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The general consensus seems to be that low output single coils work the best and bring out the best colors of fuzz pedals. While I love my fuzz pedals, I'm a metal guy first and foremost. I played with and loved crunchy articulate hi gain distortion years before I ventured into fuzz territory. I've been thinking of upgrading to higher output Passive pickups than the stock pickups currently in my guitar, in order to get the best metal tones to compliment the hi gain distortion from my amp.

I've also fallen in love with fuzz pedals over the past few years, so I'm at a point where I'm looking for the best compromise between hotter pickups to push my amp for crunchy metal playing, and pickups that also provide a good foundation for my fuzz pedals (I only use fuzz on the clean channel of my amp, by the way).

I have two guitars-an Ibanez HSH style guitar (Humbucker bridge, single coil middle, humbucker neck) and an Ibanez with Seymour Duncan active pickups. As you'd might expect the fuzz tones sound a little bit better coming from the first guitar, than from the active pickup guitar. I initially wanted the active pickup guitar to be my main guitar for a band I plan on putting together, but now I'm not so sure... So here are the options I feel like I have.

1. Try to find some good higher output passive pickups that sound great for metal/heavier rock, but still work really well with fuzz pedals. Might be a bit of a tall order. Nevertheless, I'd love to hear any recommendations if anybody has some.

2. Get higher output pickups for the bridge and neck pickups of my HSH guitar, and a good lower output single coil pickup for the middle pickup-probably a bright/intended for bridge pickup. Switch to the middle pickup when I kick on a fuzz pedal on the clean channel of my amp.

3. Pick up an Electro Harmonix Knockout and have it on with my fuzz pedals.

http://www.ehx.com/products/knockout

^ This pedal is supposed to be able to replicate the sound/feel of a single coil guitar even if you're playing a guitar with humbuckers. It seems like it could provide a good base for fuzz pedals, and maybe I could play fuzz with my active pickup guitar (except for oscillating fuzz) with it still sounding awesome.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

I play metal. Went from a Lundgren M6 (6 string version of meshuggah's pickups) to Bobby Nelson's low output hand wound singles.

I use a clean amp and pedals for everything. The Elements has so much gain that changing to lower output made no difference. I did (and still do) have to do some work adjusting to compensate for the lower clean volume. I like my metal tone better now. Cuts through way better.

Lower output single does work better with fuzz.

I've only got one Nelson Instruments guitar and it is just so different to my other guitars so I was in a bind a bit with what to do with my backup guitar. I can't break a string, change guitars and then have my sound go to shit! So I started using my ibanez RG with the Lundgren in split coil mode. It comes close in output to the Nelson which doesn't fuck up my levels, and it delivers some of that awesome separation and bite I get with the Nelson. Definitely close enough for live work. Maybe not recording. But it's a good sound all the same, it's just not the Nelson sound.

So get a rad passive humbucker that you can coil split and you'll be set. Just use the volume on the fuzz to compensate for the lower output.

High output humbuckers work ok with fuzz but you're pushing the input so hard you miss out on a lot of the range of the fuzz and end up in highly compressed territory too quickly. Gotta get that output down. Active pickups have too high impedance for most old school fuzzes and you'll get a fuckload of treble content and less clean up. If you can avoid active pickups.

Lundgren M6 is ok, but I thought a lite flat sounding. DimarZio tonezones are rad. What are those SDs mudfuzz has? Black winter? Can't remember. Newish. Passive. Metal pickups. They are sick.

Reread my post: to clarify: use high output serial wired humbucker for distortion, flip switch for coil split for fuzz.

http://www.dimarzio.com/player/mark-morton

Lamb of God was the first thing that came to mind, because I always thought it was cool that they stayed with passive pickups, and on the first few albums standard E tuning, and still sounded so goddamned heavy.

Mark has signature pups, both in the link above, and Willie has used the 59s, JB,and distortion pups.

My thought would be to get one of the hotter pups for the bridge, and one of the lower ones for the neck, with fuzz. You might even go for a bucker sized p90 in the neck for using with fuzz.

Check out the Bare Knuckle humbucker sized P90s:

Supermassive 90

'Pig 90

I'm not sure I agree with this conventional wisdom. While I love fuzz with single coils, it sounds phenomenal with some of the highest output factory pickups (or otherwise) in existence. Two of my guitars have stupid high output buckers - a 339 Studio with a Dirty Fingers in the bridge, and a Jaguar with a pair of coil-blendable modern Fender Atomics (which are so damn hot it's laughable).

They sound *different* than the single coils, but..I like the same fuzzes with all my guitars. Some shine more than others with a particular config or setup, but...that's the breaks!

I'm also a clean amp guy. It's the only way the articulation I flat out demand exists out of the amount of gain I often use - my adage for the last twenty-some years of playing on amp gain: you can add gain with pedals, but you can't take it away if the amp doesn't get or stay clean.

I should add that my high gain distortion stuff does generally sound better with buckers, but again, it sounds perfectly acceptable with single coils. I don't use low-output vintage pickups on any of it though, I've always loved modern ceramics over the vintage-voiced happyland (with the sole exception being P90s, where they're so damn hot they're honorary ceramics!).

I should also add that the stacked bucker in my Ibanez Kaoss-Pad equipped thing sounds good with fuzzes as well. It doesn't have impedance control to save its life, given there's a Kaoss Pad in the middle of the circuit, and they still sound good.

I used to be in the camp of clean amps and medium to low output pickups. But ever since I got my Electrical Guitar Company guitars with their extremely loud pickups (read loud, not hot) I've really had a hard time playing low output pickups without thinking that they sound weak for my clean tone. I've always now run some sort of a boost if I'm not playing my EGC's. I never used to roll back guitar volume knobs until I started playing EGC's either. Volume knobs are my friend now

Yea, I keep a boost in my chain for the Mustangs and other stuff with stupid low output. Mostly so it hits the Space Echo with some oomph, post-SE it's so damn loud it doesn't matter but I'm looking for a particular tape impact on that box.

rfurtkamp wrote:I'm not sure I agree with this conventional wisdom. While I love fuzz with single coils, it sounds phenomenal with some of the highest output factory pickups (or otherwise) in existence. Two of my guitars have stupid high output buckers - a 339 Studio with a Dirty Fingers in the bridge, and a Jaguar with a pair of coil-blendable modern Fender Atomics (which are so damn hot it's laughable).

I use two guitars for most stuff; an Ibanez with Mighty Mite Motherbuckers, and another Ibanez with a Bill Lawrence 500XL in the bridge.

All my fuzz based pedals sound best to my ears with these two guitars. Especially anything that is LM386 based.

+1 on the coil splitting. Really mixes things up.

But... that's just me.

IMO Gibson dog ear p90 from the 50s-70s is as good as it gets for higher output, high-end response w/fuzz.

My initial way of thinking about gear, when I first started upgrading pickups and getting into pedals, was "more is better, so I want hotter, louder pickups." I've also always liked the idea of being able to turn down if I needed, while never having to worry about turning up. So most of mt instruments end up with hotter pickups. I've mostly played through dirty fingers and 500ts, and I've always liked the tone I get. Also, if I'm playing heavier music, I feel like I get a gnarlier tone that way, and I love it. All that being said, I really like the clean tone of single coils a lot....

it depends! i think everybody should try both options to simply make the experience. This is one point why we blame demos, because of using different gear in a different way which has a really big impact for the sound of Fuzz pedals. i play heavy music and my whole rig is trimmed to it. High output PUs, downtuned sevenstring guitars, slightly compressed and scooped clean (dont ask my why, but it works that way for me), 4x12 closed CAB - i am just using the clean channel for fuzz and dirt pedals. Most Muff fuzz pedals sounds more like distortion and they feel way tighter as on a deluxe reverb with a tely. on the other hand, lower gain to get a more gnarly or broken tone isnt that easy. needs just a different pedal or setting. yeah... what was the question ?