The better the guitar & amp...

[Grant Harding]

... the more likely I am to use the bridge pickup.

 

I find with cheap gear I find myself using the neck pup most often, but with really nice gear I tend to stick with bridge and bridge + middle.

 

You?

[Alecto]

The more I'm likely to play it.  Good gear challenges me to get better as a player.  It's also a reward for improving as a player.  See how it works*? :robotwink:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[billybilly]

 

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Alecto wrote:

 

 

The more I'm likely to play it. 

Good gear challenges me to get better as a player. 

It's also a reward for improving as a player.  See how it works*? :robotwink:

The above is very true for me, exposes me, forcing me to improve, I like it.

[kayd_mon]

I've found that the nexk pickup on cheap guitars is often too muddy, and the bridge too shrill, making the middle the way to go. Of course, I don't play guitars like this too long. If one of mine wad like this, I'd go pickup shopping immediately.

[jpnyc]

I think most cheap guitars come with harsh ceramic pickups. And I think this is because those guitars are mostly targeted at teenage guys and teenage guys who play guitar tend to associate good tone with very angry sounding bands.

[Dougy]

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jpnyc wrote:

I think most cheap guitars come with harsh ceramic pickups. And I think this is because those guitars are mostly targeted at teenage guys and teenage guys who play guitar tend to associate good tone with very angry sounding bands.

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I think you're putting too much thought into it. Most dirt cheap guitars come with dirt cheap pickups. Most dirt cheap pickups sound like {censored}e. I doubt there's much 'marketing strategy' involved in the construction of one of these:

[benzem]

 

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koiwoi wrote:

 

... the more likely I am to use the bridge pickup.

 

 

 

I find with cheap gear I find myself using the neck pup most often, but with really nice gear I tend to stick with bridge and bridge + middle.

 

 

 

You?

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Well no, but I do get your point. Some cheap stuff can sound thin.....but way too many variables to agree.

[stormin1155]

Regardless of cost, I have a harder time finding a neck pickup I like than bridge. The bridge I normally use for leads and crunchy rhythms,  A hotter pickup with more compressed sound works fine for that.   The neck I like for cleans, which I think demands more of a pickup.  It has to be very dynamic, have a very solid and tight bass, and transparent highs that ring out... A good neck pickup for me is one that I can get to sound almost like an acoustic.  So many neck pickups sound muddy to me.

[Grant Harding]

I guess I'm really talking about clean tones. In the bad old days, playing my stock Strat through my old ss Traynor amp I could not get a bridge sound that I thought sounded nice enough to use. Now that my gear is decent I find myself using the bridge pup for cleans, with the tone rolled off and it sounds rich and pleasant as opposed to thin and harsh.

[Grant Harding]

I use the bridge pup for gain almost all the time btw

[Flintc]

The sounds of these two pickups tends to be so wildly different that very little is a matter of the quality of the pickup or the amp. Plenty of jazz boxes don't even provide a bridge pickup at all, since jazzers simply don't use it. For the kind of music I like to play ("elevator music"), the bridge pickup is pure cosmetic decoration.

[Grant Harding]

I cover the clean neck HB pickup with the tone rolled off fine. I have a really varied repertoire, from folk, rock, funk, pop, reggae, calypso/soca, jazz, blues, etc, so I need to cover a lot of ground.

A good example of what I'm talking about is Dreadlock Holiday by 10CC. I always used to use middle pickup for that, because the bridge sounded like cardboard clean. Now that I have some nice harmonics I can get the bridge pup sound that I want.

[docjeffrey]

Try playing a Strat thru a one channel, 12 watt tube amp with a 12" Celestion Blue, no master volume and a single tone control. If you can make beautiful noises with this setup, you're a very good player who is in control of his instrument.

[Grant Harding]

I like the flexibility of the Shiva, but it's the same thing - the clarity is so good that there's nothing to hide behind. It definitely forces you to focus on playing cleanly.