And not many people can disagree with this statement! Mainly because the Strat is utilized by guitarists for in a wide range of musical genres, usually the heavyweight when it comes to blues, rock and country.
But can its versatility stretch to the heavy sounding genre and many sub genres of metal? A stock Stratocaster installed with single coil pickups are not favored for playing any genre or sub genre of metal. As I just mentioned above, this is only true with Stratocasters armed with single coil pickups.
Some of the issues that arise tonally when you slap a bucket load of gain and distortion on a guitar with single coils are…. A feature of single coils is although they are thinner and sound great when combined with overdrive and mild amounts of distortion. Keep in mind, humming issues can be solved by adding a noise gate but this can remove some small sonic qualities from the tone.
It must be noted, hum issues can be caused by electronic issues and unshielded electronics within the guitar. Feedback can occur with humbuckers but single coils are known for being the worst candidates for feedback with a tone loaded with heavy amounts of distortion.
You can stand further away from the amp or again, use a noise gate pedal to solve feedback issues. For these reasons, the Strat was made popular and immortalized as the main guitar for many legendary guitarists in the country, blues and rock genres.
This is great for many genres of music but not geared towards the heavier sounds of metal. The reason why the Strat can be an awesome metal guitar are for the following reasons…. Humbuckers are designed with an additional coil with its coil direction and magnet direction being reversed creating a noise removing effect eliminating hum from the signal making it a better suited for saturated high gain.
When you use compression, your palm mutes on the thicker strings will get "chunk" like you wouldn't believe on a single-coil or for humbuckers. There are many thousands of guitar players who own a BOSS CS-3 because it is probably the best compressor pedal that exists.
Is it the most expensive? Fortunately, no it isn't. The CS-3 is just designed right and does exactly what you expect of it. Every metal player should own a CS-3 regardless of what guitar is being used and regardless of whether a single-coil or humbucker is used, because when you want the "chunk," the compressor delivers it.
One of the best things about having a compressor pedal for metal is simply the reason you can turn your distortion level way down and still get monster amounts of chunk from your palm mutes. Having the distortion level down means far less buzzy noise and better control over your sound. Here's another advantage: You can get monster chunk with compression even playing quietly. No need to crank your amp to 11 when the compressor is engaged. Beginner metal players make the mistake of just piling on ridiculous amounts of distortion, thinking at some point if you use enough of it, it will magically make a Strat single-coil or any other guitar "sound metal.
A lot of what metal tone is made of involves a very "squared off" sound where the distortion is evenly spread, the treble is held down, the mids are usually scooped quite a bit, and the bass is turned up. That in concert with compression to even all that out, and a noise gate to kill the noise is a very good winning combination to get that metal tone you've been dreaming of. Even though this is written primarily for Strat players, those of you out there with humbuckers can use the same knowledge to "beef up" your metal tone as well.
If from reading this you've said to yourself, "So I don't need a better amp for that metal tone? If you already have an amp in good working order that can blast out some good volume but it's just your tone that's the problem, getting a bigger, louder amp won't magically get you that metal tone you want. In fact, getting a bigger, louder amp will just take your existing crappy tone and make it even louder. To address the tone issue, you need to pay attention to the EQ on both the amp and the distortion pedal, and optionally add in compression and a gate for extra chunk and to kill the noise.
I will admit that some amps just can't do metal very well, but it's usually only the little crappy practice amps that suffer from that because they just can't push air to get that good bass response there's only so much air a small speaker can push. Check out an RG or something. Pickups can be switched too, as I said, and many Strats already come with jumbo frets. The thing that differs the most is the neck - the traditional Stratocaster neck has 21 fret more modern versions have 22 and it's almost always bolt-on.
Superstrats, on the other hand, frequently have 24 frets, bigger cutaways, and sometimes virtually no heel because of the neck-through construction A lot of Superstrat necks are also very thin. Many Metal guitars of other shapes follow these specifics as well But more frets and good access to them is not a thing that defines Heavy music. Possibly the speculation about Strats being poor for Heavy Metal were some features that were unavailable out-of-the-box for the most popular models Some strange reasoning here If anyone asks me if the fastest car in the world is a honda civic, it would be pretty stupid to answer "yeah of course it is.
Yes, some strats come stock with hot pups and a floyd but that's hardly what the OP meant. I answered yes because with the proper equipment and the right player, a stock SSS strat could work excellently for some metal styles. I think what they are really referring to is humbuckers vs single coil pickups really. Humbuckers just sound better than single coils for metal with harsher distortion and more sustain IMO and I've built and set up plenty of guitars.
You can get some double stacked single coils that arent' bad though. Personally, anytime I try and get my single coils to roar they sound like the Cowardly Lion instead of the King of the Jungle. You can play metal on any guitar. Although if you prefer Stratocasters they are nice guitars I would highly recommend you get a bridge humbucker pickup of some sort.
Humbuckers are able to handle more gain with more clarity and less hum. In the 80s Fender made a Heavy Metal Strat. The neck was flatter than most strats. I think those are well suited for metal. They're hard to find in good condition. It is true that it can be played on any guitar. But if what you mean by 'strat' is the SSS vintage style trem equipped stratocaster that clapton, vaughan, and jimi use, then i think that one could find a guitar that is MUCH MUCH more suitable for metal.
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