Single-pickup guitar tricks

Me! Sometimes



But not always:

 

my tele with a quarter pounder in the bridge can doom through the right fuzz and the right amp.

 

i've owned a bunch and played more. i'll occasionally use a neck pickup, but rolling the tone down just sounds kinda gross to me on almost any guitar i've played.

 

ok i do use a tone knob when i use my blue box to help with the tracking.

 

I can relate...something “squelchy” about running a neck with the tone rolled off...but...that’s how you get that fabled “Woman Tone” Clapton used that everyone makes the fuss over.
You dial UP the treble and mid on the amp side of things, if I remember...

 

My single-humbucker guitar has a wire with a .001 treble bleed cap from the tap wire between the two coils to the third leg of the tone control. This gives the guitar single-coil edge which is retained when I turn down the volume, but I can dial it out by turning the tone control down to 8.5. I invented this circuit myself after devouring Adrian Legg's "Customising Your Electric Guitar".

 

Or as Billie Gibbons, a cigarette:

 

I recently switched over to having just one single-coil sized humbucker in my Strat. For the controls I have a single concentric volume/tone combo where the middle tone control usually would be, and a 3-way rotary switch for series/single/parallel coil switching. It's now my favorite guitar I've ever owned.
There are a ton of tonal variations you can get from that simplified setup. IMHO, the guitar in general sounds much more open and lively as well, probably because of the reduced string pull. I really notice it with harmonics. There is an entire world of harmonics down in the pickguard area that just weren't an easy option before. And all those pesky pickup edges, the volume knob, and the 5-way switch don't get bumped anymore, because they're gone!

 

I love single pickup guitars! Especially my Fender Esquire and Gibson Melody Maker. No switches or gadgets, but always use CTS audio taper pots, and quality audio grade capacitors You can do so much with your tone and volume controls if you use quality parts!!

 

Ahhh, allow me to introduce you to my ice-pickups.

 

Absolutely Peegoo ! I've been playing my Esquire since 1968 and there is a lot of versatility there if you know how to use it !!

 

I wire my Esquire builds like Ol' Fuzzy ... 1 , straight to output , 2 , volume only , 3 , volume and tone . Lot of tone variation there .

 

I'm just realizing NOW thread was about 'single pickup guitars'

And I was seeing (in my head) single-coil guitars' and cool tricks or techniques using single-coil pickups

*just trying to explain my earlier post- sorry!

 

Quite true ! Sometimes when playing an Esquire I will palm my pick and use my finger and/or fingernail to strum a rhythm part .

 

I likey one great pup and one great tone cap.

 

Varying pick attack and where you pick the strings yields many different sounds. The guitar knobs are also your friend. Using your amps low gain input can help tame a single humbucker guitar.

 

I have several one pickup guitars. For a hum cancelling pickup, I like doing the series/single/parallel switch.

More recently Ii got a tiny guitar with one humbucker size pickup rout. I've been using it to test a variety of pickup experiments. It had just a volume control. However, I installed a 3 position toggle, DPDT on/off/on, and wired it so position 1 is straight pickup, position 2 is low cut (signal passes through a .003uF capacitor), and position 3 is a high cut .005uF hot to ground. I'm quite liking this configuration. The low cut position does a sort of single coil emulation, even if it's already a single coil. Being a tiny guitar with a very short scale and tubby strings to get a usable EADGBE tuning, it's fairly fat sounding regardless of the pickup installed, so this position comes in handy. Position 3 is a fairly small-ish cap to ground, creating a resonant circuit with the pickup, and the low value cap functions more like re-voicing the pickup than a regular high cut tone control. With a thinner, lower output single coil installed, it almost gives a more humbucker-ish tone, and the resonant peak creates a kind of slight boost.

Being an experiment guitar, the effectiveness of this tone toggle switch can vary depending on what kind of pickup is installed. And I have run into an oddity with the low cut position when I'm using one of my odder fuzz pedal designs. I'm suspecting the pedal really likes a DC path to ground, so I'm considering adding a large-ish value resistor in parallel with the high pass cap to do just that. But all in all, I think this could be a good alternative to the normal Esquire wiring. Or any guitar, really. I've just been impressed with how much versatility it's added.

 

I had one of those back in my day. Mine was a metallic pale blue colour. Outstanding guitar - wish I’d never let it go.

 

Great thread. I put a dpdt inbetween the vol and tone as a bypass switch. Very useful in a lot of situations. Use it quite a bit. It doesn't sound good all the time. Being able to dial in the tone/volume is always an important option to have for the way I play. Best of both worlds. Keep on pickin!!! Again, I have really enjoyed this thread!

 

Mine was candy apple red. I’ve always missed it.