The pickup is the most important part of the guitar when choosing tone. Many artists’ sounds are built around the use of either single-coil or humbucking pickups and, while both Muse and Rage Against the Machine have very distinctive characteristics in their music, the pickup choice is important.
The guitarists and bassists of the two bands use the following configuration:
- Matt Bellamy, Muse guitarist: Matt uses mainly humbucking pick-ups in the bridge position in his guitar recordings, leading to what many would say is an archetypal lead guitar tone. Humbucking pickups are known for their warmth and their powerful response to distortion. The information presented on pickups can be found in the link at the bottom of this page. As Bellamy used quite a large amount of distortion on the majority of the tracks in Muse’s first three albums, a humbucker made sense and gave Bellamy a tone which was both clear and powerful in the higher frequencies, while filling out the high-mids and mids.
Matt is known for his custom-built Manson guitars (these can be found in the ‘MuseWiki’ link at the bottom of this entry). While he didn’t have these on Showbiz, they were used on Muse’s following two albums. These guitars were fitted with predominantly a humbucker in the bridge position, and a P90  in the neck position. I think the use of the P90 can obviously be heard in the outro to Micro-Cuts. The guitar tone is not as heavily distorted as others on the album and there are a lot of brighter frequencies in the sound. The tone is more like a drive than an actual distortion, which is generally more suited to single coil and P90 pickups as the noise cancellation by having a dual-coil pickup is not there. This means that single-coils and similar pickups are easier to drive and also more prone to ‘hum’ and feedback. My Fender Stratocaster HSS, which is fitted with both single-coil and humbucking pickups, should be perfect for replicating a variety of sounds from Muse’s first three albums. I intend to display both humbucker and single coil tones on this EP to capture the sounds created by Matt Bellamy with John Leckie and Rich Costey. (LO1) - Chris Wolstenholme, bassist of Muse: Chris used primarily Pedulla Rapture basses in Origin of Symmetry and Absolution. They can be seen on videos of the Origin of Symmetry tour and also in the Making of Absolution documentry. From the research I’ve done on what pick-up was in Chris’s bass at the time, I believe that it was either a humbucker, or in fact a split coil pickup. The information I found about Pedulla Raptures did not help a great deal as throughout the years they have been fitted with a range of pickups. From tone alone, I am leaning towards the conclusion that the majority of the sounds of Chris’s bass in Origin of Symmetry and Absolution were created by a humbucking pickup in the bridge position. As most of Chris’s basses at the time were fitted with a single pick-up, this means that the bridge (and only) pickup will be slightly further up the guitar than a regular bridge pickup. I will need to take this factor into account when recording bass. I will be using my Overwater Jazz bass, fitted with a humbucking pickup in the bridge position to model sounds created by Chris, John Leckie and Rich Costey (LO4)
- Tom Morello, Rage Against the Machine guitarist: Tom is known for using Fender Telecasters, most commonly with a single coil pickup in the neck and bridge positions. The link to Morello’s ‘Equipboard’ page can be found at the bottom of this entry. Tom’s tone does not change a great deal from Rage’s first album to their last, and in many songs he has a single-coil sound which is extremely distinctive and archetypal of Fender guitars. Whilst Tom is most famous for his blue ‘Arm The Homeless’ guitar, fitted with two EMG humbucking pickups, much of his studio sound comes from the Telecaster. In an interview with Musicians Friend he said of the Telecaster: ‘this is in a song with all the Rage [Against The Machine], Audioslave, Street Sweeper [Social Club], The Nightwatchman songs that are in drop D tuning. Killing in the Name, Freedom, Testify, all those that are in drop D, played and written with the band on this.’ While I’m finding it tricky to know for sure, the sound closely resembles that of a neck pickup, and in the video the pickup is switched to the neck setting. In a live version of Testify, the pickup is also switched as such. Neck pickups are known for their prominance in bass frequencies while creating a slight absence of mid-range frequencies. Again I feel this is obvious in many RATM guitar tones. I will be using the single coil neck pickup of my Fender Stratocaster to try to achieve a Morello-like tone on one of the tracks on my EP. (LO1)
- Tim Commerford: Rage Against the Machine Bassist: Tim has used a combination of the Fender Jazz bass and the Musicman Stingray throughout his career however on their later material the former is primarily used. On Renegades the tone is quite clearly that of a Jazz bass, and most likely the bridge pickup. As I own an Overwater Classic Jazz bass fitted with a single-coil bridge pickup, I should be able to closely replicate sounds created by Commerford on the album.
http://www.dawsons.co.uk/blog/main-electric-guitar-pickup-types
http://www.musewiki.org/Manson_Guitars
http://www.musewiki.org/Bass
http://equipboard.com/pros/tom-morello/fender-american-standard-telecaster-electric-guitar
http://equipboard.com/pros/tim-commerford