Bridge pickups

[Hurricane Bob]

I installed the Seymour Duncan SSL-6 in the bridge position on my Squire Parts-caster and it sounds kind of harsh and trebly even with a .022 capacitor on the tone pot. Would it be better suited for the neck position? I am leaning on getting Rose pickups for the others.

[Gypsyblue]

Harsh and trebley? Isn't that the definition of a Strat bridge pickup?

With the tone control turned down say 1/2 way, an .02 cap will retain more treble and mids in the audio signal than a .047 cap, BTW.

Maybe you ought to try a .047 cap instead?

Bob, I get the feeling you've been playing electric guitar for a short time. Maybe less than five years.

And it sounds like you don't own a professional guitar amp.

I wouldn't be to quick to blame the pickup because I've had that pickup in my Strat and also heard that pickup in other Strats.

It wouldn't be my first pick, and I wouldn't want a SSL6 as a neck pickup, but it's a very good, hotter than vintage, bridge pickup.

My own favorite Strat size bridge pickup is the Lindy Fralin SP43. Sounds somewhat like a Gibson P90 but still like a Strat. Great pickup.

[Hurricane Bob]

Hardly new to playing electric guitar, on my 41st year now, have played professionally in bands for 35 years. Just new to soldering pickups and modding strats. Playing through my Ampeg Jet ll w/ JJ's and my Music Man Hd-130 w/groove tubes. My pickup is too hot for me, gonna try a different one w/ that .47 cap.--thanks for the tip.

[Steel and wood]

If it's too trebly, I'd consider taking it out and replacing. (If you can't tone the treble down using the amp settings that is).

[moon]

Does it sound anything like this:



Note the tone cap doesn't affect the tone unless you roll the tone pot down so a bigger cap isn't going to help. Choose the cap based on the kind of rolled back "honey" tone you want. Bigger caps attenuate across a wider bandwidth.

[Hurricane Bob]

The video sound great-my pickup does not sound like that, I tried lowering it and balancing it with the others. Still kind of harsh even with the tone rolled back.

[moon]

Post a clip if you can.

The impedance of the volume pot knocks off some treble - quite a bit if they are standard Strat 250k pots. A long shot but I don't suppose there's a wiring fault which caused the bridge pickup to bypass the volume pot?

Or, can you hear an out of phase sound?

Maybe try a quick test with simplified wiring ie just the bridge pickup, volume & tone pot in the circuit.

If it's not a wiring problem it would have to be something about the way the signal interacts with your amp & speaker. A "bright" amp and/or speaker might have a tendency to produce harsh treble if it's fed with a bright signal - like most single coil bridge pickups produce.

[Dru Edwards]

Any chance you have a bad solder joint?

Did you have another pickup in your partscaster or is this the first?

[Gypsyblue]

Originally Posted by moon

Post a clip if you can.

The impedance of the volume pot knocks off some treble - quite a bit if they are standard Strat 250k pots. A long shot but I don't suppose there's a wiring fault which caused the bridge pickup to bypass the volume pot?

Or perhaps the pots are 500K when they should be 250K? 500K would result in an unpleasantly bright tone with Strat single coils.

Most likely there's nothing wrong though and Bob just doesn't like the sound he's getting.

That's why Seymour makes so many pickups.

[moon]

If it sounds drastically different to the demo vid something may be wrong with the wiring - although of course speaker/cab is another variable.

[Hurricane Bob]

Guess its just my fried ears not liking bridge pickups. I did originally have the Squire ceramic pickup. I did install all new CTS 250 pots and the tone knob is doing its job, could be a bad solder joint. I noticed too that the other tone knob hardly does anything, time to check it out.