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Single Coil Distortion

I've heard nothing but good things about that mini-rectifier. Wise choice.

I know what you mean about getting too old to manhandle a ton of equipment around. A meeting between me and a 4x12 bottom is the confrontation of an irresistible force and an immovable object. Nothing but wishful grunts. Damn thing may as well be welded to the floor. But, when I was younger I used to heave a pair of Marshall 1960s in and out of the pickup, up and down stairs 3-4 times a week. Not any fun, but I could do it on my own. Today, I couldn't manage that at gunpoint. You'd just have to shoot me so I'd be out of the way. Although, if you asked nice and offered me a beer, I'd move pretty readily. No need for bloodshed <grin>
 
Had a mexi strat with Texas specials years ago and ran it with an Ibanez Tube King TK9999 with an Ibanez TS-10 tubescreamer for leads then through a bunch of other effects and to my 72 Twin reverb. I highly recommend that tube king if you can get the original one (pic below). It's a nice warm dist pedal for single coils, and humbuckers too.

Now I'm just running everything through amplitube 3.

ibanez_tk999_001.jpg
 
Hey do you guys like the Wide Range pickups by Fender?
I think mine are reissue, came with a pink slip in 2009 or 10  :laughing8:
They are single coil I think, but supposedly voiced with a slice of humbucker.
I don't know if its because of they are unpotted, but lately I have been loving mine!  :headbang:
 
I guess I can chime in.  I have been driving my strat around the block a lot lately.  It has vintage strength single coils and I've found that my normal overdrive settings just sound more tasty than with an all-the-way-humbucker-at-high-gain sound.  Mind you, they can still sound heavy, just more defined.  If you put them in a mix I think you'll be surprised. 
 
For the amp question, I have an older Tech21 Trademark 60 amp and I've found that it can hold its own with most tube amps.  With that amp and a couple pedals, I'm extremely happy.  Like many folks, I invested in nice tube amps over the years (Peavey, Carvin, Fender) only to sell them later.  The Tech21 is the only one that I kept.  Theres some solid state/analog stuff out there that sounds damn good, so don't get caught in the whole "must have tubes" ideas these days.  I've seen more and more shows lately and seen players with awesome tone playing through a modeling amp.  For a basement dweller like me, tube amps just don't make any sense.
 
I think for a normal single coil to give you a balls-out distortion that's actually listenable, you need some really good EQ in there too, to tame some of the highs and give the mids a healthy bump. Before I ever changed the bridge pickup, and when I was too poor to really afford decent gear, I got great distortion with a bog-standard Strat and a Boss Metal Zone. The EQ on that pedal is very powerful. I was playing a lot of stuff from Momentary Lapse of Reason at the time and it was perfect for that.
 
Others here have more experience than I do on the matter but I wanted to mention don't forget Gary Moore if you want to consider overdriven single coil work. He used a stock 1961 strat and when he went to town on it it sounded like he could knock down doors. According to what I have read, if true, he used one of the Boss boxes through the clean channel of his Marshal for the strat overdrive sound he had. Check out this video. I have no complaints about his sound whatsoever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBTRtL-OcPQ
 
Cagey said:
LPB-1. As inexpensive as those solutions seem, don't discount them. They sound real, which is worth a lot.

Thanks for the flashback!
I just found mine in the bottom of my desk drawer.

I agree. It was the most "real" sounding solution I ever found.
Used it with Fender Bandmasters and finally a Fender Twin. The first version with the master volume
and it made all the difference.


 

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mullyman said:
A bit more info is needed, specifically, what amp are you using? I don't know anything about other than what I saw in this thread, so don't take this personally if I'm mistaken. It's easy for us 40+ year old guys to sit here and tell you all day long that you should have a Marshall, Mesa, Soldano etc... Truth of the matter is this, a lot of young people don't have the funds to run out and buy a really nice tube amp. Hell, a lot of people our age don't have the funds for it, and there's absolutely nothing wrong or embarrassing about that. Point being, if a pedal is what can afford then we shouldn't be so quick to point towards amps that cost hundreds and even thousands of dollars. So, my suggestion for a pedal would be this, check out amp modeling stuff like Line6. In my opinion, modeling pretty much negates pickups. I have a line6 amp here and I get pretty much the same sounds no matter which guitar I use.
MULLY

:icon_thumright: to what Mully said, there are no end of cheap but decent tube amps available these days that will pretty much duplicate the sound of expensive vintage amps if you throw the cheap Chinese tubes that come in them away and spend some time experimenting to find which tubes sound best in them.

It would really help if you gave a few examples of songs that have the type of distortion sound you're trying to recreate...
 
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