Hi Majere!

I read through the excellent suggestions fellow members have to temper your problem.

My humble opinion is you´ve just discovered a pickup you hate.
I say do away with it!

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FIGHT!

shimalou , take a gibby or epi guitar with buckers , 22uf they have .22uf caps fitted as stock , stick some 1.5 caps in and its as bassy as hell , trust me i've done the tests myself, , usually buckered guitars use 500k pots and .22uf caps , thats the way of things , single coils like strats use 250k pots and depending on what vintage of strat you use the caps vary wildly , anything from 1.5uf to 63uf .
I have strats set up with both .15uf and .22uf that sound excellent (both have paper in oil caps fitted ) and i'm very happy with them , cheers
Alan

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Here's the easy answer. Have a look at the resistance value of the volume pot. It should be either 250K or 500K. Neither of which sound right with Humbuckers to my ear. 330K being far more balanced.

So what you do to solve the problem, add a 150K resistor from the middle lug of the volume pot to the hot side of the output jack.
Easy adjustment should take seconds to do. Best of all it will cost pence, be totally reversible and you can experiment with more or less resistance. If you want to get really picky about it, you could wire another pot between the output lug and the hot side of the jack. I'd use a 1meg/No load. That way you'll get loads of range to bring that treble back out. When you have it set where you want it, stuff it under the scratchplate where no one can see it.

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No no and no

So Alan would you just tell me IF I replace the neck pup which is alnico V hot vintage with SD sh '59 model, would I get a low gain, bright and more twangy (as much as a bucker can get in single coil etc) sound which suits better for blues (thats also the pup recomended for neck by duncan on its official site)

As to cap changing issue I'll get to that too later on but changing the pup seems like an easier process to me. after all If I want blues I should get a pup better suited for blues is what I think would be a good start.

niki they are 500k at least that was what that luthier told me. You guys seem like u know well what u doin when it comes to tweaking your gear but for me it s all new and since I havent experienced such things yet it may not be that easy to me. Im only good at basic adjustments such as truss rod adjustment, saddles tremolo height etc never gone further than that

If you don't dip your toe, you aint gonna get wet!

All in your own time mate. Until then lower the pickups as previously mentioned. Both sides. Humbuckers respond different to singlecoils. On singlecoils you can get away with increasing the attack by lowering the bass side. On humbuckers it just makes for a unbalanced sound. Try to keep em at even height but lower.

As an aside. I find a higher action lends itself to a better sound. May be worth trying for 5 minutes.

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No no and no

ok but apart from that what you say for changing to SD sh '59 pups

actually thats what Im dying to know at the first place, what kinda pups would shine for me better than what I have in terms of the sound I crave as I stated in my opening message but of course I appreciate what I ve learnt here thanks for that

Sounds to me like you need lower output pickups. I personally don't like Duncans Humbuckers but plenty of people do.
Pick a low output one. What Mike says is right, you've found a pickup you don't like. All our suggestions are just working round that. May as well cure the root of the problem rather than stick a bandage on it.

Or you could try the ever excellent BareKnuckles pickups. And their site has a output guide on the pickup spec page.

http://www.bareknucklepickups.co.uk/main/pickups.php?cat=humbuckers&sub=vintage&pickup=the_mule

To save time when shopping for pickups, I go to them first.

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No no and no

22 and 63 micro-farad, I don't think so. Maybe you are reading the values wrong. Or am I missing something? I think that if you look at the values, keeping all in micro-farads, you'll see the correlation.

22 micro-farad, or .22 micro farad, or .022 micro-farad, are all very different values.
By "1.5" do you mean ".15" or even ".015"? All very different values.

A Strat typically uses .022 micro-farad with single coils and .047 microfarad with buckers, although as you stated they do use other values. But, .1 and .2 are very large values for tone pots.

Increasing the value of a cap on a tone pot will increase the amount of frequencies that can be bled to ground (darker, less treble). Changing from .022 to .1 is a huge increase in cap value.

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---> "The amp should be SWITCHED OFF AND UNPLUGGED before you do this!" <---

Por favor, disculpe mi español, no se llega a la práctica con mucha frecuencia.

I see some excellent suggestions here. I am also not a fan of SD pups.

Have you tried lowering the pup in question and then playing with amp/fx settings?

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Chet Feathers

Authorized TonePros Dealer
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I didn't Lose my mind, I traded it for this guitar.

thanks Niki Im on it right now. Btw yeah u were right lowering both sides of the pup made a difference. lowering the bass side only, had messed it up a bit.

Majere, trust me whilst Chet Feathers is on the case you'll get your pickup heights right. That bloke is the undisputed forum champ of pickup adjustment. And you need no further input on the subject from the likes of me whilst he's around.

All I'll repeat is that buckers don't act like singlecoils regarding adjustment. If you find something wild that works, then it's not wrong. I have the neck bucker on my les paul buried below the ring whilst the bridge pickup is getting close to the strings. On my superstrat I have the neck pickup in the bridge pickup position. It's strange but it works.
Sounds not rules.

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No no and no

Thanks Niki!!

Majere
Let's start by making a generic adjustment to the pup in question. Depress the E string at the last fret on the body end of the guitar. Measure from the top of the polepiece to the bottom of the string and adjust it to 5/64in. (0.2cm). Repeat this with e string but measure/adjust to 3/64in (0.1cm).
Now with the guitar volume all the way up and the tone adjusted so there is little/no bass and the amp on clean channel at about volume of 4. Pluck the E and e strings. If you notice one is louder than the other adjust the bass side (E string side) until you get equal volume on the E and e strings.
Now you are ready for fine tuning. Adjust your volume and tone on your guitar and amp as you would to play normally.
If your pup is still too dark/muddy/distorted you need to lower the pup. Make sure that you turn the adjustment screws the exact number of turns on each side.

Remember that a humbucker is quite different from a single coil and you will need to make amp adjustments too. So part of that dark/muddy/distortion may be in the amp setting!!!


By the way, the pup adjustment technique is called the "nickel method" and can be used for all pups!!!

_________________
Chet Feathers

Authorized TonePros Dealer
Authorized WD Music Products Dealer
F/A Official Southpaw Compliance Certification Tester http://faamps.com/

http://www.facebook.com/cafeathers


I didn't Lose my mind, I traded it for this guitar.

I had a Blacktop strat and was quite pleased that it cleaned up well but it still sounds like Fender .It also has a swimming pool route and you can switch loaded pickguards at ease with a two wire solder.you can then sell the original for decent money .I tried a fake Blacktop as try out using an SX SST stratalike and some humbuckers from Axe r us in the UK ,20 quid each ,probably Artec or similar .I fitted a hot 13ohm bridge with a 7 ohm neck and 5 way superswitch .It worked very well and I was surprised at the combo of hot,mild pickups and that superswitch .It was a very heavy guitar so I sold it but it proved the hot/mild humbucker concept works OK on a strat .In the end I sold the Blacktop to buy my Japanese Thinline tele which I adore .Nice guitar though .I bought my black top in two parts. a loaded body from one dealer and later a neck from another .When I got them they fitted perfectly and I put four screws in to hold the neck ,strung it up and tuned it .the set up was perfect ,saved 50 quid as well .Thats what I call tight manufacturing tolerences..Well done Fender

Hey Chet!
thanks a lot for the detailed pup adjustment guide. I did as you've guided and it s much better now. I think now there is one thing left to do, thats changing the cap for getting a
much brighter tone because it is still too dark for my taste.

and niki; that stormy monday blues pup sounds pretty good to me Im considering to buy it since you guys say SD sh '59 isnt that good.