Neck or Bridge?

S

Silver777Guitarist

New member
Now a lot of my friends are guitarists, but most of them tend to play with one pickup or the other, me personally I favour my neck pickup for fat warm clean tones and nice sounding solos, I only use my bridge when doing distorted rhythms but my neck is my go-to for all other applications, however my friends often just use their bridge pickup for everything, now thats no surprise being as they are addicted to metal but what is your opinion what pickup do you go to for near everything?
or do you use a nice blend of both?
 
Re: Neck or Bridge?

Each serve a purpose.

Bridge is nice for distorted, tight rhythms and riffs.

Neck is better for my cleans.

Both work on occassion.
 
Re: Neck or Bridge?

That often happens because most bridge PU's are pretty bright and necks are warm, and both typically have 500K pots. You EQ your amp to one PU or the other. Dial in the bridge tone, and when you go to the neck, it's way too dark and muffled. Dial in the neck tone, and when you switch to the bridge, its shrill and piercing. This drove me crazy for years. Like many guys, I ended up using my bridge PU only.

I got tired of having a neck PU that was there just for looks. So in order to be able to use both PU's a lot, I finally figured out the following:
- Put one or two 250K pots on the bridge PU, with 500K's on the neck.
- And/or put a warmer magnet in the bridge, like an UOA5, A8, or A4.
- And if needed, put a brighter magnet in the neck, like an A3 or A5.

This brings the two PU's EQ's closer, so that you're able to get one amp EQ setting that works great for both PU's. They're still distinctly different, but no longer polar opposites. I can play solo or rhythm with either PU, and not have to touch my tone controls, on the amp or guitar. That's how a guitar should sound.
 
Re: Neck or Bridge?

I use the bridge pickup and the neck pickup during a show, but very rarely both at once.

I convert my Strats to 3-way switches to make it less likely that I will wind up landing on an in-between spot when playing live. The middle pickup is my least-used pickup on a Strat. I use it mainly for strumming chords lightly...which I just don't do in my current band. I have actually considered just unhooking the middle p/u on one of my Strats, and wiring the middle switch position so it gives me the neck and bridge pickups together. I'm curious about that.

I usually do a good bit of tweaking on my pickups. It takes a lot of time, but it is worth it. I tend to keep humbuckers very low to brighten up the tone and neaten up the attack, and I raise the pole pieces to get the presence back. I get the lost volume and fuzz back with the amp's volume control. Because I sit down and do this ahead of time until things sound good, I don't end up avoiding certain pickups when I play. With most stock setups, I avoid the neck pickup. Factory settings are just far too close to the strings for my taste.

My favorite switching in any guitar is the stock Esquire setup. One pickup, two fixed tones (bright and dark), and one variable tone (whatever you want it to be, controllable with the tone knob). I use a variety of guitars live, but the Esquire is the "no. 1" guitar. I never have any issues at all getting it to sound exactly like I want it to sound. It is simple as pie, yet extremely versatile. To my taste, all other guitars entail compromises of some sort, no matter how small. Esquires give me the most versatility with the least amount of technical monkey business on stage.
 
Re: Neck or Bridge?

Doom/really heavy sludgy stuff = neck
Spazz/tech/thrash metal stuff = bridge
QOTSA kinda R&R rhythms= middle with out of phase humbuckers, tone rolled down
leads mostly on the neck
clean-ish stuff mostly on the neck, but surfie/rockabilly stuff mostly on the bridge pickup, strummed closely to the bridge.

Easy sleazy.
 
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