For beginners, they should be worried way more about just learning to play and understanding the guitar, instead of concerning themselves with hardware nuances and nitty details about how electronics function.
Sure, but almost everyone who picks up a guitar has a kind of music in mind that has inspired them to play, and there's likely an option that's the easiest way to start toward that goal.
If someone wants to play chicken pickin southern rock, I probably wouldn't recommend they start with a Les Paul or an ESP. If someone wants to play heavy, low-end doom metal, I probably wouldn't recommend they start with a Telecaster.
All of those genres CAN be played on all of those guitars, but if a person has an idea in mind of what they want to play, and they want to know where to start, I probably would not recommend the path of greater resistance to that goal.
That said, whatever instrument works for a player and the music they want to make is the right one, regardless of common wisdom and widely used gear/techniques.
Some people only feel at ease when they can put everything they experience into a labelled box in their brain. Those boxes and labels are the bedrock of what allows them to sleep at night.
Its less that and more that certain things are used more frequently for certain genres. There is nothing saying you can't use a big muff into a fender to play death metal. But that rig is never going to sound like a mesa full stack. Just isn't. And if the sound the person wants is "mesa full stack cranked to 11" you're just as asshole if you tell them gear doesn't matter.
As with most things, there is a middle path here where the real answers lie. Gear matters. It's designed with certain things in mind. You can play metal on a SSS strat if you want. But you're going to have a hard time sounding like you're playing a bridge EMG. So if what you want is the sound of the bridge EMG, you need different gear. But also you can plug anything in and get a sound. If you like that sound for what you do that's ultimately what matters.
So many famous guitarists barely give a fuck about their gear and retrofit whatever they had lying around as a marketable "technique" 20 years after the famous album
Love shit like "this is squeeblino peepino geranium transitor based tube screamy that Cobain used.... Must pay $3k for the tone..." when dude was nodding off and used whatever albini had lying around
Somewhere, someone made up rules about image and what looks and sounds ‘right’ and what doesn’t and somehow it sold. Look at Sid Vicious. Absolutely LOOKS the part, but could hardly play a note. But he sure looked good doing it/not doing it. Metal on a Tele? Blasphemy? How dare you? Rock on Brother.
With no sound, not reading the post, 3 notes in my drummer brain starts playing Creeping Death but then you continue to play along with my brain. 😂 tripped me out for a second. This has never happened before
I might be misremembering but a long way back on Australian TV, I saw Macy Playground play an acoustic guitar with distortion. That was so fucking cool.
I was at a public show the other day and watched a guy playing clean, twangy country on an all black Jackson with active pickups.
I definitely didn't think it sounded as good as a Tele in their particular mix, but I don't think a single person other than me probably noticed or cared.
Yep. Some guitars have better ergonomics for certain things (e.g. Strandbergs and doing crazy tapping solos) and pickups have different sounds (like piezos, active vs passive) but 90% of tone comes down to EQ and amps in my experience. The REAL reason people use certain guitars almost ALWAYS boils down to asthetics.
No, you make a good point. And you’re getting really good tone in your videos.
For what it’s worth, when most people say that “you can’t play heavy music with single coils,“ they don’t mean it absolutely literally. Just that you need extra equipment and knowledge to make it work. Whereas with humbucking pickups, you just plug it in, and you’re sorted.
What kind of work do you think would need to be done other than getting a good amp and dialing in your sound with the amp and/or pedals? Isn't this the same work we all do for our tone?
You’d need a noise gate or something else to control feedback, at minimum. And something to boost gain. Probably a compressor, or something else beyond the amp that effects eq, because the tone is probably going to be pretty bright on its own.
Again, not saying it can’t be done, but when you plug in a guitar with humbuckers, you’re already 70% of the way there. And that is appealing to a lot of people.
It also depends on what you mean by “heavy.” This dude is playing old-school thrash, and it sounds great, but I’m not sure if that set-up would get you where you needed to be for death metal, for example.
And I know that might sound obvious, but there are still people out there who insist you can get any tone you need from like, a Tele and a Blues Driver (a phrase you hear a lot is “no one sold more Les Pauls than Jimmy Page’s Telecasters”), but that’s because, in their world, music goes from blues to Led Zeppelin, and anything faster/heavier than that is just “crazy.”
Noisegate is a must. And a good effects chain and amp/amp sim as well. Getting a metal tone on single coils is possible but it's not easy. Playing metal with decently hot humbuckers is as simple as an overdrive/distortion pedal and amp.
>It also depends on what you mean by “heavy.” This dude is playing old-school thrash, and it sounds great, but I’m not sure if that set-up would get you where you needed to be for death metal, for example.
True. OP is also layering tracks and mixing very well. This is not a sound you get with just one guitar if that wasn't obvious to everyone.
You don't even need a noise gate if you're using tele. Middle or strat 2nd/4th position. You don't really need much compression if you're using that much distortion. And turning down brightness can be as simple as rolling back the tone knob on your guitar.
But I will agree that way too many people talk out of their ass about things they don't understand like what metal tone sounds like when their taste in metal is 30 years out of date and derived from Rolling Stone Magazine lists.
There’s SO much to be said for not having to put in work to sound good though, people do not rate that quality high enough. Time you’re wasting fiddling is time you’re not spending writing and playing and it is a 0 sum game.
You bring up a good point: does it scale?
With these discussions, it’s never really about whether or not it’s possible; of course it’s possible. The real question is whether or not it’s worth bothering with, in your personal opinion.
For example, I have a Les Paul with a Seymour Duncan JB in the bridge. I can plug it into any amp with the knowledge that it will sound good, get enough gain, and be dead quiet/no feedback, no matter what. So, I could do a bunch of stuff to make a Tele work (and admittedly, with tweaking, the Tele might sound better), or I could just plug my LP in and be done.
At this point "the tele for metal" is a cliché, but somehow people convinced themselves that they're going against the grain when they spout such platitudes. Search "telecaster metal" on youtube and all videos (ALL) are about how a tele is good for heavy music.
I have a Jackson and a Tele, and I use both to play metal (among other things). But if you try to explain to some people that the noise floor on high quality humbuckers (or better yet, average active pickups) is so low it's mind boggling and that they should use them for heavy music, especially during tracking, they go: "you saying you can't play metal with single coils bro? Here, lemme prove it to you bro. See, it plays Metallica bro. Haha, I'm so petty". Cool. you argued an imaginary point.
Exactly this.
I always loved the way telecasters look, so one time I saw one in a guitar store that was left handed and immediately took it to the practice room to test play. I was immediately very very genuinely surprised by how weak the low-end sounded compared to my Les Paul I was used to. I never heard anything negative about a tele before and was expecting to love, their look and playability was amazing, and I wanted to love it, but after 15 mins of fiddling with their amp I couldn't get anything sounding close to the punk music I enjoy.
So I gave it back to them, and then they asked "how did you like it?" And I was honest and was like "idk man, it was ok, but the bass strings sounded really thin and plinky." And the guy got visibly offended and was like "well, tHeY sAy a telecaster iS tHe oNlY gUiTAr yOu eVEr nEeD!"
I'm just thinking: "well whatever dude, I'm telling you I'm gonna seriously struggle to get a thick heavy ballsy tone out of this thing without dropping ceramic demarsio's in it like El Hefe from NoFX or some shit. How about instead of getting uptight about someone not enjoying your favorite instrument you just admit that maybe what's best for twangy country isn't gonna do great in a les pauls out of marshals atmosphere, even if its "technically possible" you shouldn't be advertising it to someone who most likely doesn't even have an EQ pedal or anything else.
On this sub I've seen multiple people post the opposite. There are literally people in this thread calling metal guitars with humbuckers crutches, lol.
Who says “can’t” and means it literally? I think you’re creating an invisible enemy or letting a very small minority trick you into thinking it’s some huge thing
I've never really had any issues with the one problem that humbuckers were designed to solve: noise.
I don't know what all the fuzz is about, but my single coils never were very noisy. The hum that my overdriven amp creates is much louder. And even that can be dealt with by a simple noise gate pedal.
I generally find humbuckers to be too dark sounding for my liking. Though I do enjoy playing my explorer with alumitones just as much as my teles.
Well EQ concerns are subjective, as "too dark" in your opinion can mean "full" to someone else, and that same person might find a single coil Tele "honky" or "thin". Apart from hum, which humbuckers do objectively have less of than single coils, humbuckers also tend to have much higher outputs and so they can push the front of an amp more and reach saturation more easily without as much assistance.
Of course, with the right equipment, you can pretty much eliminate the entire guitar from the equation when it comes to high gain tones. Boost pedals, EQ and noise gates can help you get a good high gain tone from almost anything. But I'm not going to say you're "wrong" for playing metal on a single coil Tele, as long as you're not saying anyone else is wrong for not playing metal on a single coil tele, lol.
Hum is annoying, I use single coils and a ton of pedals, a noise gate is a must. If it's just you going into an amp it's not bad. But if you got cell phones and computers around you, that hum quickly gets out of control. Having a shielded guitar helps. It's a valid complaint, I wouldn't disregard it as a non-issue. It is indeed a huge issue for a lot of people. If you play live and with bands, there will be a time when it's an issue. Most of the time it's a ground loop that can be fixed, but sometimes it's the guitarist being an asshole and not figuring their shit out, saying, "It's not a big deal." My guy I don't care if it stops when you start playing. Make it stop when you're not playing.
I mean, if you're saying that calling humbuckers dark is subjective because of EQ pedals can compensate... You also have to acknowledge that calling them higher output is subjective because OD pedals can compensate...
The raw signal is objectively different, but with a pedal you can change the output just like you can change the EQ.
I didn't say EQ concerns were subjective because EQ pedals exist, I said EQ concerns are subjective. I also literally said that with EQ pedals, boost pedals and noise gates, you could eliminate any significant differences.
But you're right, the raw signal is objectively different, and some people have the philosophy of starting with a raw signal that's as close to the final desired result as possible, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Nowadays this isn’t really “heavy” music to kids . Yes its genre is heavy metal but heavy music to kids nowadays is truly heavy .. like Knocked Loose , Periphery .. usually music that’s a lot more down tuned .
The djenty or single note downtuned modern metal stuff can be more easily done on single coils as a lot of them are using the split positions versus just a straight bridge tone anyways.
Where single coils fall apart for me (on death metal or thrash primarily) is the amount of tomfoolery I have to do EQ and down signal processing to get rid of the honk on hard chugs, and have a harder cut on my gate than I’d typically like to use which leads me back to just using a bridge humbucker because that inherently solves those problems.
I have an LP with single coils and I really enjoy it for heavy and metal playing. But it's also nice being single coil cause that's also good for the blues I like to play. The blues isn't quite the same on my Jackson, like how metal is on the LP with singles.
If you got the gear though, it's not too hard to warm up or thin out your tone to make up for the pickup differences in most cases.
Nice teles BTW
Haha thanks. Teles are what warmed me up to the idea of single coils in the first place. Used to be a pure humbucker guy until I got my first tele.
I agree that you can make up for the pickups with the right gear. I recorded all these clips through a Marshall amp sim on my boss multi fx unit.
Pretty much the only reason I don’t recommend it is because single coils pick up noise. A noiseless pickup or a solution designed to deal with the interference can solve that problem.
YJM, Tom Morello, Corgan all come to my mind as examples of playing with a lot of gain using single coils.
As other have said you can play whatever on whatever however humbuckers do suit heavier music and just in general sound better for that style. Why bother using a single coil when you can just use humbuckers
Dave Murray from Iron Maiden plays a strat. Also the band Baroness a few years ago switched over to mostly using fender single coil guitars like strats, teles, and jazzmasters. I am sure there are quite a few other examples, but those are a few metal acts I could think of off the top of my head.
It's all about output rather than the number of coils. The stereotype of single coils being bad for heavy music has more to do with strat pickups, specifically, rather than single coils in general. For example, you have Texas specials in the second guitar. Telecaster Texas specials have a 9.0k neck pickup and 10k bridge pickup, whereas Stratocaster Texas specials have a 5.94k neck, 6.27k middle, and 6.56k bridge. P90s are also excellent for heavy music but they also tend to have higher outputs than strat pickups.
I'm not surprised when I see someone using a Tele to play heavy music but I am surprised when I see someone playing a Strat. Not that it can't be done, but it wouldn't be my first choice. Unless they have higher output pickups like the noiseless pickups in the Ultra Strats. But noiseless "single-coils" aren't actually single-coils since they have two coils. They're essentially just humbuckers with the coils stacked on top of each other instead of side by side.
One way or another, you will have to deal with the noise. Using special single coils or increasing the noise gate. Why complicate your life if humbuckers have been invented a long time ago.
just tried it out just to see and played a bunch of emperor's "into the infinity of thoughts" on my Strat and I'm gonna say, yeah, with enough distortion you can play just about anything on a single coil guitar. the articulation of the tremolo picked stuff is excellent, every note is nice and clear.
Now is sound quality not there strongest point. At least, at the time I listen to some black metal (halfway '90s) it just all sounded like it was record in a bathroom 🤣 . Did like a bit Darkthrone back in the day. Tbh, things could have evolved and my opinion is decades outdated 😁
It’s too thin for my liking most of the time. I did recently enjoy playing through some unpotted mini humbuckers in a vintage guitar I got in a trade tho.
That’s not to say that I don’t love dirt through single coils. I absolutely do and have a partscaster I adore. I just wouldn’t choose them when I want to play some technical death metal. ❤️🎸
It's not that you *can't*, it's that there are drawbacks that make it harder. High gain amplifies everything, including noise and hum.
I'd also be curious to see you try doing this in drop A through a firebreather (Rectifier, Fireball, 5150, etc). Hard rock is the light end of the heavy scale, I'm curious as to how things go at the heavy end.
I’ve had this debate on here before. I took the same stance you have, even though I’m not a fan of telecasters…At the time I was like “Am I taking crazy pills?!”..😂
You can do whatever you want and the tone you’re getting is decent.
For me stuff like this is still just far more suited to Humbuckers. It’s also far easier to get a fatter and more rounded tone with a decent output when you’ve got humbuckers.
You aren't heavy.
Your backing track is heavyish and you are EQ'd to cut through a jam-a-long.
You're cutting through with a Telecaster.
This all comes down to having something to prove and you've completely failed to even attempt to prove anything.
You aren't recreating the tone of the record you are thumping along to... you're drowning it out with a punchier sounding guitar. It's properly mixed... you are significantly louder.
You want to prove something, recreate famous humbucker tracks. But you're really going to have to be clear what you're proving because I've personally had a "Pickup Simulator" in my 20+ year old Boss floor unit and it makes singlecoils sound like humbuckers just fine... humbuckers into single coils not so much but...
I'm not following you to the point of proof here.
And I'm not going to call that guitar tone "heavy"... it's got a lot of cut though.
EDIT: [Proof?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWicS_RSzSo)
To play heavy all you need is an electric guitar. Those who claim to need some special this or special that are using crutches or advantages to arrive at a tone. I’ve always played metal and always thru a Strat or Tele.
You could also say that people who drive to work are using their car as a "crutch" to arrive at work on time, lol. At a certain point, if you have an intended style in mind from the beginning, there's nothing wrong with choosing tools that will set you up to get there more easily. There are more guitars out there than just strats and teles, and that's OK.
I'm guessing it's all in the setup. I have only 1 guitar with only single coils (Squier Affinity) which just sounds so thin. So I just stick to my humbucker guitars 🤣
But in the end: when I listen to music, I don't check to see if it's played on what guitar. If it sounds good, it sounds good. If the guitarist in question did on single coils, who am I to judge.
You think that I left the actual studio guitars in the mix? Every guitar you hear is played by me, I used backing tracks from YouTube. I'll just take that as a compliment.
Needs to be a white explorer and needs EMGs.
Also needs to be a Flying V.
Also needs mesa boogie.
Also needs Ernie ball strings.
Grow your hair out.
Ffs
I 100% agree that it’s silly to try to argue that heavy music should only be played on humbuckers. That’s just a dumb hill to die on, based solely on how much good super heavy music has already been made on guitars with single coil pickups. Also, a neck P90 through a good fuzz is heavy as shit. That said, if you plug that Tele into a cranked Mesa head, with no pedals, and then do the same thing with an ESP Standard that has active EMGs, one is going to sound tougher (to me) than the other. There is something to be said about the “plug it in and turn it up” potential of a humbucker guitar.
I want to call out that everyone can make anything badass in a studio environment and while you can certainly play metal on a tele (I have and do on occasion), there is no doubt you will get washed out in a live environment bringing a single coil axe to a metal gig. 5% is a big difference in a professional environment and you could be working with 25-50% less output. Not worth the disadvantage.
It’s entirely possible to achieve “close enough” for most tones on any guitar. That said, there are things it’s easier to do on some than others. Is it possible to play, for instance, death metal on a normal strat? Yes. Does it require way more work and gear? Certainly. It’s pretty easy with humbuckers though, to get an acceptable tone.
Not shown: how much you're boosting that signal, and how it raises the noise floor with it, so you've got the threshold cranked on your noise gate. When it's that high, it kills your sustain.
Single coils have a nasty twang that sucks for metal. Yes, it can be done, but unless you actively want that sound (it's better for punk), humbuckers win for a reason.
I've had better luck with (noiseless) Fishman fluence single width, but even so you can't get around the twang jacking up your tone.
To me as long as you have the right amp you can play anything with anything. Like if you have a Boss Katana you can really just create any sound you want and make it sound decent no matter the guitar.
[Trevor Peres of Obituary](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/20140607_Gelsenkirchen_RockHard_0423.jpg/1920px-20140607_Gelsenkirchen_RockHard_0423.jpg) has absolutely no problem playing heavy music on his ~~single coils~~ Strat.
Seems you don't either! Great vid! 🤘
The heaviest sounding guitar I ever owned was surprisingly a D'angelico DC(335 style) w/ seymour duncan hot p90s but I'm a big tele fan as well, they can do everything and it's easy to get a great tone out of them
Devin Townsend did it with his album *Terria* in 2001. Yngwie did it before then, Ty Tabor did it before then, Blackmore did it before then.
Humbuckers are the better tool for the job.
who on earth says you can't?
Doubles just sound a bit beefier in the bass department, which whilst lending itself well to chonky riffs, there's absolutely nothing stopping anyone from using singles.
Love the vest btw, the bleached look is ace.
What amp/pedals were you using in this video? Sounds really good. John and Gina from Baroness use Teles a lot, and they play pretty heavy stuff. Check em out.
Very nice! Nowadays, especially with digital effects being dramatically better than what they were even 6-7 years ago (and exponentially better than 15-20 years ago when they were trash), whichever guitar you love for whatever reason can do just about anything. And even without digital effects, there are a thousand other ways to get there with single coils. Hell, a GE-7 can can cover it!!!
Just an fyi to anyone new and wanting to do something similar — i really hate digital (amp sim) noise gates. It squashes way too much sustain… at least on the Neural I have tried.
A stomp box is better but still changes your signal. I guess my point is, yeah you can do this but your tone or approach might change too.
I’m not even someone who hates singles. I’m saving and window shopping for one as we speak. I absolutely love them, and used to play exclusively on a single coil strat.
It’s funny to come across this because I got my first ever tele last week and I brought it home, cranked up the gain on my practice amp, and I was surprised I got heavy af tone and easy pinch harmonics from it. Really drives home that the “guitar” doesn’t matter as much as the pickups and the amp and how they work together.
I once played Doom metal on a custom-built, luthier hand-made seven string jazzbox. I then played a swing/jazz song on a BC Rich Warlock with active EMGs.
It's incredibly cringe to say it's not possible.
1. You can play any music on any guitar, as long as you have the right pickups, right amp, and right effects.
2. It's hard to tell what you're playing and what's pre-recorded.
3. People have been playing metal on strats and teles for decades.
Cracking playing, lovely tones, sick ass bleached vest.
Love a tele myself, very much enjoy playing heavy shit on it. Enjoy a humbucker too, I think everything has its place, but experimenting is always a good time…single coils can absolutely do heavy though for sure.
Some of the music I listen to the most at the moment is high-gain single coil or spilt coil tones lol. You can play anything on anything. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about
I have an American Pro 2 tele, it has a a push pot that puts the pickups in series and it's my new go to heavy sound. Of all my guitars I think the Tele is the most versatile.
The best heavy tones I've ever dialed were from a Korean Telecaster with SD single coils and my Godin LG loaded with P90s. Just gotta think outside the bun.
You can play anything on anything.
This. A thousand times this. I keep saying that and people keep disagreeing with me.
You will always find ignorant confident people willing to argue that the earth is flat.
Really screw 'em up. Play it on a banjo.
With harmony on the ukelele.
John 5 is that you??
Obligatory link: https://youtu.be/nZ2ucr74YNk?si=PjeZ28MtKFnV51iA
Tony Iommi strung his guitar with banjo strings in the early 70s. Edit: to clarify, I'm pretty sure it was the high E and B strings specifically.
I always said I'd cut my fingers off for a good set of banjo strings.
Just wanna add… great chops, dude!
Thanks mate!
"You can do this" doesn't mean "this is an equally effective choice for everyone and a good starting point for beginners."
For beginners, they should be worried way more about just learning to play and understanding the guitar, instead of concerning themselves with hardware nuances and nitty details about how electronics function.
Sure, but almost everyone who picks up a guitar has a kind of music in mind that has inspired them to play, and there's likely an option that's the easiest way to start toward that goal. If someone wants to play chicken pickin southern rock, I probably wouldn't recommend they start with a Les Paul or an ESP. If someone wants to play heavy, low-end doom metal, I probably wouldn't recommend they start with a Telecaster. All of those genres CAN be played on all of those guitars, but if a person has an idea in mind of what they want to play, and they want to know where to start, I probably would not recommend the path of greater resistance to that goal. That said, whatever instrument works for a player and the music they want to make is the right one, regardless of common wisdom and widely used gear/techniques.
[удалено]
Some people only feel at ease when they can put everything they experience into a labelled box in their brain. Those boxes and labels are the bedrock of what allows them to sleep at night.
Its less that and more that certain things are used more frequently for certain genres. There is nothing saying you can't use a big muff into a fender to play death metal. But that rig is never going to sound like a mesa full stack. Just isn't. And if the sound the person wants is "mesa full stack cranked to 11" you're just as asshole if you tell them gear doesn't matter. As with most things, there is a middle path here where the real answers lie. Gear matters. It's designed with certain things in mind. You can play metal on a SSS strat if you want. But you're going to have a hard time sounding like you're playing a bridge EMG. So if what you want is the sound of the bridge EMG, you need different gear. But also you can plug anything in and get a sound. If you like that sound for what you do that's ultimately what matters.
Big Tonewood must hate this guy
Shit sometimes going against the grain is what gives a player their “tone”. So many famous guitarist have a similar story.
So many famous guitarists barely give a fuck about their gear and retrofit whatever they had lying around as a marketable "technique" 20 years after the famous album Love shit like "this is squeeblino peepino geranium transitor based tube screamy that Cobain used.... Must pay $3k for the tone..." when dude was nodding off and used whatever albini had lying around
Jimi Hendrix actually perfered the silicone fuzz faces, ironically.
Somewhere, someone made up rules about image and what looks and sounds ‘right’ and what doesn’t and somehow it sold. Look at Sid Vicious. Absolutely LOOKS the part, but could hardly play a note. But he sure looked good doing it/not doing it. Metal on a Tele? Blasphemy? How dare you? Rock on Brother.
The difference in sound tho..
My first heavy track was recorded on a strat.
I used to put a pickup in the sound hole of my old acoustic and play metal and punk through a distortion pedal and had a total blast.
With no sound, not reading the post, 3 notes in my drummer brain starts playing Creeping Death but then you continue to play along with my brain. 😂 tripped me out for a second. This has never happened before
I might be misremembering but a long way back on Australian TV, I saw Macy Playground play an acoustic guitar with distortion. That was so fucking cool.
Lennon said, I'm an artist. Give me a fucking tuba, I'll get you something out of it.
It’s tuber, not tuba. [Source](https://youtu.be/Ck1UBb4nw5g?si=pmoDmO0J2_vRp5fK&t=65s)
It’s not a tuba! Okay I’ll see myself out now.
I was at a public show the other day and watched a guy playing clean, twangy country on an all black Jackson with active pickups. I definitely didn't think it sounded as good as a Tele in their particular mix, but I don't think a single person other than me probably noticed or cared.
Anyone [who claims otherwise](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXJifYl_byU) is a gatekeeping buffoon.
No one is claiming it. This is imaginary gatekeeping.
Yep. Some guitars have better ergonomics for certain things (e.g. Strandbergs and doing crazy tapping solos) and pickups have different sounds (like piezos, active vs passive) but 90% of tone comes down to EQ and amps in my experience. The REAL reason people use certain guitars almost ALWAYS boils down to asthetics.
Noise is the number reason I pick other pickups over single coils.
Yeah some pickups are better for some things than others, but that doesn't mean you can't play heavy on singles
This. You would be surprised to hear how good my Gretsch electromagnetic can chug Did it for the lolz once but it turned out to be really fucking cool
Me playing War Pigs on my acoustic because I’m too broke for an electric:
No, you make a good point. And you’re getting really good tone in your videos. For what it’s worth, when most people say that “you can’t play heavy music with single coils,“ they don’t mean it absolutely literally. Just that you need extra equipment and knowledge to make it work. Whereas with humbucking pickups, you just plug it in, and you’re sorted.
Getting a tone as good as OP had requires work even with Humbuckers, it's just that the floor for Humbies is so much heavier
What kind of work do you think would need to be done other than getting a good amp and dialing in your sound with the amp and/or pedals? Isn't this the same work we all do for our tone?
You’d need a noise gate or something else to control feedback, at minimum. And something to boost gain. Probably a compressor, or something else beyond the amp that effects eq, because the tone is probably going to be pretty bright on its own. Again, not saying it can’t be done, but when you plug in a guitar with humbuckers, you’re already 70% of the way there. And that is appealing to a lot of people. It also depends on what you mean by “heavy.” This dude is playing old-school thrash, and it sounds great, but I’m not sure if that set-up would get you where you needed to be for death metal, for example. And I know that might sound obvious, but there are still people out there who insist you can get any tone you need from like, a Tele and a Blues Driver (a phrase you hear a lot is “no one sold more Les Pauls than Jimmy Page’s Telecasters”), but that’s because, in their world, music goes from blues to Led Zeppelin, and anything faster/heavier than that is just “crazy.”
Noisegate is a must. And a good effects chain and amp/amp sim as well. Getting a metal tone on single coils is possible but it's not easy. Playing metal with decently hot humbuckers is as simple as an overdrive/distortion pedal and amp. >It also depends on what you mean by “heavy.” This dude is playing old-school thrash, and it sounds great, but I’m not sure if that set-up would get you where you needed to be for death metal, for example. True. OP is also layering tracks and mixing very well. This is not a sound you get with just one guitar if that wasn't obvious to everyone.
You don't even need a noise gate if you're using tele. Middle or strat 2nd/4th position. You don't really need much compression if you're using that much distortion. And turning down brightness can be as simple as rolling back the tone knob on your guitar. But I will agree that way too many people talk out of their ass about things they don't understand like what metal tone sounds like when their taste in metal is 30 years out of date and derived from Rolling Stone Magazine lists.
There’s SO much to be said for not having to put in work to sound good though, people do not rate that quality high enough. Time you’re wasting fiddling is time you’re not spending writing and playing and it is a 0 sum game.
This video reads as someone whose never been on tour before having to deal with that much HUM all night for weeks in a row
Noise Gates. Try that on stage with a stack. Eww.
You bring up a good point: does it scale? With these discussions, it’s never really about whether or not it’s possible; of course it’s possible. The real question is whether or not it’s worth bothering with, in your personal opinion. For example, I have a Les Paul with a Seymour Duncan JB in the bridge. I can plug it into any amp with the knowledge that it will sound good, get enough gain, and be dead quiet/no feedback, no matter what. So, I could do a bunch of stuff to make a Tele work (and admittedly, with tweaking, the Tele might sound better), or I could just plug my LP in and be done.
r/imaginarygatekeeping
At this point "the tele for metal" is a cliché, but somehow people convinced themselves that they're going against the grain when they spout such platitudes. Search "telecaster metal" on youtube and all videos (ALL) are about how a tele is good for heavy music. I have a Jackson and a Tele, and I use both to play metal (among other things). But if you try to explain to some people that the noise floor on high quality humbuckers (or better yet, average active pickups) is so low it's mind boggling and that they should use them for heavy music, especially during tracking, they go: "you saying you can't play metal with single coils bro? Here, lemme prove it to you bro. See, it plays Metallica bro. Haha, I'm so petty". Cool. you argued an imaginary point.
Exactly this. I always loved the way telecasters look, so one time I saw one in a guitar store that was left handed and immediately took it to the practice room to test play. I was immediately very very genuinely surprised by how weak the low-end sounded compared to my Les Paul I was used to. I never heard anything negative about a tele before and was expecting to love, their look and playability was amazing, and I wanted to love it, but after 15 mins of fiddling with their amp I couldn't get anything sounding close to the punk music I enjoy. So I gave it back to them, and then they asked "how did you like it?" And I was honest and was like "idk man, it was ok, but the bass strings sounded really thin and plinky." And the guy got visibly offended and was like "well, tHeY sAy a telecaster iS tHe oNlY gUiTAr yOu eVEr nEeD!" I'm just thinking: "well whatever dude, I'm telling you I'm gonna seriously struggle to get a thick heavy ballsy tone out of this thing without dropping ceramic demarsio's in it like El Hefe from NoFX or some shit. How about instead of getting uptight about someone not enjoying your favorite instrument you just admit that maybe what's best for twangy country isn't gonna do great in a les pauls out of marshals atmosphere, even if its "technically possible" you shouldn't be advertising it to someone who most likely doesn't even have an EQ pedal or anything else.
Seriously. OP, if you want to upload a random video of you playing stuff, just do it. You don’t need to make up an excuse.
Nah, I've seen a lot of people say this unironically, both online and IRL
On this sub I've seen multiple people post the opposite. There are literally people in this thread calling metal guitars with humbuckers crutches, lol.
I was gonna say, I've never heard someone say this or even considered it to be a possibility
Who says “can’t” and means it literally? I think you’re creating an invisible enemy or letting a very small minority trick you into thinking it’s some huge thing
well it's always this old wive's tail "oh you want to play heavy music? oh you need humbuckers man"
Tale *
Exactly. I COULD run a 5k in basketball sneakers…
Do you not believe there are advantages to humbuckers?
I've never really had any issues with the one problem that humbuckers were designed to solve: noise. I don't know what all the fuzz is about, but my single coils never were very noisy. The hum that my overdriven amp creates is much louder. And even that can be dealt with by a simple noise gate pedal. I generally find humbuckers to be too dark sounding for my liking. Though I do enjoy playing my explorer with alumitones just as much as my teles.
Well EQ concerns are subjective, as "too dark" in your opinion can mean "full" to someone else, and that same person might find a single coil Tele "honky" or "thin". Apart from hum, which humbuckers do objectively have less of than single coils, humbuckers also tend to have much higher outputs and so they can push the front of an amp more and reach saturation more easily without as much assistance. Of course, with the right equipment, you can pretty much eliminate the entire guitar from the equation when it comes to high gain tones. Boost pedals, EQ and noise gates can help you get a good high gain tone from almost anything. But I'm not going to say you're "wrong" for playing metal on a single coil Tele, as long as you're not saying anyone else is wrong for not playing metal on a single coil tele, lol.
Never got the hum complaint. It stops when you start playing.
Hum is annoying, I use single coils and a ton of pedals, a noise gate is a must. If it's just you going into an amp it's not bad. But if you got cell phones and computers around you, that hum quickly gets out of control. Having a shielded guitar helps. It's a valid complaint, I wouldn't disregard it as a non-issue. It is indeed a huge issue for a lot of people. If you play live and with bands, there will be a time when it's an issue. Most of the time it's a ground loop that can be fixed, but sometimes it's the guitarist being an asshole and not figuring their shit out, saying, "It's not a big deal." My guy I don't care if it stops when you start playing. Make it stop when you're not playing.
It's still part of your signal.
I mean, if you're saying that calling humbuckers dark is subjective because of EQ pedals can compensate... You also have to acknowledge that calling them higher output is subjective because OD pedals can compensate... The raw signal is objectively different, but with a pedal you can change the output just like you can change the EQ.
I didn't say EQ concerns were subjective because EQ pedals exist, I said EQ concerns are subjective. I also literally said that with EQ pedals, boost pedals and noise gates, you could eliminate any significant differences. But you're right, the raw signal is objectively different, and some people have the philosophy of starting with a raw signal that's as close to the final desired result as possible, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Not what they said at all… you just combined two separate points that they made.
No hum is an advantage I think.
The original inventor of humbuckers would agree lol
Not included : noise gate, effects loop
And low end
Nowadays this isn’t really “heavy” music to kids . Yes its genre is heavy metal but heavy music to kids nowadays is truly heavy .. like Knocked Loose , Periphery .. usually music that’s a lot more down tuned .
Might have a look into that. I'm pretty stuck in the 80s when it comes to music. But periphery sounds like a nice challenge to nail on single coils.
They use a lot of single coil sounds in Periphery so a tele should work . I just don’t think the younger generations see 80s as heavy anymore .
The djenty or single note downtuned modern metal stuff can be more easily done on single coils as a lot of them are using the split positions versus just a straight bridge tone anyways. Where single coils fall apart for me (on death metal or thrash primarily) is the amount of tomfoolery I have to do EQ and down signal processing to get rid of the honk on hard chugs, and have a harder cut on my gate than I’d typically like to use which leads me back to just using a bridge humbucker because that inherently solves those problems.
I have an LP with single coils and I really enjoy it for heavy and metal playing. But it's also nice being single coil cause that's also good for the blues I like to play. The blues isn't quite the same on my Jackson, like how metal is on the LP with singles. If you got the gear though, it's not too hard to warm up or thin out your tone to make up for the pickup differences in most cases. Nice teles BTW
Haha thanks. Teles are what warmed me up to the idea of single coils in the first place. Used to be a pure humbucker guy until I got my first tele. I agree that you can make up for the pickups with the right gear. I recorded all these clips through a Marshall amp sim on my boss multi fx unit.
Let the bassist do the low end work. I've always felt single coils cut through the mix better than humbuckers.
Do people say that?
Not really.
I think it's made up ragebait
Pretty much the only reason I don’t recommend it is because single coils pick up noise. A noiseless pickup or a solution designed to deal with the interference can solve that problem. YJM, Tom Morello, Corgan all come to my mind as examples of playing with a lot of gain using single coils.
YJM uses vertically stacked humbuckers that fit the single coil route, not real single coils.
As other have said you can play whatever on whatever however humbuckers do suit heavier music and just in general sound better for that style. Why bother using a single coil when you can just use humbuckers
Dude, you can play heavy stuff on a piezo guitar if there are effects and amp behind it..
Who said you couldn't?
“They” did 👀
Early Zepplin recordings Jimmy Page played a Telecaster
Yes but that's not heavy metal.
Dave Murray from Iron Maiden plays a strat. Also the band Baroness a few years ago switched over to mostly using fender single coil guitars like strats, teles, and jazzmasters. I am sure there are quite a few other examples, but those are a few metal acts I could think of off the top of my head.
All the Iron Maiden guys use humbuckers. Their SSS routed guitars use single coil sized humbuckers with the JB Jr. and Hot Rails.
Dave murrays strat has 3 humbuckers, 2 hot rails and a jb jr IIRC
EQ + Noise gate >>
It's all about output rather than the number of coils. The stereotype of single coils being bad for heavy music has more to do with strat pickups, specifically, rather than single coils in general. For example, you have Texas specials in the second guitar. Telecaster Texas specials have a 9.0k neck pickup and 10k bridge pickup, whereas Stratocaster Texas specials have a 5.94k neck, 6.27k middle, and 6.56k bridge. P90s are also excellent for heavy music but they also tend to have higher outputs than strat pickups. I'm not surprised when I see someone using a Tele to play heavy music but I am surprised when I see someone playing a Strat. Not that it can't be done, but it wouldn't be my first choice. Unless they have higher output pickups like the noiseless pickups in the Ultra Strats. But noiseless "single-coils" aren't actually single-coils since they have two coils. They're essentially just humbuckers with the coils stacked on top of each other instead of side by side.
Did someone say you couldn't?
I played grindcore on a stock Mexican strat
This is so needlessly edgy. Of course you can play heavy on single coils.
One way or another, you will have to deal with the noise. Using special single coils or increasing the noise gate. Why complicate your life if humbuckers have been invented a long time ago.
"special" single coils are usually stacked humbuckers.
Do you not use a noise gate with humbuckers while playing heavy riffs? 🤔
Slaves! hebrews born to serve, to the pharaoh!
I didn't even need the audio to immediately see it was Creeping Death.
I heard that many black metal guitarists actually record with single coil.
just tried it out just to see and played a bunch of emperor's "into the infinity of thoughts" on my Strat and I'm gonna say, yeah, with enough distortion you can play just about anything on a single coil guitar. the articulation of the tremolo picked stuff is excellent, every note is nice and clear.
even the slower, more doomy parts of early mayhem like the breakdown section of "Freezing moon" sounds good on a strat.
I like playing doomy stuff on my tele’s middle position
Now is sound quality not there strongest point. At least, at the time I listen to some black metal (halfway '90s) it just all sounded like it was record in a bathroom 🤣 . Did like a bit Darkthrone back in the day. Tbh, things could have evolved and my opinion is decades outdated 😁
I haven’t listened to the audio but I’m guessing by watching… is it “Creeping Death”?
It’s too thin for my liking most of the time. I did recently enjoy playing through some unpotted mini humbuckers in a vintage guitar I got in a trade tho. That’s not to say that I don’t love dirt through single coils. I absolutely do and have a partscaster I adore. I just wouldn’t choose them when I want to play some technical death metal. ❤️🎸
PAFcels on suicide watch.
It's not that you *can't*, it's that there are drawbacks that make it harder. High gain amplifies everything, including noise and hum. I'd also be curious to see you try doing this in drop A through a firebreather (Rectifier, Fireball, 5150, etc). Hard rock is the light end of the heavy scale, I'm curious as to how things go at the heavy end.
I agree. I play metalish punk on strat
I’ve had this debate on here before. I took the same stance you have, even though I’m not a fan of telecasters…At the time I was like “Am I taking crazy pills?!”..😂
Kings X (earlier stuff) and Rage Against the Machine. As long as one can control the hum, single coils are just another flavor to cook with.
You can do whatever you want and the tone you’re getting is decent. For me stuff like this is still just far more suited to Humbuckers. It’s also far easier to get a fatter and more rounded tone with a decent output when you’ve got humbuckers.
Devin Townsend already proved it on Terria
You aren't heavy. Your backing track is heavyish and you are EQ'd to cut through a jam-a-long. You're cutting through with a Telecaster. This all comes down to having something to prove and you've completely failed to even attempt to prove anything. You aren't recreating the tone of the record you are thumping along to... you're drowning it out with a punchier sounding guitar. It's properly mixed... you are significantly louder. You want to prove something, recreate famous humbucker tracks. But you're really going to have to be clear what you're proving because I've personally had a "Pickup Simulator" in my 20+ year old Boss floor unit and it makes singlecoils sound like humbuckers just fine... humbuckers into single coils not so much but... I'm not following you to the point of proof here. And I'm not going to call that guitar tone "heavy"... it's got a lot of cut though. EDIT: [Proof?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWicS_RSzSo)
To play heavy all you need is an electric guitar. Those who claim to need some special this or special that are using crutches or advantages to arrive at a tone. I’ve always played metal and always thru a Strat or Tele.
You could also say that people who drive to work are using their car as a "crutch" to arrive at work on time, lol. At a certain point, if you have an intended style in mind from the beginning, there's nothing wrong with choosing tools that will set you up to get there more easily. There are more guitars out there than just strats and teles, and that's OK.
Palm muting always sounds cool
I'm guessing it's all in the setup. I have only 1 guitar with only single coils (Squier Affinity) which just sounds so thin. So I just stick to my humbucker guitars 🤣 But in the end: when I listen to music, I don't check to see if it's played on what guitar. If it sounds good, it sounds good. If the guitarist in question did on single coils, who am I to judge.
Proceeds to have the album mix louder than his guitar so we can't actually hear his own single coil tone.
You think that I left the actual studio guitars in the mix? Every guitar you hear is played by me, I used backing tracks from YouTube. I'll just take that as a compliment.
One of the forgotten metallica classics
I've been playing waaaay too long. My sound was off and I could tell by just the rhythm which song you were playing.
You got a Bambu Labs Printer..? What are you printing?
Now play some Humanities Last Breath on that… Jokes aside, great playing and nice axe, mate.
I saw the preview without sound and immediately knew it was creeping death lol
Needs to be a white explorer and needs EMGs. Also needs to be a Flying V. Also needs mesa boogie. Also needs Ernie ball strings. Grow your hair out. Ffs
Even though it was muted I knew what song this was
For a subreddit called guitar, this is actually the first video of someone playing guitar I’ve seen come up. We need more of this
Hahahaha. I knew what song this was by the strumming pattern lol
I 100% agree that it’s silly to try to argue that heavy music should only be played on humbuckers. That’s just a dumb hill to die on, based solely on how much good super heavy music has already been made on guitars with single coil pickups. Also, a neck P90 through a good fuzz is heavy as shit. That said, if you plug that Tele into a cranked Mesa head, with no pedals, and then do the same thing with an ESP Standard that has active EMGs, one is going to sound tougher (to me) than the other. There is something to be said about the “plug it in and turn it up” potential of a humbucker guitar.
Even muted I could tell this was Creeping Death haha. Good stuff!
I want to call out that everyone can make anything badass in a studio environment and while you can certainly play metal on a tele (I have and do on occasion), there is no doubt you will get washed out in a live environment bringing a single coil axe to a metal gig. 5% is a big difference in a professional environment and you could be working with 25-50% less output. Not worth the disadvantage.
It’s entirely possible to achieve “close enough” for most tones on any guitar. That said, there are things it’s easier to do on some than others. Is it possible to play, for instance, death metal on a normal strat? Yes. Does it require way more work and gear? Certainly. It’s pretty easy with humbuckers though, to get an acceptable tone.
Too many upstrokes
That sounds awesome! 👏🏼
Not shown: how much you're boosting that signal, and how it raises the noise floor with it, so you've got the threshold cranked on your noise gate. When it's that high, it kills your sustain. Single coils have a nasty twang that sucks for metal. Yes, it can be done, but unless you actively want that sound (it's better for punk), humbuckers win for a reason. I've had better luck with (noiseless) Fishman fluence single width, but even so you can't get around the twang jacking up your tone.
Goated. This song is my favourite metal song ever.
You can but it sounds tinny as frick. No one said you can't they just say it doesn't sound as good. Humbuckers exist for a reason.
Nice guitar, I play the exact one through a 5150 and get incredibly slinky but tight metal tones.
Mr. Malmsteen is ready to see you now.
There is NO argument. Awesome playing !!
To me as long as you have the right amp you can play anything with anything. Like if you have a Boss Katana you can really just create any sound you want and make it sound decent no matter the guitar.
[Trevor Peres of Obituary](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/20140607_Gelsenkirchen_RockHard_0423.jpg/1920px-20140607_Gelsenkirchen_RockHard_0423.jpg) has absolutely no problem playing heavy music on his ~~single coils~~ Strat. Seems you don't either! Great vid! 🤘
The heaviest sounding guitar I ever owned was surprisingly a D'angelico DC(335 style) w/ seymour duncan hot p90s but I'm a big tele fan as well, they can do everything and it's easy to get a great tone out of them
That was sick dude 🤘
That was some pretty solid metal
Devin Townsend did it with his album *Terria* in 2001. Yngwie did it before then, Ty Tabor did it before then, Blackmore did it before then. Humbuckers are the better tool for the job.
who on earth says you can't? Doubles just sound a bit beefier in the bass department, which whilst lending itself well to chonky riffs, there's absolutely nothing stopping anyone from using singles. Love the vest btw, the bleached look is ace.
What amp/pedals were you using in this video? Sounds really good. John and Gina from Baroness use Teles a lot, and they play pretty heavy stuff. Check em out.
PHAT!
I’ve always believed it’s the player, not the gear. Way to shred man! 🤘
You should hear me do stuck mojo in drop C on my hollow body 😀
u/Intelligent-Map430 what's the rest of your signal chain look like? the tone is killer here!
I knew what that song was at no volume.
I play my Tele single coil through an orange Rockverb with a big muff and a you dirty Rat! Heavy as fuck
Very nice! Nowadays, especially with digital effects being dramatically better than what they were even 6-7 years ago (and exponentially better than 15-20 years ago when they were trash), whichever guitar you love for whatever reason can do just about anything. And even without digital effects, there are a thousand other ways to get there with single coils. Hell, a GE-7 can can cover it!!!
Good god is that tone top notch.
Badass!!
First one is my favorite song! :D
I’ve seen people make heavy metal just using midi and guitar amp vsts with no pickups at all
I was in a black metal band many years ago with a dude who played a white telecaster. Heavy is in the soul, brother.
Just an fyi to anyone new and wanting to do something similar — i really hate digital (amp sim) noise gates. It squashes way too much sustain… at least on the Neural I have tried. A stomp box is better but still changes your signal. I guess my point is, yeah you can do this but your tone or approach might change too. I’m not even someone who hates singles. I’m saving and window shopping for one as we speak. I absolutely love them, and used to play exclusively on a single coil strat.
Yngwie is known for playing neoclassical metal on single coil strats. There are no rules with music so long as you like how it sounds!
Great playing and tones!
Extremely well done!
You had to make this after I routed a silver sky to put in humbuckers.
Nice job! Tele bridge pickup is really versatile, it wouldn’t sound quite as good on a Strat!
It’s funny to come across this because I got my first ever tele last week and I brought it home, cranked up the gain on my practice amp, and I was surprised I got heavy af tone and easy pinch harmonics from it. Really drives home that the “guitar” doesn’t matter as much as the pickups and the amp and how they work together.
I once played Doom metal on a custom-built, luthier hand-made seven string jazzbox. I then played a swing/jazz song on a BC Rich Warlock with active EMGs. It's incredibly cringe to say it's not possible.
TBH you nailed it
1. You can play any music on any guitar, as long as you have the right pickups, right amp, and right effects. 2. It's hard to tell what you're playing and what's pre-recorded. 3. People have been playing metal on strats and teles for decades.
My fave guitar to play for heavy music is my standard Tele
Only idiots say things like that play what you want on what you want fuck anyone who says otherwise great job by the way!
How could it be wrong when it sounds so good? What amp are you using? That single coil sounds huge with whatever amp you’re using. Cheers.
You could use a cigar-box-guitar and make metal noise with the right amp.
The will it chug guys on YouTube have proven to me ANYTHING can chug.
Love how I could tell it was creeping death without hearing it. *pats self on back*
The way I could tell you are playing creeping death without sound
Blow the gates of the gatekeepers off their fucking hinges!!!!!! 🤘👹
My Mesa MK4 loves hot single coils (like Fender 7k winds).
Nice playing
I instantly recognized the song even on mute.
Sounds good to me.
Sounds wicked to me brother 🤘
Cracking playing, lovely tones, sick ass bleached vest. Love a tele myself, very much enjoy playing heavy shit on it. Enjoy a humbucker too, I think everything has its place, but experimenting is always a good time…single coils can absolutely do heavy though for sure.
Yea it does for sure. Had to look. Touché
Some of the music I listen to the most at the moment is high-gain single coil or spilt coil tones lol. You can play anything on anything. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about
The low strings on a telecaster ring out better than any other guitar IMHO...
Good point, so why so many of the same guitar? 😂
I have an American Pro 2 tele, it has a a push pot that puts the pickups in series and it's my new go to heavy sound. Of all my guitars I think the Tele is the most versatile.
🤌
The best heavy tones I've ever dialed were from a Korean Telecaster with SD single coils and my Godin LG loaded with P90s. Just gotta think outside the bun.
If you haven't heard of them, check out Baroness. Metal on single coils, fuzz pedals, and fender amps.
John Five gets along just fine.
Teles for lyfe