So had my first practice with my new band on Friday night, American style alt-rock, and I had a dilemma. My hss strat wasn't ready yet, humbucker and scratchplate never arrived in time, so it was a toss up between my stock Epi Les Paul and my CB equipped Tele.
The humbucking LP was better suited, gave a much better crunch tone, but was set up with 9s and was mushy while clean. The Tele is super sweet sounding, nice and warm, but the CB's output is so low it's hard to get it sounding convincing for this style of music. Just too weedy. Love the pickups, pants for proper rocking.
Or so I thought. I took the tele. It blew the face off everyone.
In my flat I rarely use position 4 of the 4-way switch. I find it a bit too thick, kinda mushy sounding, whereas the neck and bridge alone cut quite well and sound fine. I never left pos. 4 all night. Both pickups in series was exactly what I needed. With my home-modded Keely Ultra Ds-1 and a Marshall DSL (which sounds horrible 90% of the time) the sound was big and fat. Clean passages? Pah, neck pickup and roll off the volume and it was Silly Grin City, population: me. All the while being loud enough to keep up with a hard hitting session drummer and a loud ass active bass swinging bassist.
So all you metallers, don't ignore the seemingly wussy, low powered single coils. with a little work, they sound AWESOME.
