Best Guitar Pedals for Humbucker Pickup Guitars

What pedals work best with humbuckers?

Humbuckers are the ultimate rock, metal and blues guitar pickups. You can easily get them to sound fat, bassy and direct - with additional hum cancelling properties cutting out excessive noise from high gain. They’re certainly a match made in heaven for crunchy rhythms and soaring leads, but they can do so much more with the aid of a few guitar pedals.

We’ve compiled a list of stompboxes to take your humbucker tone to the next level! Of course, guitar pedals work well with either humbucker of single coil guitars, but there are however a few essential effects you’ll need in order to play or enhance particular styles. Some are tone-defining, others are subtle – but all make a difference. Let’s get stuck in.

The perfect humbucker pickup partner: overdrive pedals inject gain into your guitar signal, crunching and crackling up your tone. This is a fundamental sound in rock and blues. There are lots of different takes on the standard overdrive, as it’s one of the most popular guitar effects ever made.

Classic Tube Screamer stompboxes bump up the middle frequencies, making your humbuckers sound punchy and aggressive. These lends themselves to both sharp staccato metal when paired with a high gain amp or classic rock used alone (think Stevie Ray Vaughan's fat tones).

Transparent overdrives like the legendary Klon add texture and create dynamics. Stacking is a term you've probably heard often in association. In layman's terms, it means running multiple overdrives at once to alter the sound. Another main overdrive style is exemplified by the Big Muff, which is a cross between fuzz and overdrive. It cuts up your tone into fizzy sonic chaos! Last but not least are preamp pedals, which offer more extensive tone shaping like an amp channel in a box.

Humbucker pickups are sometimes susceptible to sounding too dark or muddy. An EQ pedal gives you the option to shape your sound exactly how you want and brighten up your humbucker tone. It's an easy way to add a bit of attack or treble boost to brighten up the natural sound of the humbucker.

A number of big brands like Boss, MXR and Mesa Boogie make EQ pedals. Check out boutique options like Earthquaker Devices, Chase Bliss Audio or Union Tube & Transistor for a bit of a twist on the standard EQ approach.

Here’s where things get more atmospheric. Chorus is a type of modulation that manipulates signal processing and creates a doubling effect – hence the very appropriate name. Chorus works well with both clean or crunch tones as it only fractionally alters the pitch through oscillation. It basically tricks your ears into thinking there’s two guitars.  

We think it works great with humbuckers because it adds a sense of dynamism to their thick tone. You’ll find chorus pedals in all shapes and sizes, some subtle and other completely off the rails, with dual oscillators and fast pulsing speeds. Electro Harmonix are famous for the Clone series, or you could check out boutique brands like Walrus Audio.

Reverb is a universally brilliant effect whatever pickups you have in your guitar or equipment you use. It creates a sense of depth and an ‘in-the-room’ feel to your playing. Better yet, it works great with cleans or gain so you’ll be using it no matter the genre. Pedal manufacturers love to work with reverb and have conjured up some truly innovative tones in the process.

Spring, plate and hall/room are the three original types of reverb you’ll come across. Premium pedal companies sometimes experiment with ping-pong and reverse effects, as well as additional built-in modulation. These are great for ambient guitar sounds and shoegazing.

Strymon dominate the high-end market with the Blue Sky and Big Sky, while TC Electronic are a great option under £100. Reverb pairs nicely with delay, of which we’ll move onto next…

Delay is another effect that works well across all guitar and music styles. You’ll find a delay pedal in every rig, from country right through to metal. It registers your guitar signal and creates repeats of whatever you play. Most delay pedals give you the option of quarter, eighth and sixteenth note delays.

Like reverb, delay is a hugely popular sound you can customise extensively to create lingering notes or classic echo. The resulting delay heavily depends on whether the pedal is digital or analogue in design. Digital pedals sound cleaner and can create lasting repeats, while the latter fades out quicker and adds gritty artefacts. MXR make quality analogue pedals, while Strymon and Eventide specialise in digital.

Phaser isn’t the most popular of pedal effects, but used in the right way it can transform your sound into something truly unique. Humbuckers work great with phasers because of their natural compression. The effect sits deep in the tone and gives movement to the low frequencies. It sounds as though your tone is being pushed through a tight tunnel.

Pedal builders love to have fun with phasers. You'll find everything from crazy effect parameters to dazzling artwork. MXR, Mr Black and Old Blood Noise Endeavours are the picks here.

A noise gate kills unwanted buzz and hum from an amplifier. There are a number of reasons why your rig might be making a hissing sound even when you’re not playing, but a noise gate will relinquish you from the majority of it. This is a great effect for rock and metal; a humbucker’s ideal tonal realm.

You can use a noise gate to ‘close’ a signal as soon as you stop playing. Modern metal requires fast attack and sharp cut-offs. How do they do this? With the help of a noise gate of course. Most noise gate pedals have decay and threshold controls to let you dial in cut-off, release and the volume at which the pedal kicks into action. The Boss Noise Suppressor is an affordable industry standard.

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