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On my seemingly endless quest for universally great neck tone, I have now arrived at the station where I need to try some modern single coil designs.
Requirements:
CLEANS: glassy, sparkly, chimey, so that big chords don't sound muddy and there's plenty of headroom, but fat enough to make clean single note runs punchy and well bodied (i.e., not wimpy). I guess the classic Strat neck tone, but with a hair more muscle, tunable with the volume pot.
OVERDRIVE: enough head room to allow for nuances, Hendrix-style.
HIGH GAIN: this will be, I think, the tricky part - I'd like creamy, flutey tones, the kind you hear in the now-classic works of a man named Slash. In other words, the single coil character somehow magically fades away under high gain, and some humbuckerish magic happens at the same time.
Now, I'm well aware that having a pickup that can do the famous Strat glassy sparkle and the famous Les Paul creamy flute must be some sort of a Holy Grail (i.e., something to never be found, ever).
But what will get me the closest? The stacked design? The rails design? Another type of design? Where on the output spectrum should I look? Other things?
I've been through the split HB phase - cleans come close to single coil only in split mode, and we all know that's not it, through the P-90 phase (a Phat Cat - a brilliant p'up, but in a world of it's own, doesn't do any of the above as described), through the true single-coil phase (pretty amazing cleans, but no high-gain creaminess and flutey goodness). Not tried both a single and an HB in the neck (kind of like Steve Morse).
Please discuss and help a fellow. Specific examples very welcomed.
Thank you!
EDIT:
The Guitar: The pickup will be going in a 21-fret, 25.5'' scale hot Strat-ish build, maple + rosewood fretboard neck, mahogany body, hardtail bridge, 5-way superswitch and push-pulls will be available, so complex splitting/combinations are not a problem.
Requirements:
CLEANS: glassy, sparkly, chimey, so that big chords don't sound muddy and there's plenty of headroom, but fat enough to make clean single note runs punchy and well bodied (i.e., not wimpy). I guess the classic Strat neck tone, but with a hair more muscle, tunable with the volume pot.
OVERDRIVE: enough head room to allow for nuances, Hendrix-style.
HIGH GAIN: this will be, I think, the tricky part - I'd like creamy, flutey tones, the kind you hear in the now-classic works of a man named Slash. In other words, the single coil character somehow magically fades away under high gain, and some humbuckerish magic happens at the same time.
Now, I'm well aware that having a pickup that can do the famous Strat glassy sparkle and the famous Les Paul creamy flute must be some sort of a Holy Grail (i.e., something to never be found, ever).
But what will get me the closest? The stacked design? The rails design? Another type of design? Where on the output spectrum should I look? Other things?
I've been through the split HB phase - cleans come close to single coil only in split mode, and we all know that's not it, through the P-90 phase (a Phat Cat - a brilliant p'up, but in a world of it's own, doesn't do any of the above as described), through the true single-coil phase (pretty amazing cleans, but no high-gain creaminess and flutey goodness). Not tried both a single and an HB in the neck (kind of like Steve Morse).
Please discuss and help a fellow. Specific examples very welcomed.
Thank you!
EDIT:
The Guitar: The pickup will be going in a 21-fret, 25.5'' scale hot Strat-ish build, maple + rosewood fretboard neck, mahogany body, hardtail bridge, 5-way superswitch and push-pulls will be available, so complex splitting/combinations are not a problem.
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