Can You Play Metal With Single Coils? 

my favorite example of single coils in metal is the band baroness. they manage to get these killer yet magical tones out of their guitars and describe using strats and teles like using a scalpel instead of a hammer

Tony Iommi actually used a Strat first (and recorded „Wicked World“ from Black Sabbaths Debut-Album with it) before he switched to his (P-90 equipped) Gibson SG Special, when a Pickup of the Stratocaster broke.

You can play metal on any old type of guitar, with any type of pickups. I've seen people play Slayer on plastic kid's guitars, and do it very well. It's the player that matters most.

Single coils are great for leads and layering, I like to record one guitar track full humbucker then layer it with a single coil/split coil recording. Also I think Hank Shermann from Mercyful Fate used single coil strats

My Tele is my favourite metal guitar. I find the pickups slightly hotter and by rolling off the tone a bit you can get some killer high gain tones. I prefer teles over strats simply because of the fact that the volume pot doesn’t get in my way

The first time I heard a single coil playing metal is on a comparison video, it's really unique. But I think I'm just gonna stick with passive humbuckers

Deathhammer have made some of the most brutal, raw Thrash metal albums of the last 20 years with a single coil pick up Strat. Don't sleep on them, those norwegians play some of the best old school metal in the world and their sound its pretty unique.

I started on a strat copy and when that’s all you have and you love metal you figure out really quick how to play metal on it. That was several lifetimes ago now and I have Les Pauls and SGs etc. still have that strat copy with the single coils and I still play metal on it every once in a while.

Kirk Hammett used a single-coil Fernandes Strat on many songs, including Master Of Puppets.

Strats have so much heart that with the love you can give them they will sound in all possible scenarios, unless you are a purist.

That Harley Benton bass sounds absolutely massive in the mix, I’d love to see a video of how you record bass.

Yngwie used traditional low output pickups in his strat for Marching out and the debut with Rising Force and it sounded good 👍 I think you could use single coils for Heavy, Power, Black and even Thrash Metal without my problems.. I think that's what the bass player is there for anyway. In positions 2 and 4 a strat is hum cancelling so no problems.

Sounds pretty damn metal to me!! Sorry I been commenting on all the videos bro, just trying to help you against that unforgiving algorithm. I just realized I cant binge watch old videos anymore and now i gotta wait for more content haha thanks for all the hard work man. This channel is kick ass. Gonna spread the word in the musician groups im part of. Looking forward to future content, bud.

I have several Stratocaster guitars and I love the single coils. I play them much more than my Kramer Baretta Special much like the Cosmo Kramer, I only had the strat for a long time so I played everything from rock, metal, etc… and tbh I prefer the single coils with some distortion to my humbucker.

I like how single coils have this sort of untamed, wild thing about them. When you put a pedal out in front, and you're really going at it, it's so chaotic and unhinged that I feel it does a better job at expressing the spirit of rock/punk/metal. Hendrix is the finest example of this. You watch Voodoo Child at Woodstock, and your jaw just hits the floor. The feedback, the noise, the squealing bends, the other-worldly palette of sounds... none of that could have been possible with a humbucker. Yes, as you mentioned, using a humbucker makes everything so much easier. But as you also mentioned, that's not always a good thing. I've used both, and I really prefer single coils.

I think you can play anything on anything but I'm watching this anyway because I just like this channel! I'm a big fan of oddball alt metal and those bands use unorthodox gear combinations often.

I love that you had the fan on for the playing parts

Let's not forget Bernie Torme from Gillan. Listen to his single coil strat sound...not metal but powerful hard rock sounds ...and he did that gig once with Ozzy.

I used to use a squier strat and I don’t have it anymore but there was something about the single coils in that guitar that I liked for higher gain applications and sounded unique in a good way, wish I still kept it

I started playing guitar like 1 and a half years ago, and bass around 4. I am 25 and an absolute noob on both Instruments BUT I gotta say i already love single coil bass tones for metal. And that Strat sounds fucking killer!

Ive been a humbucker guy for 20 years. Bought a sss strat few months ago, and i absolutely love the sounds of the single coil for the hard rock metal tracks im recording, sounds different, yet just as heavy as humbuckers, with a unique touch to it

bass tone is growly - good job

Strats for metal? Sure. Why not! You pointed out a couple of reasons. And as for the Toxic riffage, awesome! I remember seeing them back in the day on their tour for Think This in my hometown Hengelo. It was quite a dangerous expedition to get to the venue as it was during Storm Daria on January 25th 1990. Also saw them on Dynamo Open Air before that in '88.

Tony Iommi used a Gibson SG with P90s on all of the early Black Sabbath stuff so I don't wanna fucking hear it if someone says you can't use single coils for metal.

Yngwie said of Joe Satriani playing in Deep Purple "I love Joe but he's playing Richie's stuff with a humbucker and that is just wrong"

Nice to see that you keep uploading. Tell me you're a hipster guitarist without telling me you're a hipster : "I prefer playing metal on single coil pickups."

If I'm not mistaken, Brian May has used single coils extensively. To me, his tone is an example of a crushing single coil sound.

Active/high-output passive humbucker enthusiast here. Yes, you can absolutely use single coils for metal. Metal is all about trying to find your own sound and you can get single coil tones that easily hold their own against humbucker tones. Case in point, this video.

I love that you use Think This for the demo, great album. Thanks for this video though cause I'm considering getting a strat with single coils, since all my other guitars have humbuckers, and I was trying to decide whether or not I should get a Strat with a humbucker in the bridge or not. Feel like I don't want that now!

I recently got a peavey raptor 1 for $60, and put a leftover gfs overwound in the bridge position, it sounds really good, my other guitar is dual humbucker, and it sounds great too, but I do prefer the single coil bridge/middle sound for leads, humbucker neck position for rhythm.

I love when Kirk Hammett played a single coil Strat for recording one

John 5 plays alot of telecasters with single coils in them

I tried looking for a video about this for a while but couldn’t find one. Happy to see someone clear it up.

Your recording is clipping something crazy on the guitar playing.

Honestly it's about preference really. The bridge pickuo on a strat gets a lot of shit for being brittle but it handles gain really well. I find that I can put unreasonable amounts of gain on a single coil and get a good sound but with humbuckers, there's a sweet spot depending on the output. Granted I'm not into very high gain sounds anyway but single coils can maintain a lot of clarity, especially the strat bridge. If you have any doubts just go and listen to old school Ritchie blackmore or yngwei.

Fender Strats tend to have this percussive sound that doesn't fit the warmer mahogany tone of most "metal-conforming" guitars.

I just spit my coffee in the “draw” moment 😂😂😂😂

If you wind back the treble to about 4 or 5 on the bridge pick up, you loose that strat “spank” add treble on the amp.

Possibly the best thrash tone I’ve heard was from a G&L ASAT Classic. The tone knob and the bridge pickup right into some gain and it was there. Through multiple distortion types it still got there. Singles kick ass if you like them. I prefer humbuckers, generally, but that’s just a preference. My problem with them for ME is the attack of how I play makes the attack from singles too prominent. I find Fender Wide-Range to have the best balance for me. It has just enough of that jangle and attack for me. The middle position turns any guitar into a Rickenbacker, so that’s for cleans, but regardless, it’s what’s for me.

This proves you can play what you like, if you can play… 🤷‍♂️ Great playing! Enjoyed the video!

Honestly if it's a pickup (besides maybe a piezo) you can play metal with it. My first 2 years of playing was on a triple s strat, then I eventually tried humbuckers (I prefer the classic EMG 81/85 set) and they sounded great with heavy gain and distortion. While I prefer a humbucker, there is nothing wrong with singles. If they sound good, then they are good.

since the 1980's the can you play Metal on a Strat had been settled. The classic bridge and neck single coil with the bridge having the Telecaster metal around the bridge debate got settled in the 1970's when some early metal was done by Led Zepplin like the Immigrant song on a Telecaster in some live performances or a few bands used a Telecaster like Deep Purple in the late 1960's early 1970's.

I love single coils as I feel they are more expressive, but the L500 is my all time fave pickup. I have an original 80s L500R and it just seems to bring out pinch harmonics with no effort.

All of the Mercyful Fate albums were done with single coils. Hank Shermann used a Seymour Duncan SL-2 single coil in the bridge of a cheap Strat copy that was used in studio for the recordings of Melissa, Don't Break The Oath and In The Shadows. That specific pickup sounds a lot like a Telecaster bridge pickup. From 1994 onward beginning with the album Time; Hank used a standard single coil American Fender Strat on the rest of the MF albums. Tony Iommi also used single coil P90s in his SG on all of the earth Black Sabbath records up to around Never Say Die when he finally switched to humbuckers.

What did the author play? Nice music, especially the first composition.

Ty Tabor of King's X has used a Strat for his whole career, and played through a Gibson LAB series L5 (SOLID STATE) amp, and has an incredibly heavy tone...I recently saw them live and his stage setup includes a couple Orange amps...

The distinction of single coils for more clean tones and humbuckers for more high gain stuff is a bit of a relic from the times when guitar players were kinda limited by their gear and most importantly amps available on the market. These days, with endless options on amps and signal processing, the difference between single coils and humbuckers can be largely mitigated and it essentially becomes a question of personal preference, not the sound you're after. (Also, Adrian Smith of Iron Maiden does/did play true single coil Strat at times, to mix it up a bit, as he said.)

@sixstringtv1 i have that exact contemporary strat special you have hanging in the background. Ive been tossing around the idea of making a video using that exact guitar for some modern death metal riffing which is why i was searching for single coil modern metal riffs at this moment, leading to this video. Quite a coincidence. Those contemporary strat specials guitars make some very solid heavy tones. Love the 2 point trem and the tuning stability. Its defininetly a special guitar. Would love to see you make a video with it, doing some heavy, metal riffs

That splatter strat is sooo cool

yes, you can play, my first ""show"" I played ride the lightning with my tagima tg-530 with single coils, and it sounded good because I'd put distortion on it, but it's all way better with humbuckers

it is all about the amp and pedals

I actually prefer passive pickups. I have several guitars with both active and passive pickups.. And yes, you can play Metal with a single coil!

Question, for a SSS configuration - do you use just the bridge or bridge+mid ?

When i heard the outro solo to Mr Crowley for the 1st time I knew i wanted to learn, but obviously didn't know anything about pickups... Thank Fn goodness the guy at moonlight music recommended a fat strat(99-01 mim) and im pretty sure it has fender's "atomic" bridge humbucker because it's hot AF. i remember my cousin being surprised i didn't need a distortion pedal.

Nicely put together and well informed video, I always say the gear doesn't matter as much as the imagination of the player does. Whether it's single coils, humbuckers, mini humbuckers, active or passive or whatever; it's about you. Have you ever heard of the technical death metal band Gorod? They're from France, and one of their players uses a single coil tele on a lot of their recordings. While they're known with fans of that style, I feel they're still underrated in death metal as a whole. Definitely recommend them if you haven't heard their stuff.

I love using my tele with singles coupled with anything humbuckered up for mega dirt, adds a bit of clarity to the sound. Yeah they hum when not playing but thats what a volume control or noise gate was built for, also high gain itself brings a ton of noise. Great video as ever sir and some top notch playing to help eliminate the myth that singles suck in metal.

It’s interesting in this video that after hearing the single coil, the humbucker sounds kind of lifeless. The single coil is very articulate and detailed. I am listening on a phone, but it’s still a pretty pronounced difference. I love single coils. They just have a ton of character.

I run a telecaster with a warmoth barotone neck rocking single coils and it fuuuuuucks. Im running Bare Knuckle's Sinner pickups. Its a 15ohm neck and a 21.5 ohm bridge. I almost exclusively run the neck because of how heavy it sounds. Im thinking of switching the bridge to a humbucker soley for a tone variation since i honestly believe nothing can compete with that neck pickup as far a heavieness.

Yngwie's signature pups as well as the old Dimarzio HS-3 and HS-4's that used to be his signature pups are stacked humbuckers as well. My only issue with traditional single coils is dealing with the noise and feedback if you don't have a good compression setup. I think alot of beginners grab a strat type guitar, turn up the gain, and then wonder why the feedback look is so horrendous when they are not muting the stings and then write them off.

I have single coil strat, and i play metal mostly. Can't afford a humbucker pickup

Queen were producing metal sounds decades before metal existed (check out Stone Cold Crazy, and Sheer Heart Attack). Brian May has Trisonic single coils.

The irony with humbuckers is that it's really hard (for me anyway) to find humbuckers that stand out in terms of tone. The fact that single coils are low output is a feature, not a bug. Just as you demonstrated here, you can run those low output pickups through boost pedals and an array of effects and come out with a hand crafted sound. You can do this with humbuckers, of course, but it just seems harder to me to get a real standout tone from humbuckers vs single coils or P90s. Like you, I also preferred the strat sound you created.

Hey...what single coil pickups would you suggest for metal? Thanks in advance for your advice.

My personal take is that single coils just need to be processed differently than humbuckers. The primary issue is that humbuckers lose some of the upper harmonics to the two coils not being in perfect phase with one another, so a lot of modern distortion pedals and amps aren't designed to keep that part of the audio spectrum in check. This makes single coils tend towards sounding harsh. To counteract this players need to experiment with the tone control and implement other means to filter out those frequencies, which are also quite dissonant against the fundamental. Rats are perfect for this, as they are incapable of reproducing those frequencies due to the parts used, as are a lot of fuzzes which are pretty much all based on designs that premiered in the 60s when humbuckers were only really on guitars aimed at jazz players (remember that Les Pauls and other Gibson guitar designs were initially adopted by British and American rock musicians partially because they were going relatively cheap second hand at that time. Getting a strat or telecaster in England was a big deal because of import duties post-war but finding a Les Paul on tour in the USA that had either gone unsold or was traded in was relatively accessible. There wasn't a speculator market on electric guitars back then, those guitars were used and the stores had more interest in making good on their investment in new instruments). I'm also doing some experiments with flatwound strings, as those would have been what players used when fender was designing his pickups. Long story short you can't always expect to be able to use the same signal chain for everything and get equally good results.

I'm building a (pink :P) Tele and opted for "tradition", so ashtray and single coils. And sure as hell I'm gonna play metal on it. 🙃 Planning to put it in Eb standard. And I was surprised how good the Strat sounded, tbh. Great video. :)

What about comparing noiseless single-coil to humbuckers?

You can play metal with single coils. It may take a little big of work to get the sound right, but you can do it, and some single coils work better than others. I can think of single coils that work better for metal than a lot of humbuckers. For instance, I think the Duncan Quarter Pounder works great for metal. It's a heavy duty, raw, powerful pickup with strong low end. Also, a lot of stacked buckers like the DiMarzio Injector, Virtual Solo, Heavy Blues 2, HS-2, HS-3 and HS-4; and the Duncan stacked single coils, some of which sound outrageously good with distortion. I go back and forth from single coils to humbuckers. I also think P-90s can really kick ass with high gain, although they don't always do a tight chug if that's your thing. It's not my thing a I go for more of a classic rock era tone, so a P-90 is great for me.

I mostly use single coils that aren't too hot. I also sound much more guttural than most music I've heard. Two things help with that. Using a modded Fender amp that can be put in class A mode and the Snarling Dogs 'Black Dog' pedal.

Dude, you made a little mistake in the beginning. When you listed Active Pickup users. You mentioned Randy Rhoads. Overall great video, even though i didn't prefer your single coil sound for rythm.

I use a Fender Squier Classic Vibe 50s with fender alnico V and its a chug machine

“Think This” fucking right

I guess what it comes down to is that you can get a great heavy crunch riff tone out of single coils, but to do so you have to go through at least one pedal if not a combo of pedals, whereas you can get that tone with humbuckers going straight into the amp.

So "back in the day" getting a higher gain sound out of an amp was hard. You basically turned it up and even then it wasn't super "gainy" like a lot of today's amps get. So you used humbuckers because they had a higher output and helped push the amp into overdrive. This is why companies came out with "super distortion" type pickets because they would help drive those amps. In addition, humbuckers had a very nice midrange to them which really helps thicken up rhythm guitar. But these days you have an enormous choice of amps and pedals to get you a very overdriven/distorted sound. So with some tweaking you can get some really nice heavy tones with single coil pickups. Finally, some of that classic metal was not made with really distorted guitars. The use of medium output humbuckers in the 70s through cranked amps is kind of a classic "rock" sound and it was where metal got its start. Early Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, etc... did not have super overdriven guitars.

In the era of amps with insane gain stages,hi quality emulations like axe-fx kemper and the likes or very high end but also quite affordable amp sims that live inside your DAW you really dont need much to drive those amps hard and i prefer the added clarity of a single coil(even if driven hard) over a high powered but a bit muddy humbucker....its like punching vs knifing.....a punch ll hit you hard and bruise you up...and the knife ll make you bleed.....all in all i prefer noiseless pickup single coil sets for everything....

I own a silver triple single coil strat and it sounds terrible with distortion/gain up to 10 when I try to play metal or rock on this silver strat. I'm still saving up for a new guitar with humbuckers which will sound better for metal and rock

Why is the volume of your videos so quiet? I had to crank the level on this one and it still not loud enough.

The answer is yes, and It's my favourite way to play (single coils, p90s) but damn, man! You can achieve an even more focused and better sound with this pure gold.. Great gear anyway!

Man just hearing Jon Schaffer`s name these days almost bring a single tear to my eye, since i never got to see iced Earth live, being my favorite ever band and having their festivals of the wicked albumart tattooed on me...

to answer this question with a practical example: just watch Rabea Massad play "Don't Kick It"

Much love for the SplatterCaster

_They mix better with a good bass tone too. 🏆🎤🤘🎶☠️ I also mess with single coils and fuzz but use the neck pickup whenever I do it. Great video! Single-coil bliss!_

One good thing about single coils, they gave the bass room to shine

I will say while I’m truly quite impressed with the fairly aggressive sound you got out of that strat, it was kinda hard to hear over a scratchy high noise coming from the bass guitar. I honestly thought my headphones or my phone speakers were messed up or something.

I’m not saying you can’t play metal on a single coil…but sometimes these guitars are loaded with stacked single coils…dimarzio HS-2 for example…so it looks like they’re playing a standard single coil when they are actually using a single coil size humbucker…this fooled me for a long time…rock on bro!!!

Wolves at the Gate often play Tele’s and while some are Humbuckers some appear to be traditional Tele’s

Paul Davids just released a video today, "Top 80 Greatest Guitar Intros". He played all 80 intros on a single coil strat! And there were plenty of metal and hard rock songs in the list. 🙂

seymour duncan quarter pound singlecoil ssl-4. Is a great sounding pickup 4 metall.

I'm I hearing some Toxik riffs? Sweet!

**Takayoshi Ohmura enters the chat** What a great tone this guy has, he used single coil strats in drop C# and it sounded awesome!

That's all I have, anyway: Giannini's THS 1 single coil. Also, I can only use the bridge pick up. _Also,_ I don't have any pedals, only a 15w cube with distortion (actually, the clean channel is somehow broken, so I only use the distorted channel), and it only has Volume, Gain, Low, Mid and High knobs. I take Highs... Up, that sounds weird, well, it's up to 70%. But I also take the Mids above to Low, although I play metal with fast picking riffs. I don't wanna sound like anybody, even if I could, but I really miss some things, like a proper distortion pedal, so that I can write more dynamic songs, as a good Opeth fan. BUT, I really wish to change this pick up. Yeah, maybe I throwing all of this away hah Probably I'll get another guitar, too, but this one is special, so I want to upgrade it.

I think you’ve got great tone. I also think the bigger reason why you don’t see a lot of strat in metal is the C shape neck. It’s such a small thing but to me uncomfortable. I’ve always used my 86 Kramer Rhoads knock off mainly and it has had many passive pups in it. I’ve had a couple real deal Jackson’s that looked cool as fuck but the active emgs made them sound like shit. I H8 active pups. There is nothing worse than pickin up a guitar to play just to find out the 9v is dead and you don’t have any because all pedals need them too. Fuck the H8ters. There are players out here with the same opinions on things. Not on others stratwise but I can live with that if you can. Keep at it brother!

Toxik -Think This! Great album!

If you want yoru pinch harmonics to really ring out the humbucker is the way to go.

I havnt used actives yet but the sound of emg 81s are so badass but the Seymour Duncan JB has done the job well for me , and the new Thrash factor pickups are those on steroids lol best pickup for metal I have used… and Yngwie is a good example BUT he uses stacked single coils so even he technically uses a pickup closer humbuckers (That Stevie T clip is cringe.. u said it best the strat sound is a single coil neck or bridge bell like tone )

Randy Rhoads never used active pickups. He used the stock pickups in his Les Paul, and in his other guitars he played a Dimarzio Distortion and Dimarzio's PAF. He also used Seymour Duncan's JB and Jazz pickups

what fender model is that greyish one in the demo? looks dope

I feel like it’s a matter of the player as well, if you need humbuckers to make a riff sound heavy, then you should reassess your song writing.

So I've got an unrelated question but this is the most recent video of yours that features the Splattercaster so prominently, I figured this is the best place to ask; I've got a Strat around the same year as your Splattercaster. Mine is a MIM 2000 model. I was just wondering how often do you have the frets releveled for a 20 year old guitar that you clearly play very often? Have you ever had to re-fret it completely? My guitar came with pretty short frets before they changed over to the more modern medium jumbo. Wasn't sure if your Splattercaster came with larger frets for it's time as it's a special edition guitar.

Raise the bass side of the pickup for more bass response.

Teles are absolutely monsters for metal.