Peoplw tell me you can't play heavy metal with a strat then how come iron maiden's dave murray uses one

Question

iron maiden is a heavy metal band and I also want to know if he uses any special type of pedals and what are the names of his pedals

Answer 1

dave murray's strat has different pickups and a different tremelo bridge on it, so its closer to an ESP or an Ibanez internally

Answer 2

Of course you can play metal with a strat, i have a strat and play alot of metal/heavy rock on it. You can pretty much make any sound with the right pickups,pedal,amps ect. Goodluck

Answer 3

Now I own a strat and I do play heavy metal with it. It's not that the guitar cant play it, its just that there are other guitars that can play it better. I have listened to Iron Maiden before but not in depth, so I am not sure about what you said regarding the pedals. Sorry bout that.

Answer 4

Have you tried emailing the band to find out?

Answer 5

many metal players that use strats have fat strats (humbuckers) which give it a fuller sound

Answer 6

A couple things look for in a Metal guitar are high output pickups and by design, classic fender single coils are a much lower output pickup.  Lots of manufacturers- Dimarzio, EMG, and others- make single coil sized pickups that have a very hot output, like humbuckers.  

Another thing Metal guitarists often like are flatter necks.  Another way of saying this is they look for a larger radius.  Fenders can have from 7.5 - 11 " radii.  Metal guitars probably start closer to 11" and move up some.  The flatter neck allows the strings to rest closer to the frets without creating lots of fret noise.  You can also play riffs more quickly across the neck.  

The 3rd thing Metal guitarsts often look for is a Floyd Rose or Kahler tremolo.  These are usually locking trems so that they stay in tune when heavily used.  Strats traditionally have a dual edged or ben trem (with the 6 screws) and these are only good for limited bending before the guitar goes out of tune.

As for Dave Murrays Pedals:

Dave Murray's set-up:

a MXR Ten Band Graphic Equalizer pedal;

a MXR Phase 90 pedal;

a MXR Distortion+ pedal;

a Dunlop DCR-2SR Custom Shop Rack Wah;

a Marshall JFX-1 Digital Signal Processor; and

a custom Pete Cornish pedalboard designed to control the above-mentioned effects; and

a Korg WT-12 Chromatic Guitar Tuner.