PUs for stoner/sludge/Doom telecaster in E std

[h3r3t1k]

Since I was a teenager I've been chasing ultra tight (low end wise) and compressed metal tones. Now I'm 30 and me and two mates are looking to play the music that started metal. Bluesy, slow and Sabbath inspired. Modern production and a bass that's very present in the mix will give us the heaviness we need without detuning. The bass player will be using some kind of fuzz. I'm looking for a "loose", nasal tone with the highs rolled off somewhat and not too much gain, kinda the opposite of a tight modern metal rythm tone. I might even give p90s a try. I will put together a tele for this project.

Edit: Did Iommi actually use p90s at some point? I always thought someone had made him custom humbuckers which he used ever since...

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: PUs for stoner/sludge/Doom telecaster in E std

Pretty sure the Paranoid album is a Gibson with P90s.

Lots of different people use lots of different pickups for stoner/doom to great effect. What are you using currently? Simply lowering the pickup, tuning lighter strings than normal low, and rolling back the tone and volume knobs go a long way.

A good balance of amp drive and fuzz is key, too.

 

[Mincer]

Re: PUs for stoner/sludge/Doom telecaster in E std

Pics of Iommi from 72-76 or so show him with P90s. BTW, La Super Rica sounds great on bass.

 

[Despair]

Re: PUs for stoner/sludge/Doom telecaster in E std

If you are seriously chasing Tony Iommi's tones, you want a treble booster. He used a modified Rangemaster, look for a Laney TI-Boost if you want a reproduction of that. Treble Booster's give a wild cut, emphasized midrange and higher, but you'll likely want a really good gate, though given treble boosters' need to be first in chain, perfect noise suppression is difficult. There's nothing else that really sounds like a treble booster, though. Brian May, Rory Gallagher, Judas Priest for some other examples of musicians who heavily use treble boosters. Depending on settings and gear around it, a treble booster can sound pretty fuzzy in the high end.

Most of Sabbath's beef came from Geezer Butler's bass, not Iommi's guitar. Also true for a lot of stoner/doom bands. Though there's plenty where the guitars are bass-heavy as well, but that can be a mess live, depends heavily on the soundman knowing how to get things to work for that band's sound.

Plenty of Stoner/Doom stuff follows a different formula, with sludgy, fuzzy guitars. Just always test fuzzes as first pedal, as buffers in other pedals (particularly ones that aren't true bypass) can affect how they sound. Some it matters less for, like Big Muff Pi-derived circuits. There's an enormous variety of interpretations of different circuits. Earthquaker, Black Arts Toneworks, and Dwarfcraft all have strong showings in sludge/doom, but there's plenty who use cheaper models from Boss, Electro-Harmonix and DOD. Bang around youtube and see what catches your ear!

Anyways, back to pickups, are you talking standard tele bridge? P-Rails might be fun, even if only a neck one with rail towards the neck. Rail+bridge for tele tones, or you have a P-90, or series mode for flubby high output, or parallel for a bright humbucker tone... Bridge, another P-Rails would be one option for flexibility. Or you could go with lowish output humbuckers, or P-90s, all of which work well with fuzz.

Fairly stock tele into fuzz is pretty classic, too, though less common in doom/stoner.