Can I get a metal sound with single-coil pickups?

[codycarter]

Last post I'm going to put here:

Yesterday I played a Fender American standard Strat. All I can remember is he was tuned to drop a with super tight strings, and had a Lace Red Sensor in the bridge, something lace reverse wound in the middle, and something else lace in the neck. With this set up I could get that awesome strat metal tone, get a humbucking bridge tone, a lead that could scream, and a lead that could sing.

Damnit i wish Lace would make some 8 string sensors

 

[redstone]

Noise gate only kills the noise when you are not playing, it is still present in the background while you are playing.

.. but not audible if properly shielded.

 

[FearComplex]

Strats with single-coils can work great. If you're playing on your own you might feel they lack the beef but in a jamming/recording situation this lack of low end and low mids can help. Massive guitar sounds tend to be filtered when it comes to the mix, hi-passing the lows and eq'ng & multi-band compressing the low mids is common, unless you want the guitars to dominate those areas but good bye to your kick and bass if so. Heavy handed use of those filters can bring out the harshness in the upper mids and shrink the tone in an overall unnatural sounding manner. With a Strat you might find it's already in a good place lows and low mids wise, allowing you to deal mostly with shaping the mids and giving the kick and bass breathing room. There's also space for drum room mics to fill out the low end.