Remember your first guitar? The one you saved real hard for or got bought as that extra special birthday gift. Remember how it felt to hold that guitar. to spend hours practising on it. All the sore finger tips and cramps in the forearm /wrist area. Boy though it was worth it. Chances are that first guitar was a cheap Strat copy. Mine was a Hohner, still got it, gathering dust in my spare room. If yours was a Strat too then you will know what I am going to say next.
Single coil pups. WHY? Why on earth are they still making them? And they are STILL fitting them, as standard, to some expensive guitars.
Think about it for a minute.
A single coil pup is weedy. It sounds thin. It buzzes like a bandsaw EVERY time you take your finger off the metalwork and even Fender kind of admit that the pups are gutless. Why else would they fit a 5 way switch as standard to their Strats if not as an attempt to get some grunt out of those pickups?
Of course that buzz is nothing compared to what you get when you introduce some gain to the signal.
This is the 21st century yet the single coil is still so ubiquitous that we, as musicians just seem to accept it. How many times have you heard someone say or even read in a magazine " Yeah, we wanted that authentic feel to the sound". And you know full well they are talking about buzzing and lo fi output. That's single coil pups for you.
Please don't assume that I am pushing or denigrating any particular brand or model guitar here. I had a very pretty Fender Strat Antigua reissue a few years back. Apart from some quality control issues regarding the finishing of it the guitar was fine. I just wish that it had humbuckers instead.
With Humbuckers having twin coils wound in opposite directions the noise output was dramatically reduced. My Epi Les Paul had its twin stock pickups replaced for hotter Iron Gear pups and it screams like nothing on earth. But ask yourself this. How many times have you thought "Hmm. I think I will rip out those paf's because that Les Paul would sound great with Single coils"?
Well?
My point exactly.
I just tried an experiment . I dusted off my Hohner, a cheap but well made guitar and put it through my pedal board into a Marshall 30 combo. I had to adjust my MXR Noise Clamp in order to hear the clean signal. I then engaged the Rothwell Tornado i use for overdrive. The MXR just turned its gate light on and sulked. I have the use of a Vintage VRS guitar. Similar build quality I would say to the Hohner but is equipped with twin 'buckers. I put that through the same set up and rig and it worked just fine. And I didn't have to use a bucketload of compression on it either.
So I repeat my question.
What is the point of Single coil pickups?