hey,
ive been playing acoustic for about 5 months and took a class in school and now im looking into getting an electric. I know what humbuckers and single coil pickups are but i really dont notice that much of a differece between them when i hear a person playing on them. Ive heard my friends in my school guitar club play on both strats with single coils and humbuckers and ibanezs with both on them. is there something i am missing?
If you don't hear a difference, it might be because of the amp settings or even the size of the speakers. An amp setting with too much gain or distortion sorta swallows up the subtle differences between the two types. And sometimes, if an amp has smaller speakers the difference can be harder to hear too.
I've noticed that with my POD: if I turn the gain all the way up on whichever amp model, I can't hear any difference between the Strat and the LP; turn it down and the flavor of each type begins to show up.
Even with lots of gain though, the difference is sometimes heard when the player does pinch harmonics or maybe even thick power chords; but you'd have to compare them using the exact same amp with the exact same settings - there's just so many other things that can veil the tone.
