I just bought an american std strat and swapped the stock pickups for custom shop 54's. The only problem is that it's way too bright, I have to eq the treble way low to make it bearable. What should I do? I don't know how to adjust pickups (they were swapped by a technician).

Take it back to the tech and explain your requirements to him, Theres a few things he could do.

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No no and no

He's on another country . I was thinking of adjusting the pickups by myself, but I don't know how. If I eq the treble really low to balance the brightness is there a loss of tone?

If you mean by adjusting the pickup height then yeah give it a shot. Heres a free tip. Draw around the 2 thin ends of the pickup with pencil, just above the pick guard. That way If you dont like having em low you can bring em back up to the height he set em at easily. There are other things you can do but they involve rewiring the guitar, It sounded to me like you didnt want to go down that road.

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No no and no

This is most likely caused by the values of your current tone and volume pots being too high. Try switching everything to 250k CTS and you will have a much mellower sound.

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Custom Shop '59 Strat with John Cruz Master Design Pickups
Vibro King
Fulltone Clyde>Deja-Vibe>TS-808>TS-9>Boss Tuner

Get different pickups

Check your volume and tone pots. If they are 500Ω or 1KΩ you could swap them for 250's. If they are already 250s you could lower the pickups further away from the strings lowering the high E a couple of screw turns more than the low E. Google for a web site called Mr. Gearhead for a better understanding of how height affects tone. After all else has failed to fix it change to warmer pickups. Vintage guitars often had very bright pickups. For great warmth and a traditional Strat tone with zero hum go with Kinman Blues.

they are actually very round and mellow. I had a set in a '57 reissue and that is a very bright guitar by itself.

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Custom Shop '59 Strat with John Cruz Master Design Pickups
Vibro King
Fulltone Clyde>Deja-Vibe>TS-808>TS-9>Boss Tuner

Hi imc_1121: is there a reason you don't just roll off the tone control till it reduces the brightness to taste? What it's there for, after all. If your tone knobs only control the neck and middle pickups there's a tiny little mod that brings the bridge pickup onto the second tone pot's circuit too. (Which of course you may know very well. No disrespect.)

I'm always surprised how many people don't like to use their guitar's tone controls. Joe Bonamassa has some things to say about that...

But maybe there's something I'm missing about how you like your sound?

Cheers - C

I generally don't use the guitar's tone controls, but I do switch between the pickups to get different tones AND I use the tone controls on my amps.

Mostly, I ride the volume control which does affect the tone a bit as well as the distortion I get outta my amps.

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

Hmm, if you don't want to change the hardware and the tone knobs are of no avail, lowering the pickups might be the only choice.