking.

I have an Ibanez rg hsh with dimarzios which does a lot of things very well. Positions 2 and 4 coil split the humbuckers so it can be quite 'Stratty'.

I like the idea of owning a Fender Strat because it is one of THE iconic electric guitars. But I expect the reality would be that I don't use it that much given the kind of music I play (foos, qotsa, biffy, acdc, wolfmother, black keys, ratm, nothing but thieves).

Maybe I should be looking at Les Paul's instead. Every guitarist needs to own either a strat or les paul at some point, right?
But I have a Gibson DC Jr and a Shiflett Tele too, so the Les Paul bases are sort of covered...

Perhaps I should be worrying about more important things, but I quite like the distraction that comes from these dilemnas.

monquixote

Jetfire said:

guitarmangler said:

All the rage against the machine riff stuff is a single coil neck pickup. Tom Morello only use the bridge pickup for soloing. 

Citation is DEFO needed for that. 

There are various rig run downs you can find on the web.

He had two guitars. One was a custom make thing which was a apparently piece of crap and the other was a US Std Tele.

Everything in standard tuning was the custom and everything in drop D was the Tele.

He pretty much always used the neck pickup on the Tele.

Voxman

The more distortion you run the more that humbuckers and single coil sound closer to each other.  With a Strat you can wire it with a no load tone on the bridge pup that can help thicken up tone a bit. And at higher volumes the brighter Strat tones can arguably cut through the mix a little better.  But an external EQ can do wonders for both types of pick up adding highs to hb's and more mods and bottom end to single coils. 

It was a while before folk learned that Led Zep I and most of Led Zep II were with Jimmy Page playing a Telecaster and not a Les Paul.  

So, just use what you're comfortable with.

stickyfiddle

Biffy is 100% bridge pickup. Simon Neil's rig rundown (can't remember if it was PG or a TPS special) mentioned he sets the heights of the middle & neck super-low so they aren't in the way, since he never uses them. 

You can tell Morello is a huge neck pickup guy just by listening, but you can literally just watch live videos

1:05 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8XiUrpn6u4

1:49 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm7ych5qH14

Audioslave, but 1:40 here. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4CN_aCQvvo

Jetfire

Frankly, I didnt know that

https://www.musicradar.com/news/tom-morello-shows-us-his-rage-against-the-machine-guitars

Its not what springs to mind when it comes to the riffs in Bombtrack etc. I think you'd need a decent bridge pick up more than a neck one IMHO...

monquixote

Jetfire said:

Frankly, I didnt know that

https://www.musicradar.com/news/tom-morello-shows-us-his-rage-against-the-machine-guitars

Its not what springs to mind when it comes to the riffs in Bombtrack etc. I think you'd need a decent bridge pick up more than a neck one IMHO...

It's one of my standard tests when I'm trying out a single coil at the neck.

If you can do RATM songs it passes the "works at high gain" test.

stickyfiddle

monquixote said:

Jetfire said:

Frankly, I didnt know that

https://www.musicradar.com/news/tom-morello-shows-us-his-rage-against-the-machine-guitars

Its not what springs to mind when it comes to the riffs in Bombtrack etc. I think you'd need a decent bridge pick up more than a neck one IMHO...

It's one of my standard tests when I'm trying out a single coil at the neck.

If you can do RATM songs it passes the "works at high gain" test.

Yep. I spent a lot of time in my old originals band on a Tele neck pickup with a Rat - that was most of my heaviest moments and worked brilliantly. 

NelsonP

Now I want a tele as well
And a Les Paul.

ennspek

There are single coils that are "heavier" than some humbuckers. To taste really.

birtner

Fat 50s pickups, middle and bridge position, tone knob rolled down some, a decent drive  pedal and plenty of volume should do it. Failing that; tele

axisus

It just depends on whether you like the single coil rock sound or the humbucker rock sound. 

FreddieVanHalen

If you’re going to use single coils and a load of gain, make sure it’s either shielded or has some kind of noise reduction or silent coil system.

The hum and buzz may drive you crazy otherwise

skullfunkerry

monquixote said:

Jetfire said:

guitarmangler said:

All the rage against the machine riff stuff is a single coil neck pickup. Tom Morello only use the bridge pickup for soloing. 

Citation is DEFO needed for that. 

There are various rig run downs you can find on the web.

He had two guitars. One was a custom make thing which was a apparently piece of crap and the other was a US Std Tele.

Everything in standard tuning was the custom and everything in drop D was the Tele.

He pretty much always used the neck pickup on the Tele.

I don't know for a fact but I'm pretty sure that his custom make guitar is a Performance, similar to mine: the shape is the same, and he said he got it from a company in Hollywood, which is where Performance Guitar is.

I'm not sure what he didn't like about his: mine is fantastic!

YellowLedBetterMan

One of the studios I used to rehearse at, there was another band that let me use their guitarist's Mexican Strat with SD hot rails and an invader in the bridge for a few sessions. It was one of, if not the best "rock" guitar I have ever played.

SunDevil

Leslie West

..Real men (and there was a lot of Leslie back in his Mountain days) use a P90

..just sayin’ ;-)

TTBZ

I just did a quick bit of recording with my strat copy, I've always been a Gibson player but I actually prefer the recordings I've done with this guitar over my old stuff on the SG! I'm tuned down to drop C doing heavy riffy stuff and the strat just sounds tighter and punchier even with dead strings. The extra scale length must be working in my favour. The SD Custom 5 I have is too scooped and dull for me though, I'm going to stick a ceramic or A8 magnet in to get some mids back in it! Feel like I'm turning a corner in my guitar tastes.