The single-pickup electric guitar is one of the great designs in popular culture. Think of the Esquire, the Gibson Les Paul Junior, you’ve got everything you need.
You can turn it up, crank it, roll back the tone pot if you want to take some of that high-end off. Besides, the pickups can get in the way. Many players will tell you that the triple-humbucker Les Paul Custom – and its SG sibling – is a little awkward with that middle pickup’s positioning.
We all have our preferences. Lenny Kaye does. He is, famously, an aficionado of the single-pickup electric. But he is, statistically speaking, a little unusual. Take a look at the picture at the top of the page. There, the polymath guitarist, writer, and producer is pictured at tastefully lit home in New York City, sitting with his Fender Stratocaster. Do you notice anything different about it?
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That’s right, it’s a single-pickup guitar, but that single pickup is not at the bridge – and it ain’t at the neck like some golden-era jazz box (e.g. the Gibson ES-175, the Guild X-50). Just one middle single-coil. What is this madness?
Well, it’s how he likes it. In a recent interview with Guitar World, he explained why he’s the man for the middle.
“I wanted a guitar to be who I am,” he says. “I know a lot of guitarists never use the middle pickup, but I’m all for it. I never used the other pickups, and I was always hitting the selector switch by accident. My guitar tech, Barre Duryea, fixed up the guitar and even made a new pickguard for me. So now I don’t have all that stuff I don’t need. It’s just point and shoot.”
The guitar in question, a Unicaster, if you will, is a 60th Anniversary Fender Strat that features a Fralin single-coil pickup and a solitary volume knob. Kaye doesn’t even bother with a tone control.
Weird? Yes. Unheard of? Not quite. Guitar teacher at large Tomo Fujita is a middle pickup superfan. He too is a paid-up member of the Unicaster club. Doug Martsch from Built to Spill got his Strat modified so that only the middle pickup is active.
And then there are those players who regularly find themselves on their Strat’s middle pickup, such as the great Robin Trower, whose Bridge of Sighs tone owes much to the under-celebrated middle pickup (it wasn’t all Uni-Vibe).
So when you pick up your Strat this weekend, ask yourself: have you been ignoring your middle pickup? And if so, isn’t it time you gave it a try?
You can read our interview with Lenny Kay in full in the latest issue of Guitar World.
