I am mostly playing acoustic guitars, nylons, but steels too, with thick strings, which aren’t really easy to bend.
So for MIDI tracking purposes only I am thinking of buying a Harley Benton electric guitar from Thomann, probably a Strat, with a tremolo and super thin 0.09" strings.
These are even cheaper than a Squier but still playable.
Should I get one with a single coil or with a humbucker at the bridge postion?
Or does it not matter?
What I can tell you is, with a Strat, is that pickup positions 2 and 4 (60 cycle hum free positions) are the best for tracking. You can use the other (1, 3, 5), but they introduce tracking noise (unwanted triggering of midi due to the 60 hz hum) You can use the built in noise gate to filter that hum out and prevent unwanted trigger, but its so much easier to just stick in positions 2 and 4 and be done with it!
Thanks for reply.
Well, I’m not a strat guy, are you talking about a strat with 3 single coil pickups?
If yes, what does “positions 2 & 4” mean?
If no, what about a strat with humbuckers?
From what I’ve seen, there are HSS and HSH configurations available.
So just using the bridge pickup should help with humming, as I understand.
Yes, SSS configuration. 3 pick ups which gives you 5 pickup positions in total.
Hence why I said position 2 and 4, since positions 2 and 4 both use two pickups at once which in turn cancels out the 60hz hum, just like on a Les Paul.
I see. So I could also use a strat with HSS pickups and only use the bridge pickup, which is a humbucker in this case, correct?
Sure, OR you could use position 4 which is neck and middle pickup combined. Either will work well.
It’s not so much the guitar as the pick ups that determine the style of music you play. Guitars with hum buckers are for higher gain for distorted tones for Rock, Guitars with signal coils are lower gain for clean sounds for County. This is of course very general description. Pick ups now come in a zillion different designs.
But off the self inexpensive guitars generally come with so so pick ups. I never worry about the pups until I decide that I really like the guitar. Then I order something better.
Example: my no name strat plays and feels as good as any other strat I’ve played. So I swapped out the Pups with a Fender Custom shop set. They are stacked signal coils and dead quiet in all positions. This is my clean guitar for country and old time rock and roll.
I also have a G&L Telecaster style guitar. It came with soap bars that were super boring and noisy. It now has a Seymour Duncan Jeff Beck and a Fury humbucker. This is my overdrive guitar for Rock. It has a coil tap on the bridge PaU so it also does clean signal coil.
Thanks for explanation, but in this case I don’t care about the “sound” of the plugins.
For my guitar sound I play acoustics.
What I am after is to get the best possible conversion to MIDI at the lowest possible price point, and that seems to be using MIDI Guitar 3 (once it is out) and a solid body electric guitar with a humbucker in bridge position.
I won’t use this guitar for anything else.
Have you ever considered using a sound hole pick up on your acoustic? They make humbucking models?
No, I didn’t. In another thread it was discussed that a solid body guitar would be the best for MIDI conversion. I think it was the maker of MIDI guitar himself who wrote that. And it seems obvious.
Hi every one. I own all kinds of electric guitars and what I can tell is that I always prefer using humbuckers while using MG. This not at all a technical based point of view, it is purely subjective : I have the feeling that tracking is better while playing with those pickups, that’s all.