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guitarist with single coils vs humbuckers

claytitan

claytitan

Mar 12, 2008
330
8
Tennessee
#1
I'm am playing in a couple bands at the moment. In band A the guitarist plays a Les Paul and in B the guitarist plays a tele. Both are competent players. What I am finding is it is much easier to get a good mix and hear everyone with the tele than with the LP. Especially when they are using a distorted sound - not as much difference when clean. May be it is just the EQ setting they are using?

I know this is not much to go on since no player or amp is identical but the difference is pretty dramatic. I am curious what the experience of the group is?

Thanks,
 
#3
both are fairly diffrent sounding guitars. pickups make a big diffrence. a few years ago i modded a guitar for my friend gemma, she wanted a bugger in the neck and a coil in the bridge of her strat. both pups sound fairly diffrent so in that case it was all about trying to get the balence right.
 
#5
Yeah, it's hard to make generalizations about this stuff...not that it's going to stop us!

I play with a lot of different artists and lineups, and IN GENERAL it seems like humbucker equipped guitars tend to creep into my sonic space more than Strats and Teles, and make mixing a bit more challenging. That being said, some of the guitarists I work with switch between the two and they make either one work just fine. I think it's probably more a case of the guitarist knowing how to EQ effectively rather than any inherent tonal quality of the guitars themselves.

Just my theory...
 
#6
Single-coil strats and teles have very sharp, aggressive, peaky attacks while humbucker-equipped Les Pauls tend to have smoother, lower attack peaks. That tends to make the classic Fender sounds stick out more in a mix and to make the classic Les Paul sounds blend in.

As a guitarist, you can play your way around those tendencies, of course; and FX and amp voicing matter as well. In any event, the band's frequency-slotting and arrangements should account for the guitarist's choice of instrument (or vice versa).
 
#7
Our guitar player uses both single coil and humbuckers, and to me he sounds about the same on both of them. The humbucker guitars are a little less bright, but that's about the only difference I can pick up on. You can EQ single coil guitars to screw with the mix just as easily as humbuckers. It's mostly about the player. Actually, it's ALL about the player.
 
#8
When I'm playing guitar, I can hear the difference between single coils and humbuckers [I have both]. I agree that single coils have more attack in their tone [i.e. are more treble] than humbuckers, which tend to be more low-mid end. Perhaps that is what's happening when you're playing with the LP guitarist - the guitar's frequencies are probably cutting into the bass tones.
 

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