what guitar and pickup do you play with the bridge pickup?

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AdamSH89

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I find that I tend to use the neck pickup, or some middle position mostly. All single Strats, SGs with coil splitting humbuckers, teles, minibuckers, pretty much all of them don't get much bridge pickup love from me. Wondering what you use.
 
I am a metal guy so I am all about the bridge.

I do use the neck for leads sometimes and the middle or neck/middle for acoustic stuff on the electric depending on what it calls for. I use them all and like a 5 way selector but mainly a bridge user.

My main guitar is a 93' S540 with a Tone Zone in the bridge and an Evo in the neck.

My 7 string has the Nazgul/Sentinant set
 
Stratocasters

Bridge: Dimarzio VV Heavy Blues, Injector, Super Distortion, Suhr Aldrich.
Neck: Dimarzio Injector, stock Fender, Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound.

Only use bridge and neck. Only use neck for leads. Cleans and crunch are bridge pickup.
 
More of a Hard Rock guy myself, so Bridge Position a lot on my Les Pauls.
But my Strats all require something special in order to keep up in the Bridge Position.
My SSS Strat has a Tone Zone in the Bridge and that makes that Position Useable.
My HSS Strat has a Dimarzio DP166 Breed in the Pickup.
Both of those have Boosted Mids and Treble, otherwise previously the Bridge was worthless in the Strats for my needs.
 
Metal here, so bridge 99% of the time. I rarely use any other pickup.

My usual combo is HH though. Bridge humbucker only guitars just look weird :lol: :LOL:
 
On all my guitars, the bridge pickup is the go to pickup. I can name a few where I rarely use the neck pickups alone (ric 360 and Gretsch brian setzer), but will use the next and bridge together most on those particular guitars.

In the last few years I have expanded to using more pickup positions on a guitar, for example on a les paul, I generally ran with the bridge and rarely the neck. Now I use all 3 switch positions (neck only, both, and bridge only).
 
I have two Gibson V's with 500t's. They are one of the more aggressive/high output pickups from Gibson. I have a Les Paul with a Super 57', which I think is just a cheaper '57+. I also have a Gibson Explorer with an EMG 81.

The '57 is the brightest, the 500t seems to have a lot of mids. I use the EMG's for lead occasionally, but beyond that, I don't really like them.

Have you ever tried putting an eq or peq in front of the amp? I'm pretty sure you meant that you just don't really like bridge tones, but that may help. It helps me :)
 
PRS. Mushok with a Duncan Custom in the bridge; never touch the neck cause the stock pup sucks.

JR Jazzmaster with 81/60 combo and I'm all over the place; I love the 60 for leads.

Ibanez 7621 with DiMarzio 7s; use both but the bridge more than the neck.

LP; hand wound Sigil pickups...they're a mid output PAF voice and I use both but the bridge more.

Partscaster gets the neck love; there's a set of hand wound singles from MCM Guitarworks in there and the neck is the thickest fattest single coil I've ever heard. Never touch anything else on that guitar.
 
I used to be a mostly bridge player with my SSS Strat or HB guitars.
On my SSS Strat I can get clear and distinct tones as single coil pup's have less drive and hold up with high gain.
With HB guitars I always loved the tone from the neck, but it would get too muddy using them for the majority of playing.
The low E and A just over powers the tone with low end and there is a loss of string and chord articulation.
That is until I started tweaking the pole pieces to bring out the volume and tone of the higher strings, so as to get a better volume balance between the strings. The results have been fantastic.

I bring the pups lower and then tweak the pole pieces to get a much more even volume between strings, and now the tones are better balanced and I can play in with the neck pup's with all levels of gain.
I used to just raise or lower the whole pup but the results were limited as all that does is lower or raise the guitars overall output.
By tweaking the pole pieces it opens up a whole new palate of what a pup can sound like.
 
I'm all over the place on this one. I play strats, teles, LP's, PRS's. Strats - primarily I play an HSS strat. I stay on the bridge for rock rhythm stuff, position 2 for the country stuff. When I play leads I go between whatever bridge position I'm in to the 4th or 5th position. I use those for the stuff that requires faster alternate picking, the 4th and 5th positions on a strat seem to always be more conducive to fast picking (and much more forgiving!).

On the LP's and PRS - same basic principle. Bridge for most of the rhythm stuff, on the long sustaining single note passages I may stay there then move to the neck for fast picked passages or legato stuff.
 
my favorite combo at the moment has been suhr modern satin with the suhr SSH+ sounds amazing. After having a high output ceramic pickup im back in love with the low to mid output alnico pickups forsure!
 
i love it all. got my emg 81x and 85x. sweetest combo ever.
 
I'm mostly a metal player, but every once in a while, I have to bust out some AIC/Soundgarden type stuff.

I mainly live on the Bridge for rhythm and lead, unless I switch to the neck for a little darker lead tone, or if I run the volume low and use the neck for my clean sounds on an overdriven amp. My "go-to" for the last 15 years has been a EMG 81, and I absolutely love it. I can get it to clean up with the volume on the guitar.

As of late, a few of my Les Pauls are still running the stock '57 Classic pickups. I really don't care for the output of these pickups, but I do like the overtones I've been getting out of them. I've been looking for a passive pickup that is just as quiet and has the same high-output as the EMG 81, but has more overtones, and I can coil split. Any recommendations?

I've been looking at Motor City and Bareknuckle pickups, but I've never been able to demo them and see how they stack up. It looks like they both have some seriously high output pickups, but I have no clue what model would be best. I know that Jerry Cantrell is using Motor City pickups as of late, but I've never been able to find any specs on his "custom wound" models. Besides Seymour Duncan, what do you guys recommend?
 
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