A more balanced humbucker?

[mom]

I've been a single coil player for about 10+ years now and I've recently been playing in an original 2 guitar rock band with a guitarist that plays humbucking guitars. Here's the problem - after we dial in our rhythm tones (where we spend most of our time) his unwound strings are noticeably louder/brighter/more present than mine. As the main lead player this poses a problem. I've even gone as far as buying an SG (which I really like) but I can't seem to bond with the dark wound strings/bright unwound strings issue inherent in humbuckers. So, does anyone make a humbucker that's more balanced like a single coil with the wound strings a bit brighter and unwound strings a bit less harsh?

[Quencho092]

Re: A more balanced humbucker?

Turn up your mids and highs. Raise the treble side of your pickups so that it is slanted, I do this on my neck position and it works wonders for bringing out body in the unwound strings.

That should make your unwound strings louder, more articulate, and turning up 400hz and the very high treble frequencies will add to the texture and CUT through his sound. If his strings are louder/brighter, he has a volume control to deal with that, and a tone knob.... rhythm is supposed to be dialed back compared to the lead and the lead shouldn't have to blow volumes out of proportion to be heard. This is not a gear issue IMO.

Use your tone controls, raise treble side of the pickup, tell him to turn down. Unless your guitar is a POS, you should be able to get great lead tones.

[Quencho092]

Re: A more balanced humbucker?

Another thing, eliminate tone misconceptions. Any pickup can sound like anything depending on specs, having heavy expectations will lead to self fulfilling prophecies like- MY STRAT IS ALWAYS THIN, IT WILL NEVER BE AS FAT OR ARTICULATE AS THIS HUMBUCKER GUITAR, etc...

I never had a problem slicing through bands when I used a single coil neck pickup for leads. You might be using too much gain/compression and the sound fails to lift above the dB threshold to be lead. Vintage wound pickups have tons of dynamics and are great for lead, I use a seth lover neck position on my strat and it gets the job done for rock/jazz/wailing solos.