Bridge, neck or both positions for soloing?

[Matt Wildman]

I know everyone has different preferences but I was curious as to what you guys use and what the pros and cons are for using each one to play lead and solos. Especially when using distortion.

 

[Andres Pierce]

I personally like to use both, i like having the gain from the bridge but also the smoothness of neck. I find it works good with EMG 81/85s. On my other guitar i have JB in the bridge and jazz in the neck (both duncans). In that case i like keeping it in the bridge because im not huge on the JB but thats just me

 

[Filip Tomiša]

For me it just depends. What sounds good at the moment that’s what I’ll use. Usually I use neck pickup for clean and bridge pickup for distortion but it’s not like that’s a rule you need to follow. What sounds best to you, use that.

 

[Dominik Gräber]

For me it also depends. I have a set of EMGs that differ on terms of warmness and aggressiveness. So when I play shred solos I normally use my bridge pickup as it is cold and aggressive, while for melody driven solos (for me The Last Fight by Bullet for my Valentine or Metallica solos like Nothing else matters or the Fade to black Intro) I use the neck pickup to get a warmer, smoother sound.

 

[Matt Wildman]

I usually play my bridge pickup for aggressive solos and stuff

 

[idssdi]

I tend to play the neck pickup for solos on one of my guitars and the middle position for my other guitar. For rhotm with distortion I always use the bridge pickup because the neck pickup is a bit mudden for my guitars

 

[Mike-666.exe]

It’s usually good to switch between them. For instance the neck pickup gives a more cleaner sound when sweeps or scale runs up or down. However, playong further up the neck on lpwer trings it doesnt have the punch that the bridge pickup would have if that’s what you are going for. Also in most cases neck pickup doesn’t too good with pinch harmonics where as the bridge would never fail (unless you fail). So yea use both depending on the sound you are trying to make.