What Settings Do You Use?

[BeZo]

What settings do you use on your guitar? I'm sure most of you are all bridge pickup all the time, but some of you probably coil tap. Do you use any phase switching or coil tapping on your guitars? Is it at the switch or do you have separate switches or push pull pots?

Aside from the bridge or neck pickup, I like to use the outer coils on clean parts. It is chimey and pretty, even when I dial my clean in a little dark and dirty.

 

[WizardAmpIphoneClip]

Everything up.
I rarely even use my neck pickups though they sound mint
I wish I didnt have volume or tone knobs on my guitars at all.

 

[MadAsAHatter]

I've probably experimented with just about every option you could think of. North/south coil tap, series/parallel, in/out of phase, etc. I went to far as to try a blend knob to blend in the amount of each humbucker coil. Even took it a step further and tried triple and quad coils.

Everything has it's place, but I always found myself going back to the straight forward humbucker in series with 1 volume & 1 tone. In most cases I can do without the tone knob. The volume knob is there mainly for mute otherwise it's generally full on.

 

[stratjacket]

I will experiment from time to time with splitting or combining pickups, but ultimately Full bridge and full neck. Preferably no Tone knob, but tone knob all the way up if there is one.

 

[griff10672]

When I fist starting wiring my own guitars I went right to the old Jimmy Page Wiring ..... and never really used any of it ....

now all my LP's or anything with two buckers that I have is done in 50's wiring .... except maybe my new 70's LP Custom that might be modern ..... I'm not sure on that one ....

one of my favorite lead tones ... is the neck bucker all the way up ... tone all the way down ( aka woman tone ) with a Green Ringer or equivalent in front of a high gain amp ......

 

[DanTravis62]

bridge and neck, mostly at full volume and tone, and sometimes i use the pushpull that takes all the bullshit out of the circuit

 

[rsm]

It really depends on the guitar.

In general, I usually dial in my amps, software and modelers using both pickups / pickup selector in the middle setting - what I consider the "neutral" setting, guitar volume down around 7-8 which I adjust while playing as needed, tone at full/10. Then I check/adjust for each pickup selector setting to get distinct sounds I like from each setting as much as possible.

Switching the pickup selector is designed to provide different sounds; why not make use of them?

If I have 3-5 (or more) pickup combinations (e.g., my Ibanez Q42 had 10 pickup settings) I like to find how to use most/all of them. One of the reasons I like the EBMM Kaizen is the middle pickup selector uses the outer coil of both pickups, like a clear single coil, with a lower volume; switching to the neck or bridge is a dramatic change in tone.

...I guess if I was playing dropped tuned modern metal sludge pickup nuances wouldn't matter as it mostly sounds like indistinct roaring mud without articulation to my ears.

 

[Uzi Nein Millimetah]

42.

 

[stephen sawall]

My preference is two humbuckers. 4 knobs, threeway switch. Push / pull for single coils and phase.

Bridge humbucker about 90% of the time.
I like inside set of single coils. Lot of versatility with the two volumes. It's similar to the no.2 qauck setting on a Stratocaster. The humbuckers out of phase is good clean / edge of breakup. Neck for leads.

Really depends on the part I am playing. Sure it all could be done with a single humbucker. But I prefer a variety of options.

 

[NeubyWanKaneuby]

I'm usually full vol/full tone, 70/30 bridge to neck ratio.

If I'm on my 594, I'll split the coils and go middle position to pull out the sweet Neo-Soul tones.

 

[BeZo]

I've been playing the neck pickup on a new song the band is writing. It's fat and tubby sounding and fits the part.

I think my winter project is to homogenize all my switches so they are all wired the same and do the same thing.

 

[DrewJD82]

For metal it’s pretty much bridge pickup 95% of the time, volume/tone up, I only use the neck pickup for leads. If there’s a clean tone in a tune, I generally prefer the split/inner coils of humbuckers, but that’s the only time I’ll use split coils these days, I absolutely fucking hate splitting coils for single coil tones, I’d rather just swap guitars.

For the non-metal stuff I’m all over the place, especially with my Gilmour Strat and those EMG’s. Made me realize I want a mid-boost on all my single coil guitars from now on, Volume, Mid Boost and Tone knobs. While I hate splitting coils for single coil tones, I have no problem cranking a mid boost and playing a single coil like it’s a humbucker.

 

[rsm]

I've been playing the neck pickup on a new song the band is writing. It's fat and tubby sounding and fits the part.

I think my winter project is to homogenize all my switches so they are all wired the same and do the same thing.

I tend to use certain guitars with certain gear; e.g., with my JP-2C I use Majesty; with my ISP Theta Michael Sweet, I use my Jacksons; with my Marshall / Marshall-esque amps, I use my Ibanez PS10, etc. I dial everything in accordingly, to the "whole package".

Likewise with modelers, I have different patches for different guitars designed for the sounds I want for different types of guitars; I just have to adjust the input settings for each type of guitar.

 

[Humbucking]

With my Gibson's, bridge volume all the way up & the tone at around 3-4. Gets a little more honk there. Middle & neck, volume and tone on 10!

 

[cobrahead1030]

I was an “everything on 10” player for the longest time.

The last 4-5 years I find myself recording a lot more, and covering every end of the clean/gain spectrum while doing so. That has me using the volume & tone controls a lot more, in addition to every pickup configuration I have available.

I don’t use coil splits as often, usually when I’m just jamming & the guitar in my hand happens to have them. Occasionally I’ll record a part & a coil split sound just happens to work well for it.

 

[JimAnsell2]

when it comes to playing the style of music that i'm good at, which is sloppy 80's influenced classic metal mixed with 70s prog ego, and 90's eruo metal sensibilities, yeah i keep that bitch at 10 and on the bridge at al times more and more the older i get. i'm becoming more like Alexi with that one pick up, one knob, one tone, fuck you type shit. like if i want to play sultans of swing, its going to be drenched in liquidy boogie mark IV gain, have a dd-5 for the long delay, and a dd-2 for the short delay (and the fucking unrelenting clipping it provides because its an oddly hot delay pedal for effects loops), a pmeq, to scoop 900hz - 1.2k depending on if i'm in C or E tuning, and thats it. i like one tone, and a volume knob. the rest is on you. pick attack, palm mutes, crowd work to distract them from your shitty tone, etc.

 

[anomaly]

Bridge pickup 99% of the time, everything full on. Sometimes I'll roll the volume down for some cleaner kinda tones... Crunch tones.

 

[thiscalltoarms]

Depends on the guitar but a lot of mine start each set with the neck volume at 8 and the bridge tone at 8.

 

[Findthetone1]

Depends on the guitar. My only guitar that has a coil split is my T/A and I haven't been playing it. I do switch between bridge and neck quite a bit. About 10 years ago I started playing more using the volume control. I like the dynamics. Of course, since I've been playing nothing but my LP Jr DC, all I have is volume and tone. It's been a challenge to try and get a convincing neck tone from it but that's why I bought it, for the fun of the challenge.

 

[Maarcn3]

I use push-pull coil splits. don’t touch phase much.