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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 love that you had the fan on for the playing parts

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

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.

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 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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

_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!_

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...

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. :)

That splatter strat is sooo cool

Toxik -Think This! Great album!

@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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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!

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.

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"

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.

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.

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

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

Much love for the SplatterCaster

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

bass tone is growly - good job

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."

I like using the middle position for rhythms on my HH ltd guitar. It's kinda twangy but palm mutes are still rich sounding. Singles are nice but I find em a bit too bright for palm muting.

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.)

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

John 5 plays alot of telecasters with single coils in them

Whats the names of these demo songs? The harmonies were really nice. I know its not really singles, but i compared chugs with humbuckers vs those same pickups split, and while split is a bit brighter, i guess to my ears i just didnt like the initial attack, it sounded twangy to me. Though i still wanna us humbuckers wired to split, since i think split cleans sound nice.

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

It would be amazing if you could do a video about micing a cab. From personal experience I know how hard and frustrating it can be to do this well.

I recently picked up a tele replica cuz it was cool but dude it sounds so awful with a little distortion. I’m not sure if it’s my focusrite or Amplitube 5. Whats a good combination for recording? Maybe I just won’t use this guitar for distorted tones idk.

I have an Yngwie Strat and I love it for modern metal tones.

Hey man what brand guitar rack is that in the bottom left corner

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.

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 have an american pro II strat and the single coils are pretty low output and using a distortion pedal makes my amp sound like it's about to blow up. But when it comes to blues and classic rock, I think it sounds great. But i'll leave all the metal stuff to my explorer.

I have a set of single coils from the undisputed best pick-up manufacturer in the multi-verse, EMG (jk), in one tele with an afterburner in it and an esquire with a seymour duncan hot stack and I'd say both do the job fairly well. (does it count if you run a preamp boost?)

Ive went about thinking to myself that it's more so pedal choice than guitar/pickups, and that has gotten my music to be heavy almost always 100% of the time, but yes single coil do add a level of uniqueness to the tone of your guitar playing

Your recording is clipping something crazy on the guitar playing.

Nice to see Steven Fan Halen's still earning his keep around there! He's working almost as hard as the noise gate on that Marshall kk amp! (Super jealous btw, all I got is a Mesa mark v combo, I gotta use my own noise gate lol)

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. 🙂

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

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

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.

4:37 What is this song? I could swore I've heard that intro riff, but can't put my thumb on it 🤔

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.

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...

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.

Sorry if this has been asked already. Did you use a noise gate?

We have 30 releases on Bandcamp and I play the same squire strat on all of them and it sounds badass haha

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

I could be wrong but didn’t Yngwie use Dimarzio HS series pickups, which are basically humbuckers, just stacked vertically instead of horizontally?

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.

Do you mix the fuzzs with the OD or distortion?

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.

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'm I hearing some Toxik riffs? Sweet!

Awesome shirt 😎👍

IMO - the QP tele bridge pu sounds killer for metal.

Minute 6:30 and a few seconds later; was it the riff from Think This by Toxik?

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

What is the song that starts at 5:35?

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 have a les paul and strat... i was more excited for the les paul but i dont use it.... the only purpose it serves is that i have a guitar thats in e standard instead of retuning my strat.. i thought the humbuckers would appeal to me as a metal player but no.. i mean i guess the les paul might be nice for if i break a string on the strat but i dont really do that..

What about comparing noiseless single-coil to humbuckers?

Where did you get that shirt?

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.

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

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!

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 )

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!!!

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