Examples of iconic bridge pickup clean tones?

[Rex_Rocker]

Other than Tele Country playing, I mean.

I keep hearing on the thread about how some bridge pickups sound nice clean and some don't. Particularly, humbuckers. But I've never really been able to dial anything that didn't sound underwhelming as soon as I flipped the pickup position switch, personally.

I don't know if I'm being narrow minded, but I wonder if you guys can point me into some good examples of bridge pickup clean tones? Other than Country music playing on a Telecaster. I do know those are iconic. But what about humbuckers? I'd like to learn something new by listening to some cool tones.

Not sure if this is the right forum, so please feel free to delete or migrate the thread to where it's supposed to go, mods.

Thanks!

 

[jeremy]

i play clean on the bridge pup of my les paul a fair amount, but i dont think i have any clips i could share. granted it has antiquities not a custom or dimebucker, but i think there are good clean tones to be had with a bridge pup

 

[Rex_Rocker]

i play clean on the bridge pup of my les paul a fair amount, but i dont think i have any clips i could share. granted it has antiquities not a custom or dimebucker, but i think there are good clean tones to be had with a bridge pup

I play Fishman Classics, but I have had Duncan '59's and WLH's and Slashs. I've never quite gotten them to work for me.

But maybe I'm not taking the right approach because I'm not referencing the right sounds.

I can think of a few Van Halen clean-ish sounds, but it always seems to me like he just dials down his bridge pickup to later let it go wide open and create that contrast that just makes the distorted sound so much better.

 

[Rex_Rocker]

BTW, I'm not trying to say there aren't any iconic bridge pickup sounds. I'm just trying to learn from you guys what I should reference in well-known music. I admit I've never really cared to research clean sounds.

When I think clean sounds, I usually think Metallica JC-120 80's chorusy sounds. I admit I'm super ignorant about clean guitar sounds. Or Pantera - This Love or Cemetery Gates.

Hendrix, maybe? SRV? But then, neither are using hummies.

 

[Mincer]

Other than chicken pickin' sounds (Albert Lee, Steve Morse), I never use a bridge pickup for clean sounds.

 

[Clint 55]

59 neck in the bridge. I love Cobain's clean tones. The guitar is his iconic 'Vandalism strat'.

 

[Rex_Rocker]

I didn't think about Kurt Cobain, but that tone sounds very Surf Rock, which I guess uses bridge pickup cleans a lot too!

 

[Clint 55]

Yeah, he had Fender-y clean tone, but it was more washed out than overly jangly which I love. Had his own style to it.

 

[Rex_Rocker]

Did he use the bridge pickup for strumming cleans? Or is Come as You Are bridge pickup too? Can't quite tell.

 

[Rabelais]

Other than Tele Country playing, I mean.

I keep hearing on the thread about how some bridge pickups sound nice clean and some don't. Particularly, humbuckers. But I've never really been able to dial anything that didn't sound underwhelming as soon as I flipped the pickup position switch, personally.

I don't know if I'm being narrow minded, but I wonder if you guys can point me into some good examples of bridge pickup clean tones? Other than Country music playing on a Telecaster. I do know those are iconic. But what about humbuckers? I'd like to learn something new by listening to some cool tones.

Not sure if this is the right forum, so please feel free to delete or migrate the thread to where it's supposed to go, mods.

Thanks!

Perhaps a vintage Alnico 2, 1957-1958 PAF style humbucker?. Any good A2 PAF pickup modeled after those humbuckers from that era sounds sweet. Trouble is, if it is unpotted ...

 

[Clint 55]

Did he use the bridge pickup for strumming cleans? Or is Come as You Are bridge pickup too? Can't quite tell.

No, he'd use neck or bridge for strumming cleans. Come as you are kind of sounds like a bridge humbucker but I'm not sure. Occasionally some clean parts were notch jangles.

Clean Fender-y neck strums

Notch jangles

 

[beaubrummels]

Tom Petty used a lot of clean bridge sounds, and they sounded good.

 

[eclecticsynergy]

Not exactly iconic, but some dizzying clean-humbucker parts here.

 

[eclecticsynergy]

Some iconic Tele bridge from Elliott Easton in this hit. An homage to sounds of days gone by, of course.
Still, it's one of those tones that's instantly recognizable, "Yeah, that's a Tele for sure."

 

[Mincer]

Not exactly iconic, but some dizzying clean-humbucker parts here.

I thought of this album too (one of my favs), but it sounds to me like the neck pickup. I think Belew might use a bridge pickup for the scratchy part in Thela Hun Gingeet.

 

[Clint 55]

One of the most iconic bands there is? The Beatles used the bridge pickup clean all the time.

 

[Spaghetti Bolo]

Mojo Gold Foil is, surprisingly, the best bridge clean tone I have ever come across.

 

[nienturi]

As far as i remember Dick Dale used to choose bridge pickup of his strats;

 

[freefrog]

Yep, surf music is all about bridge pickups... Hank Marvin is another living proof of this.

Here is a vid with an EMG humbucker doing surf music.

https://youtu.be/DSMCH875i9o?t=718

 

[Sirion]

I love bright clean tones drenched in reverb and chorus, that sound larger than a guitar ever could. Although the latter band is easy to make fun of (and not entirely without reason), I think these are the first two songs I think of when I think bright tones. They definitely are not neck pickups, but I can't tell what kind of bridge pickup they are, or if there might possibly be a piezo or some other shenanigans at play:

(More so the guitars under the verse than the intro)

(Iconic, perhaps not, but who cares? We all have to listen and make up our own minds about these things anyway.)