Does anyone actually use their neck pickup for rhythm playing?

[synthpenguin]

I never used to outside of some specific "jazzy" sounds (and my hollow body that only has a neck pickup), but I started using it that way more on my tele after being inspired by this video:

 

[ragingplatypi]

 

[Gary_W]

I’m a weird animal who will use anything for anything. I like the necks and bridges on my main guitars.

Having said that, my favourite three guitars have neck pickups that would be considered relatively low output. My Vela is from a few years ago and has the single coil (ish) thing in there and I love it. Also have a Tokai Les Paul goldtop with (traditional style) P90’s and a PRS Stripped ‘58 which has the 58/05 humbuckers. These are in a vintage direction and (for my ears anyway) still have a nice clarity on the neck. I might feel different if I had a set of nail bombs in these? Most of the tones I gravitate towards are clean / edge of breakup so that probably contributes to my neck pickup fondness. On the occasions I go for a gain monster amp model then I generally prefer the bridge.

I also prefer neck pickups on strat and tele to the bridge. Maybe I just like woofy things!

 

[rocknrollshakeup]

The Les Paul has the neck pickup marked "Rhythm" and bridge pickup as "Treble".

Jazzmaster has the "rhythm circuit" which turns on the neck pickup and a different set of potentiometers with a largely useless 50K tone knob so it sounds kinda dark.

I'm guessing this harks back to the time of early electric guitar when most players used a clean tone and guitar wasn't front and center, so a darker guitar tone let the singer shine through.

But do any of you actually use their guitars like this today?

A neck single coil can work just fine because it's inherently leaner and brighter, but a neck humbucker is IMO always too tubby and dark that I would never want to use it for rhythm on anything but a clean tone. I tried dialing my Mesa Mark V so that an overdriven rhythm tone worked on the neck pickup, but the bridge pickup then becomes icepick city.

The only time I use a Neck Pickup, is when I’m using the Middle Position even when I use Single coils,l so the Humbucker neck alone is mostly useless to me, except! When I use certain fuzz sounds, esp, with a Fuzzrite (bright and cutting).