best single coils for the 90s era smashing pumpkins tone

RSRD

RSRD

New member
I have a friend who is working on a partscaster and needs to put in some pickups. Single coils. He wants the essential smashing pumpkins tone. Im a HB guy thru and thru so I didn't have an answer for him. Hope you all can hook him up. Suggestions?
 
Well the obvious answer would be the Dimarzio Billy Corgan Signature ;)
 
The essential Smashing Pumpkins tone lies within the Big Muff, not the pickups. Any decent Single Coils will do...
 
AmpliFIRE":2iot7yy7 said:
The essential Smashing Pumpkins tone lies within the Big Muff, not the pickups. Any decent Single Coils will do...
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What era?
Corgan is a tone freak, he's been using Diezels and many other amps; last rig rundown I saw he was using Salvation modified Randall MTS modules
 
I don't recall which Big Muff but Corgan has also used Devi Ever fuzzes for a while, I want to say either White Spider or Shoegazer.
 
correct me if im wrong but weren't the pumpkins notorious for overdubbing guitar tracks on a track by track basis with different sounds to get their tone on a given song

i remember reading that thru the eyes of ruby on mellon collie had like 70 guitar tracks on it...looking forward to reading about single coil suggestions in this thread though
 
Yes that is true. Butch vig said they would track many different amps and guitars and then EQ the bejesus out of each track.
 
RSRD":s0fjl0jl said:
Yes that is true. Butch vig said they would track many different amps and guitars and then EQ the bejesus out of each track.
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Which is exactly why pickups are not a big part of the tone equation.
 
Tell your friend pickups aren't important then :LOL: :LOL:

The Corgan signature are based on the Tone Zone S and Air Norton S, which are single coil sized humbuckers
I can't tell you what "true single coils" he used back then
 
I think the pickps in his Strats around the Siamese Dream era were Fender Lace Sensors. as far as Corgan's distortion sound, he used the Big Muff as well as a Fender Blender.
 
Corgans MTS rig is sick! Its what 4 or 5 RM4's and he had the salvation crew flown to the us to build the modules for all those RM4's.. Lucky bastard!
-mp-
 
Fender Lace Sensors were his pick-up of choice for the Siamese Dream era. Blue in the neck, silver in the middle and red in the bridge.

billycorganbatstrat.jpg
 
Lace Sensors or something in the same vein - regular Strat single coils are going to sound very different. The red and blue in particular are closer to PAF's in output/tone than they are to your standard strat pickup - the Red's push about 14-15k on their own.
 
I agree it's more about fuzzing it out than the pickups. I used to use my emg Gilmour set to decent success back in the day (cranking the mid boost on the guitar to sim buckers). I soon realized though that tone freak or not, the 90s corgan sound just disappears in any decent mix.
 
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