How Do You Use Your Pick-ups????

[piebaldpython***]

This is a NEWB question for those of us who are NEW to the ELECTRIC guitar. Lots of guitars have a neck and bridge pickup.
What determines when you use one or the other or in combo?
Are certain things (rhythm or lead) better off one or the other?

Same two above questions but for Strats with 3 pickups--neck, middle, bridge.

An idea or when to use which pickup would be most helpful to those new to the Darkside.

[tunghaichuan***]

Personally, for distortion I like to use the bridge pickup. Doesn't matter what guitar: Strat or Les Paul style although I've always gravitated toward strats.

For clean I like to use the neck, neck/bridge, neck/middle, middle or middle/bridge. Those positions just don't sound good to me with distortion, unless it's light distortion and I'm playing blues licks.

tung

This is a NEWB question for those of us who are NEW to the ELECTRIC guitar. Lots of guitars have a neck and bridge pickup.
What determines when you use one or the other or in combo?
Are certain things (rhythm or lead) better off one or the other?

Same two above questions but for Strats with 3 pickups--neck, middle, bridge.

An idea or when to use which pickup would be most helpful to those new to the Darkside.

[markb]

Playing a strat clean I'll use whatever pickup or combination matches the tone in my head for the song. With drive, bridge for crunchy rock numbers, neck for blues, position 2 or 4 for rhythm parts where it suits. I don't use all that much gain usually. Really no more than a sort of AC/DC crunch, often less.

[sunvalleylaw]

I am answering mostly from a strat point of view. Neck, for warm tones, neck/middle I use seldom. Middle seldom. Middle bridge I like for rhythm, bridge for noise and distortion, and for vintagey raw stuff.

With my Vik, (Humbuckers) I use the neck for warm stuff again, blues and jazzy sounds. Both on for just full saturation, and bridge for distortiony rock. Sometimes I like to have both on but use the volume knobs to have the bridge on just a little to add just a little bite to the warmth.

[wingsdad]

...
An idea or when to use which pickup would be most helpful to those new to the Darkside.

Some good answers here for starters, but if you could give a couple of specific examples of what style you want to play or type of sound you want to get...

'lead' or 'rhythm' are kinda vague, pie.

However, Gibson puts instructions telling you which pickup is for what, on the washer around the pickup selector toggle switch for Les Pauls...most thoughtful of them, I must say...but they eave the middle position a mystery...maybe they couldn't decide what to call that one.

[markb]

...However, Gibson puts instructions telling you which pickup is for what, on the washer around the pickup selector toggle switch for Les Pauls...most thoughtful of them, I must say...but they eave the middle position a mystery...maybe they couldn't decide what to call that one.

I don't know about you but I don't play much "Treble"

[piebaldpython***]

Some good answers here for starters, but if you could give a couple of specific examples of what style you want to play or type of sound you want to get... 'lead' or 'rhythm' are kinda vague, pie.

OK as to music/sound.......mainly blues, slide stuff....Texas blues/rock to Southern rock........so, SRV, Albert Collins, ZZ Top to ABB and Skynyrd with a good dose of Bonnie Raitt and Lowell George.

[Robert****]

Listen to SRV - you can hear when he switches different pickups. Same with Jimi. The neck pickup has a great tone for bluesy lead stuff. I use the neck pickup a lot for leads, but I switch to the bridge pickup now and then for creating more "sharper" tones. There are no rules - go with what you think sounds good.

[oldguy]

I say use them all.
Seriously, try all combinations, see what you like best. Lots of times I'll change in the middle of a song, depends on what effects I'm using and the mood I'm in. You don't need preconcieved notions limiting your imagination.
Now, if you're trying to emulate the people/bands you named (SRV, Albert Collins, ZZ Top, etc.) you're going to have some homework to do! Those are some fantastic players.:

[wingsdad]

I don't know about you but I don't play much "Treble"

.......mainly blues, slide stuff....Texas blues/rock to Southern rock........so, SRV, Albert Collins, ZZ Top to ABB and Skynyrd with a good dose of Bonnie Raitt and Lowell George.

With a dual 'bucker guitar, such as an LP type, you can defy the conventional Gibson nomenclature & use the 'Rhythm' position a lot to play ABB-style bluesy lead lines & the 'Treble' position to play a lot of ZZ Top or Skynrd style 'Rhythm' or lead lines. I find the Mysterious Middle position is good for clean rhythms, and excellent for the Dicky Betts sound leads ('Ramblin' Man, for instance).

The sound of Skynrd's early Allen Collins, then Ed King and finally Steve Gaines Strat stuff is mostly found in the 'latex rubber' texture of the bridge/middle (position 2 on a 5-postion switch), with a bit of treble rolled off to soften the glassiness. The most obvious example is the signature 'Sweet Home Alabama' intro lick.

Either way, you're gonna likely need to mate the guitar to an amp that can deliver smooth overdrive and sonic harmonics to get a fat, round (vs. brittle) tone; an 8" or 10" speaker might leave you a little cold and thin.

[TS808]

I pretty much use them all depending on what kind of tone is in my head. I know SRV used mainly the neck pickup on his strats.

That's what I like about amps with separate channels AND eq's. You can set one channel to sound good with neck, and one with the bridge pup. My EQ settings on my lead channel for example might sound right on with the bridge pup, but muddy with the neck pup.

[markb]

Wings, when I played a Lester I hardly used the switch. I mostly got my tones in the middle position using the volume and tone controls for variation.

Pie, Lowell George's secret weapon was a tele pickup in the bridge position of his strat. A Duncan Twangbanger or a Rio Grande Stelly are tele pickups made to fit strats without surgery. Or, for a similar result you could just fit a baseplate to boost mids and bottom in your existing pickup. Scroll down this page a bit.

[Jimi75]

Strat type of guitar, three single coils:

Bridge Position: When playing very distorted rock stuff and when playing twangy rockabilly like stuff

Middle Position:
My favourite on the Strat that I play most of the time. I play it for BluesRock stuff. It's the gentle mixture between creamy rock sound and wood sound. It gives you enough highs to cut nicely through the mix and a little bit of bottom for spontaneous licks and fills

Neck Position:
Kinda SRV sound for Texas shuffle blues. I also use it for fast picking lines and arpeggios (distorted), because the neck pu gives you a lot of clarity, the notes do not really melt with each other like in the brige postion, you can play very accurate and defined.

Also experiment with the in between positions. My JV Strat sounds way better in the in between position (neck/middle) than my 60 vint. Strat, which just sounds better on pure neck position.

:

[piebaldpython***]

Thanks to all for the great suggestions and info.

[Brian Krashpad]

As you can see, it's mainly a personal preference. The closer you get to bridge pickup alone, the more bite and cut the tone will have. Thus for high-gain rock a lot of times bridge is used for lead, neck for rhythm. But with less distortion you can get a nice "smooth" lead tone from the neck. On a lot of "jazz" oriented guitars, there is no bridge pickup at all, just a neck pickup.

One thing to remember about Strats is that the 2/4 positions are fundamentally different sounding than the 1/3/5, since the 2/4 use two pickups in tandem, while 1/3/5 are singles alone. Also, on most modern Strats the middle pickup is reverse-wound/reverse-polarity, so that 2/4 are hum-cancelling where 1/3/5 are not. That can be important either in a recording sitch (to kill hum on the recording) or live (to fight feedback if in a higher-gain or high volume mode).

Just play with it and have fun. The rule is: there are no rules!