Has anyone ever tried playing rhythm on their neck pickup?

[Emperoff]

This is why I've never really understood people using EMG 81 bridge + EMG 85 neck and various other common pairings.
Using them the other way around, or having a pair of 81s, makes far more sense to me.

DiMarzio got it very right by designing the bright Super 2 as a neck pickup to pair with the Super Distortion. The DiMarzio/IBZ set found in many Ibanez Prestige guitars offers a very similar flavour.
The PAF Pro is also bright enough to be used in the neck with a fatter Super Distortion or Tone Zone in the bridge.
The D Activator set is very well-balanced due to how bright the neck model is.
While the Air Norton (possibly the most popular DiMarzio neck model) is far too dark for my high-gain leads, and is comparatively useless for rhythm.

Exactly. I believe the reason is people tend to mimic what they see others do/use and that's it. Plenty of players only use the neck pickup for soloing, so they EQ their presets based on it and use the bridge pickup for rythm exclusively.

Regarding the brige pickup being harsh for leads... I wonder if people saying that have heard of Andy Timmons or Eric Johnson. I use the bridge pickup for leads like 80% of the time. It's just a matter of EQ and balancing your pickups right.

 

[Neon_Knight_]

Exactly. I believe the reason is people tend to mimic what they see others do/use and that's it. Plenty of players only use the neck pickup for soloing, so they EQ their presets based on it and use the bridge pickup for rythm exclusively.

Regarding the brige pickup being harsh for leads... I wonder if people saying that have heard of Andy Timmons or Eric Johnson. I use the bridge pickup for leads like 80% of the time. It's just a matter of EQ and balancing your pickups right.

I tend to use the bridge for rhythm and neck for leads, but not strictly by any means. When I want an aggressive rhythm tone from the bridge, the same EQ settings have a tendency be brighter and harsher (and less forgiving of my imperfect playing) than my desired lead tone - this is particularly true when I'm living on the upper frets.

With an HSH guitar, I often use positions 2 & 4 for cleaner parts, in situations where the "average" guitarist seems to use their neck pickup, as I generally prefer the tone and find it more convenient than dialling back the volume pot.

Obviously I could achieve all of the above by switching between pedals instead of pickups, but I've never really gone down that route with the aim of keeping my tone relatively dry.