Optimizing tones from neck and bridge humbucker through an amp...

[Bowtomecha]

When you have a set of humbuckers, how do you set up your amp tone? Do you use the one clean and the one overdriven channel and optimize them for the pickup you use the most, or for something useable between the two pickups? Or do you use completely different settings for each pickup with pedals or presets?

I usually stick to a couple presets since I don’t bother to use a foot switch much. I like the idea of honing my pickups so that they give me the sounds I want from each through a clean channel and a distortion channel. But maybe I’m losing some tonal capabilities by not having separate presets for neck and bridge pickups? I tend to use the crunch channel on my amp and play with the volume knob for drive, again mostly because I don’t bother pulling out my foot switch. I use a katana 100 which gives me a lot of different tones. I’m not sure what school of thought to follow though, variation from the guitar, or variation from the amp.

[Clint 55]

Re: Optimizing tones from neck and bridge humbucker through an amp...

I like to have my pups balanced. I have a mini hum in the neck and a full sized hum in the bridge on 1 rock ax and that gives me cutting but full sounds in both positions. On the other rock ax, I have p90s in neck and bridge and that gives me more of a difference going from sort of fat neck to sort of bright bridge.

[Demanic]

Re: Optimizing tones from neck and bridge humbucker through an amp...

I set my amp up for a clean sound with the bridge pickup. Then, if I have to, I make adjustments to the neck pickup to get a decent sound out of it. I get my dirt from a pedal. I also don't care if my pickups sound the same as long as the bridge is louder and brighter than the neck.

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[Wattage]

Re: Optimizing tones from neck and bridge humbucker through an amp...

I mostly run a fairly distorted guitar sound and I am predominently on the bridge pup so I get that dialed in and then set the neck up for a good balance. I like the neck pickup to be a bit louder if I can get it since I'll flip to it for some lead breaks.

[DavidRavenMoon]

Re: Optimizing tones from neck and bridge humbucker through an amp...

I just set a tone that works good with the bridge pickup. Then the neck pickup is a different version of that tone. Same for clean and dirty tones.


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[beaubrummels]

Re: Optimizing tones from neck and bridge humbucker through an amp...

I set the amp for whatever my lead tone will be and roll back the guitar volumes for clean. Some guitars don’t sound good with the volumes rolled off, so I’ll set everything for clean tones and get lead tone from a pedal, channel or boost of some sort.

[Mincer]

Re: Optimizing tones from neck and bridge humbucker through an amp...

I set my amp up for a clean sound with the bridge pickup. Then, if I have to, I make adjustments to the neck pickup to get a decent sound out of it. I get my dirt from a pedal. I also don't care if my pickups sound the same as long as the bridge is louder and brighter than the neck.

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I do this, but start with the neck pickup, as I use it most of the time.

[Demanic]

Re: Optimizing tones from neck and bridge humbucker through an amp...

I've been playing straight into my Picovalve tonight. Set at 2watts with the master volume on 7 and the pre on 3. 1x12 closed cab with C-Rex. I've played three different guitars and every one of them was useable in all switch positions. I must be doing something right (at least for me).

[AlexR]

Re: Optimizing tones from neck and bridge humbucker through an amp...

You can always remove treble with control settings, but its much harder (read -impossible) to remove mud with rig settings.

Hence I always set up for a good neck tone, If I have only 1 channel, then its done mainly on overdrive as thats where the flub occurs.
Bridge gets then dialled back with the tone knob.


But I also tweak the electronic values to maximise clarity in the neck and reduce bite in the bridge Plus I try and set up so I can either have the bridge pickup on one tone by itself, or so it has its own separate controls fullstop.

[Demanic]

Re: Optimizing tones from neck and bridge humbucker through an amp...

Mudd is oftentimes directly related to volume, specifically low end volume.
Low watt amps can give great recorded tones without having to to eq the crap out of it.

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[IMENATOR]

Re: Optimizing tones from neck and bridge humbucker through an amp...

It depends on the music too but I would say first I dial my rhythm tone as that is what you are gonna year 90% of the time. If the music is clean or mild gain I may dial my rhythm tone for neck pickup and will switch to bridge to play single notes that need to stand out a bit more because of the extra upper mids and bite. If it is a crunch or high gain music I dial my rhythm tone for bridge pickup and will use a Zoom 70CDR as volume boost + more mids + echo for soloing.

[GuitarStv]

Re: Optimizing tones from neck and bridge humbucker through an amp...

I set the neck pickup to about 2.5 mm from the strings, and the volume/tone to about 8/10. Then adjust the bridge close enough to the strings that it's pretty close to the same output as the neck.


Next set amp to the clean channel and make it sound nice with the neck. Then set amp to the dirty channel and make it sound nice with the neck.


At this point I'll tweak both pickups slightly (adjusting pole pieces or height to tweak the sounds a touch).



Then you're good. The guitar and amp sound nice on their own. Both pickups are balanced. Can roll the tone up or down to get a brighter/darker sound, have extra headroom on tap with the guitar volume. Neck never sounds muffled.

[BluesIsBlood12]

Re: Optimizing tones from neck and bridge humbucker through an amp...

For a given situation, I set my amp for the darkest guitar/neck pickup with the tone on full, and then everything else gets the tone rolled back to get in the same ballpark EQ. So if I take a LP and a strat to gig, the amp gets set to the LP neck, and then the LP bridge gets rolled back some. The Strat will get rolled back quite a bit.