Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

[comstox]

I am so discouraged. I bought a newest generation Fender Vintage Noiseless loaded plate and it sounds like crap. It doesn't matter if I have the pups way up, or flush with the plate, ANY mid to high tones have this shrill glass shattering noise that I HATE! - I have two other Humbucker only guitars that I do NOT have this issue with. With the single coil Fender Vintage Noiseless pups I have to turn the gain down to zero before it goes away, but it also wrecks the sound of the whole amp. It's just plain stupid! :headache: Who's got any ideas?

Equipment:
* Boss Katana 100KTN newest model with most up-to-date firmware.
* Strat with Trem blocked off.
* I even tried GraphTech Saddles. No change I can hear.

 

[dystrust]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

I am so discouraged. I bought a newest generation Fender Vintage Noiseless loaded plate and it sounds like crap. It doesn't matter if I have the pups way up, or flush with the plate, ANY mid to high tones have this shrill glass shattering noise that I HATE! - I have two other Humbucker only guitars that I do NOT have this issue with. With the single coil Fender Vintage Noiseless pups I have to turn the gain down to zero before it goes away, but it also wrecks the sound of the whole amp. It's just plain stupid! :headache: Who's got any ideas?

Equipment:
* Boss Katana 100KTN newest model with most up-to-date firmware.
* Strat with Trem blocked off.
* I even tried GraphTech Saddles. No change I can hear.

What value are your volume and tone pots? I've run into Strat and Tele pickups that don't play all that nice with values above 250-300K.

 

[ItsaBass]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

Adjust your e.q.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

In the end, you just might not like single coil pickups. Have you played Strats at all gain levels before?

 

[JimmyO]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

Equipment:
* Boss Katana 100KTN newest model with most up-to-date firmware.

Definitely recommend trying the guitar through a few different other amps. I have a Boss Katana and think it's great for getting me a nice low cost metal or shred tone when cranking a tube amp isn't practical. For the money they are fantastic. However I've found if I dial in a nice clear tone for my humbucker guitars my single coil strats sound too biting, and my humbucker guitars sound darker when dialing in a thicker strat tone.

Depending on your setup switching from a humbucker equipped guitar to a vintage output single coil can be pretty drastic, unless you adjust the eq, use a boost or eq pedal, or like me use a Seymour Duncan Pickup Booster pedal to match levels with the humbuckers and thicken the tone a bit with the resonance control.

Before giving up on the guitar or spending on a pickup upgrade you may want to take it to a guitar store with a variety of tube Fender and Marshall style amps. See if a different amp helps. Next try a few different pedals. Most famous strat players have used a pedal of somekind to help thicken their gain tone, e.g. Hendrix, SRV, Gilmour, Eric Johnson, even Clapton has his mid boost thingy. Hope it works out for you.

If you really don't like the single coils just convert to an HSH setup. Super versatile and you still get the 2, 3 & 4 positions for some more traditional strat tones.

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

What kind of sounds are you going for? If you're dialing in an Albert Collins tone with humbuckers, yeah, singles are gonna sound shrill.

 

[RorySquier]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

I sure love my 1998 Fender American Standard Stratocaster guitar with it's stock single coil pick ups. I love the twang I get out of them and the straight forward rock sounds if I set the levels right on both the amplifier & pedals I use. I brought my Fender to band practice one time but things didn't work out. My pick ups sounded too thin and my guitar was picking up radio signals through my Fender Twin Reverb amp. My Fender guitar is now retired for home use only.

My main axe I now use for the band I'm in is my Godin Belmont guitar loaded with genuine Seymour Duncan pickups. It has 2 SD Tube Lipstick pick ups in the neck & middle positions and a Duncan '59 in the bridge position. I find I use the bridge position the most and after tweaking with my amp & pedals I have found the magic tone! I think the Duncan '59 is one of the ultimate humbucking pick ups created in thine universe.



;>)/

 

[AlexR]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

Make sure of your pot values.......and make sure of your grounds. Even with 500k pots and humbuckers the difference between the tone circuit shorted, then connected and on 10 is quite significant.

I tried a strat with a 500k vol pot once. Even with the 250k tones connected as normal it was quite bright. The notch tones were unusable.

 

[comstox]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

What value are your volume and tone pots? I've run into Strat and Tele pickups that don't play all that nice with values above 250-300K.

All 250. It's a Fender made pre-wired pickguard. (Vintage - Noiseless.)

 

[comstox]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

In the end, you just might not like single coil pickups. Have you played Strats at all gain levels before?

Yes, I have Mincer, but I really don't want to change up the dials each time I change guitars. At least not THAT drastically! I still think something might be off with the setup, but I could be wrong.
Thanks!

 

[comstox]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

What kind of sounds are you going for? If you're dialing in an Albert Collins tone with humbuckers, yeah, singles are gonna sound shrill.

JB, I like very cool, growly slow/sad blues sounds. I mostly play on my neck pickup.
Thanks!

 

[dotsdad]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

Vintage Noiseless sets used to come with 1Meg volume pot and 500k tone pots. This may be the case with your pre-wired pickguard. You could even have a muchhigher value volume pot if it was connected to a ppeamp at some point.

Change the volume pot to a standard 250k Fender pot and the shrill should go away.

 

[dotsdad]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

P.S. Also, get rid of the TBX tone control. That cuts bass, further shrillifying the situation.

 

[dotsdad]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

Or add a Clapton mid-boost pre-amp to fatten it all back up. You might really like that!

 

[GuitarStv]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

Use the tone knob.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

JB, I like very cool, growly slow/sad blues sounds. I mostly play on my neck pickup.
Thanks!

Yeah, single coils don't go the growly neck pickup thing. That is a humbucker sound. Maybe a Little 59 or Red Devil, at least in the neck, would work.

 

[Chickenwings]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

Maybe you just prefer humbuckers. One man's ear piercing treble is anothers definition. One man's mud is another man's warm.

 

[Gtrjunior]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

JB, I like very cool, growly slow/sad blues sounds. I mostly play on my neck pickup.
Thanks!

Srrange...I find the Strat neck pickup warm and round. Very pleasing.
The SC bridge pickup however, is shrill and biting and not at all for me.

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

Yeah, single coils don't go the growly neck pickup thing. That is a humbucker sound. Maybe a Little 59 or Red Devil, at least in the neck, would work.

I would've attributed the growly sound to digging in and picking hard.

 

[ItsaBass]

Re: Single Coils sound SHRILL like breaking glass!

Yeah, single coils don't go the growly neck pickup thing. That is a humbucker sound.

This statement is just nuts to me. "Growly" is largely a right hand thing (no small part of it comes from deliberate fret rattling), and amp settings play a large part too. Pickup output only matters in how it affects the right hand technique required to get the growl. Pickup e.q. doesn't matter, as long as you have an amp, or something in your rig, that lets you tweak the e.q.

If you can't get growly out of a single coil, then you just need to try harder. E.q. it so it growls in the desired register. Hit the strings such that you'd growl even unplugged.