Many years after vintage Fender and Gibson guitars tore the stage in the hands of famous Rock 'n' Roll guitarists, new players of the 80's and 90's went for a different kind of guitar, the HS or HSS.
Fender Stratocaster HSS (Fat Strat)
Fender Telecaster HS
These guitars have a humbucker (H) in the bridge position, a single coil pickup (S) in the neck position (see the Telecaster above) and some of them another single coil pickup (S) in the middle position (like the Stratocaster).
What's the deal? Well, if you want a bright sounding guitar, you'll need single coils, at least one. Since the bridge sound is already bright enough, you don't want a thin sounding single coil in that position. You want a hot pickup and the humbucker is just what you need. Especially if you're into Metal and want to rip the speakers with hard and heavy power chords in the bridge position. Besides, guitar noise is usually stronger in that position and a humbucker in place of a single coil pickup solves the problem. But It should be an average 7-8 kΩ humbucker, not a hot one above 14 kΩ. Neck humbuckers have usually normal output and you can put one of those in the bridge position.
So, yeah, we put a humbucker in the bridge position. But what about the rest of the guitar? What kind of pickups do we choose next? Well, not humbuckers again because, after all, we still need that bright sound. We're fed up with that muddy Les Paul sound because we don't play Blues or Jazz all the time. We also play Country, Funk, Metal and so on. We need brightness. We need some single coil pickups.
The whole idea is to normalize the sound across the guitar, more precisely from the bridge to the neck. The strings vibration increases from bridge to neck. That means you'll need a hotter pickup in the bridge position and a weaker pickup in the neck position in order to reach a balanced sound.
The point is... go get a HS or HSS guitar, man! Or just split coil your neck humbucker if you can. I did this on my Les Pauls and they sound great.
The whole idea is to normalize the sound across the guitar, more precisely from the bridge to the neck. The strings vibration increases from bridge to neck. That means you'll need a hotter pickup in the bridge position and a weaker pickup in the neck position in order to reach a balanced sound.
The point is... go get a HS or HSS guitar, man! Or just split coil your neck humbucker if you can. I did this on my Les Pauls and they sound great.
