Members steve_man Posted August 16, 2015 Members Share Posted August 16, 2015 Okay, if you've been around for a few years, I've been through all kinds of guitars, but the ones that always seem to stay around are Fenders. Currently just down to my Tele, but I'm sure a Strat will re-join the stable at some point. 2 Fender basses round out the electric side of things. I would really like a guitar with humbuckers, but have yet to find a guitar with buckers that sounds right to my ears. I've had Les Pauls (Epi & Gibson), a Sheraton, a Dot Deluxe, several different Ibanez guitars (SA series, hollow body, couple of others), a Carvin, and a Telecaster 72 Deluxe RI. All looked great, but I always have issues with humbuckers either sounding muddy, or that they are just too powerful. I don't like having to have two completely different setups for my pedals, HD500, etc. So, here's what I'm kinda wondering... For those of you out there that enjoy the tones that single-coils can make, what dual humbucker guitars have you had the best experience with? I love the look of Les Pauls, but have yet to find "the one" yet. Any other thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Bucksstudent Posted August 16, 2015 Members Share Posted August 16, 2015 I didn't get into single coils until later. My first electric was a MIM Strat, but I didn't have an appreciation for it until later when I got into Richard Thompson, Johnny Marr, and Phil Manzanera. I practiced and wrote my early stuff on a SG, so that sound is still very informative of my work. However, I'm going back and forth between my Epiphone HSS strat and a Goldtop Les Paul Traditional Pro right now. I actually prefer strats with a humbucker in the bridge because it sounds sweeter in the "out of phase" position with the middle pickup. Maybe what you need is an HSS strat with a vintage PAF style humbucker? The PRS SE series has a more Fender neck feel, and they're incredibly well made for their price point. Some of the Epiphone G-400s have a similar neck. Both are fairly clear in tonality while retaining the warmth of humbuckers. Then again, if you find humbuckers to be too muddy, you could always go for a guitar with P-90's. I love my Casino. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Grant Harding Posted August 16, 2015 Members Share Posted August 16, 2015 These are nice. Has the shorter scale which gives it a Gibson voice with the HBs. The splitting system lets you get more traditional Fender sounds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members gardo Posted August 16, 2015 Members Share Posted August 16, 2015 I tied to buy a Les Paul sevral times but never found the right one either The closet I came was an Epiphone 1956 goldtop reissue... I love humbuckers on ES-335 types.. I'm curious to see what recomendations you get. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members badpenguin Posted August 16, 2015 Members Share Posted August 16, 2015 Find a Paul style guitar you really love, and work on the electronics. A simple series/parallel switch can get rid of of the "over powering" of humbuckers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members steve_man Posted August 16, 2015 Author Members Share Posted August 16, 2015 The PRS/PRS SE guitars are intriguing... do any of them have a coil tap from the factory? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members billybilly Posted August 16, 2015 Members Share Posted August 16, 2015 The PRS/PRS SE guitars are intriguing... do any of them have a coil tap from the factory? Not that I'm aware of but the pickups in my SE Semi hollow cleaned up very well, to a fault, I wanted them to sound thicker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted August 16, 2015 Members Share Posted August 16, 2015 I've always loved guitars with Mini Humbuckers. They hit the middle ground between Full sized HB's and Singles. You can get that clean tone by backing of the volume two notches and its not all mud, but you can get drive tones when turned up. They have to be vintage wound around 5.5K however. Gibson got it right when they first made the pickups. Anything hotter wound and they don't clean up the way they're supposed to. I have them in 3 guitars now. Two builds of my own and an Epiphone dot. I must have tried a dozen different types of humbuckers in the Dot and nothing was getting me the sound I wanted. I then picked up a set of full sized to mini HB adaptor rings and that was it. No more mud tones. The mids in that guitar came alive. In the 30+ guitars I have I've experimented for decades trying Singles, Full sized HB's, P90's, P100's Toasters, TV Jones, Lipsticks, Gold Foil, Blades, and several with unique pickups which are extremely unique. I only have hot would pickups in my Flying V and I'm getting ready to swap those out when I find something that will sound right in that one. I find pickups with lower winds work better with my gain boxes. Instead of all or nothing they ramp up gradually in gain and I cant get all those partially driven tones to sound great. I like this particularly for recording because multiple guitars sound better. If you have one driven its extremely difficult to mix with a second guitar that's driven just as hard. If you have one that's clean, one that's partially driven and one highly driven they can all be heard individually without using all kinds of EQ and effects to separate them. Even live the pickups have more dynamic punch. I play with one guy who loves the super saturated hot sound. He's a great player who can do all those modern licks, better then I can. The problem is he is dynamically monotone on everything he plays. He has to ride his volume pedals to be heard. I have a difficult time playing with him because I rely on my pick hand to get louder. I go from a light touch for clean tone to digging in to get driven tones and he disappears in the mix and sounds like noise in the background. I recorded an album for him with his band. I recorded the direct signal from his guitar and his amp miced on a few songs. You wouldn't believe how many layers of compression I had to add to his clean track to get it to even up. When a guitars gained up like he usually has it, it doesn't matter how hard or light you pick a string. His timing is excellent and all you hear from his amp is his metal tones so what he does is fine for his style but I'd be bored silly having to play everything with that much drive. Much of my playing style is based on old school techniques cranking up a tube amp and digging in to get drive tones. This is why I like having cooler wound pickups. I can use a wider range of drive pedals to get a wider range of drives without having everything over saturated. The pedals don't have a problem driving even my coolest wound pickups. Its the amount of clean tone that comes through that gives that drive dynamic character, and without it you may as well be playing a square wave synth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Chordptrn Posted August 16, 2015 Members Share Posted August 16, 2015 Try an EC strat or mod a strat with the boost kit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members speakerjones Posted August 16, 2015 Members Share Posted August 16, 2015 +1 to mini-humbuckers. Seymour Duncan makes some nice ones. I have a set in a Hamer Special and it can get single coil chime. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mrbrown49 Posted August 16, 2015 Members Share Posted August 16, 2015 You may want to find a middle ground and go for either and HSS strat or an HSH super strat. You may feel more at home with the longer scale length andmiddle SC and guitars in those configurations often have coil splitting standard, more so than guitars modeled after dual HB gibby's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members jtr654 Posted August 16, 2015 Members Share Posted August 16, 2015 You could look for a Fender Flame or Esprit both have Humbuckers and are cleaner sounding than most Humbuckers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted August 16, 2015 Members Share Posted August 16, 2015 For many years, my live rig was a stratocaster and a 335 through a light to moderately overdriven tube amp. Like you, I first found the humbuckers in the Gibson sounding muddy or too powerful when compared to the Fender, but soon discovered the clean in the 335 by using both pickups together with the volume controls turned down. The blend of the two pickups is where the magic is and it takes a while to find it. It seems that the little bit of phase cancellation that occurs with the two pickups on can be used to keep the sound bright while the volume pots are down a bit. You might want to look into Kinman Pickups. Chris Kinman posted here for a while before he was run off by some rather rude "experts" but he did talk about how the original Gibson Humbucking pickup was meant to sound like a P90 without the hum/noise. He claims that he has been able to achieve that and in his posts, he explained his theory as to why the humbucker sounds muddy in some situations and how he was able to "fix" that. http://www.kinman.com/guitar-pickups/humbucker/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members knotty Posted August 16, 2015 Members Share Posted August 16, 2015 Kinman came, advertised his product, criticised everybody else's, advertised a bit more and left. Simple as that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Floyd Rosenbomb Posted August 17, 2015 Members Share Posted August 17, 2015 I just use a volume pedal.https://reverb.com/item/361779-dunlop-dvp1-volume-guitar-pedal?_aid=pla&pla=1&gclid=Cj0KEQjw6cCuBRCh4KrGoJ6LoboBEiQAwzYsdMK048-zCKsa9mZ7t5Zeq_IOjinU-eP0WCUVnL2f_ecaAr628P8HAQ Put it at the front or back of your chain and it is all good.If you use it at the front then it will effect your distortion levels; if you use it at the back your distortion and or overdrive will be controlled by the guitars volume and the overall volume will of course be controlled by the volume pedal. As we all know I love the ibanez Rg. I think sometimes we guitar type ourselves into corner. I play a lot of jazz and blues on a rg, lots of clean stuff. They simply do a great job. They feel great and sound great. All that is left is to get past the idea that it is for shredders only. A stock RG550 or RG770 from 1987 -91 is what I prefer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members steve_man Posted August 17, 2015 Author Members Share Posted August 17, 2015 So, you set your volume at it's max for single coils and rock it back a bit for your humbuckers? That makes sense... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members steve_man Posted August 17, 2015 Author Members Share Posted August 17, 2015 So, you set your volume at it's max for single coils and rock it back a bit for your humbuckers? That makes sense... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members thatsbunk Posted August 17, 2015 Members Share Posted August 17, 2015 If you're into teles, how about one of these? Not muddy like a lot of traditional humbuckers, but dirties up nice when you need it. Another option would be a 4 way switch on a tele to give you both pickups in series in the 4th position (not hum cancelling though). I've done both but for me i prefer the little 59... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Floyd Rosenbomb Posted August 17, 2015 Members Share Posted August 17, 2015 So, you set your volume at it's max for single coils and rock it back a bit for your humbuckers? That makes sense... My Strats (single coils for the most part) have 500k pots so I don't see a big drop in volume (i think that is what accounts for it). The volume pedal really helps on my HSH guitars, were yeah, you see a drop in volume when the middle single is selected. I have a couple ways to deal with it. I can click on a compressor or an OD pedal that will jump up the volume, too. Anyway, a volume pedal has become a permanent part of the board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted August 18, 2015 Members Share Posted August 18, 2015 Kinman came, advertised his product, criticised everybody else's, advertised a bit more and left. Simple as that. Do you think he has a good product? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members AlamoJoe Posted August 18, 2015 Members Share Posted August 18, 2015 Cut to the chase Knotty! That's me Knotty! Arrggh! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members steve_man Posted August 18, 2015 Author Members Share Posted August 18, 2015 If you're into teles, how about one of these? Not muddy like a lot of traditional humbuckers, but dirties up nice when you need it. Another option would be a 4 way switch on a tele to give you both pickups in series in the 4th position (not hum cancelling though). I've done both but for me i prefer the little 59... I do like my Tele, but I'm thinking that I want something different altogether... A Strat with a hum bucker might be okay, but I have not found one that sounds the way I'd like it to. Most Fender humbuckers are a bit "lacking" for something, IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members gardo Posted August 18, 2015 Members Share Posted August 18, 2015 I do like my Tele, but I'm thinking that I want something different altogether... A Strat with a hum bucker might be okay, but I have not found one that sounds the way I'd like it to. Most Fender humbuckers are a bit "lacking" for something, IMO. Good point because in the end your opinoin is the only one that matters. My toughest critic is me.I have to be the one who is satisfied Although I hate to say this, maybe try Ibanez? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted August 18, 2015 Members Share Posted August 18, 2015 I do like my Tele, but I'm thinking that I want something different altogether... A Strat with a hum bucker might be okay, but I have not found one that sounds the way I'd like it to. Most Fender humbuckers are a bit "lacking" for something, IMO. Have you tried the 4 way switch Tele mod? It adds the two coils in series which is not quite Humbucker but not quite single coil either. Its still a center position setting but its a hotter driven sound. I did the mod on my Tele about a year ago when the stock switch started giving me issues. Its a pretty easy mod too, so long as your pickups are two conductor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JRicoC Posted August 18, 2015 Members Share Posted August 18, 2015 I'm a guy with two "different" Fenders in his stable. The first being a mid '80s Telecaster with coil-split humbuckers and a vibrato, and a 24.75-inch-scale Toronado with P-90-type single coils. Each is very "Fender" and very "different" in its respective way ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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