solos with bridge pickup

[60Strat]

Happy New Year!

Yesterday there was a TV channel that brought 24 hours of live music here in Germany - Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker, Santana, Eagles and many, many other groups. Many of the guitarists played Les Pauls but the majority played Strats and beside some exceptions the Strats all had Humbuckers on bridge position.

Well, I`ve got two Strats (or Strat type guitars) with singlecoils and I love the sound of the neck pickups. This warm clear sound is simply amazing. But - I never manage to get a good distorted sound/solo sound out of my bridge pickups. There`s always something missing, there are to harsh hights and if I try to correct that with tone pot from the guitar or the amp, the sound loses everything. So when it comes to melodic solos I always take my R9.

The cause why that bothers me is, that my dream for this year is to get a vintage guitar. A "real" Les Paul is out of reach and so I thought about getting a good vintage Strat.

To all Strat players in the forum:
How do you get a good solo sound with the bridge pickup? I mean there are so many great guitarists (Eric Clapton, Jeff Back, SRV) what do you think how often they use their bridge pickups (in %)

[ShawnRT]

I think the real trick is to play LOUD with a middy sounding amp. Jimi always pulled it off :) At low level/practice volumes the bridge pickup can tend to sound anemic. Running two different types off amps can help to thicken up the sound as well. A good overdrive pedal with tone shaping can help things. Also the location of your picking can make the tone brighter or darker.

[Butch Snyder]

Originally posted by 60Strat
How do you get a good solo sound with the bridge pickup?

Use a Telecaster.:nelson

[60Strat]

Originally posted by ShawnRT
I think the real trick is to play LOUD with a middy sounding amp. Jimi always pulled it off :) At low level/practice volumes the bridge pickup can tend to sound anemic. Running two different types off amps can help to thicken up the sound as well. A good overdrive pedal with tone shaping can help things. Also the location of your picking can make the tone brighter or darker.

Yes, I thought about the volume thing, too.
I`m not playing in a band at the moment, just jamming with some friends now and then and I´m playing 90% at home, with lower volumes.
In a band the situation is different, single coils will cut through, I always realize that it`s a huge difference when I`m playing to loud music. I have to use different amp settings then.

For the pedal, I`m using a Bogner Metropolis with a Fulldrive 2.

[Jim Collins]

Back when I played a Strat, I made a slight modification that made the bridge pickup quite useful. Strats with vintage style wiring feature no tone control on the bridge pickup, and the two tone controls they do have are in series, sharing a common capacitor. This made the tone controls pretty much useless, as far as I was concerned.

Back when Fender introduced the TBX tone control, they gave the player some ability to control the bridge pickup's tone, but they did it in a way that made no sense, to me. They put the bridge and middle pickup on the same control. For my money, it was the bridge pickup that needed its own control -- the other two pickups could reasonably share a control, but the bridge pickup rarely required the same tone shaping as the middle pickup.

I wired my guitar so that the middle control was a master tone control for the neck and middle pickups. This control used the vintage-value capacitor that was already in the guitar. The outside tone control was reserved for the bridge pickup, and it had its own capacitor. I used a .047uF cap for that purpose (same as a vintage Tele value).

Unlinking the two tone controls made a huge difference. Suddenly, I actually WANTED to use the tone control for the neck and middle pickups. And having a dedicated tone control for the bridge pickup made all the difference in the world. I started using the bridge pickup more and more.

[ShawnRT]

Originally posted by Butch Snyder
Use a Telecaster.:nelson

[Bolero]

David Gilmour is the only guy who I like hearing use the bridge pickup.

evreything else just sounds thin to me. even later Jimi.

Clapton on Layla sessions is great playing, but not my fave strat tones, all bridgey.

I like the tele pup in a strat idea though.

[Teleologist]

Originally posted by Jim Collins

I wired my guitar so that the middle control was a master tone control for the neck and middle pickups. This control used the vintage-value capacitor that was already in the guitar. The outside tone control was reserved for the bridge pickup, and it had its own capacitor. I used a .047uF cap for that purpose (same as a vintage Tele value).

If that works for you great, but it really loads down the bridge/middle position - the 2 tone pots and 2 caps are all in parallel(resistance halves, capacitance adds).

A way to do it without altering the other 4 stock tones is to add a short jumper on the switch so the bottom tone control works for both the middle and bridge PUPs. This will leave both the B/M and N/M tones unchanged. Like the stock scheme, both tone controls are in parallel with a single cap in the N/M position making that position darker. If a no-load pot were used, you could still get the bridge-pup/no tone sound plus brighter sounds for every position except the neck-only - I believe this is how the Delta tone Strats are wired.

If you wouldn't mind having the N/M position a little brighter, another alternative with 'normal' pots is to move the bottom tone control wire over one lug on the switch so it works only for the bridge PUP. Besides making the N/M position brighter, the middle-only position will have no tone control. This would also be a good way to go if you want to use 2 caps, since they're never in parallel.

I definately agree about doing it one way or another. I added the jumper on mine and with Fat 50s PUPs the lead sound out of the bridge PUP is MUCH beefier - not quite a Tele though ;)

[Jim Collins]

Yes, you are correct -- it loads down the middle/bridge position. The one thing I didn't mention is that I never used the inbetween positions on a Strat. I've never liked those sounds, at all. In fact, I used three-way switches, so that I wouldn't get those positions, accidentally.

I was never meant to play Strats, anyway. A Telecaster has long been my main guitar.

[Gazza]

I used to not like the bridge pickup on 99% of strats and then I got a real guitar(Lentz.) Scotts guitars sound HUGE, larger than life!


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[Electron]

A strat bridge pickup is for advanced players only -- lol.

[GuitarG]

I wire my strats with the bottom tone control for the bridge pickup and the upper tone control for the neck. No tone control on the middle pickup. Current I'm using .047 caps but I have some nice .022's coming in and I'm going to try those. I agree that having a tone control on the bridge pickup is essential in getting fatter, more usable tones. And after years of experimenting with different wiring schemes, this seems to work for me.

[Lurks]

Hey Gazza,
How is the Lentz wired ??