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SH-5 Custom chokes - help!

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  • SH-5 Custom chokes - help!

    Hi! I just received my new strat with two SD humbuckers: 59 (neck) and SH-5 Custom (bridge). My trouble concerns the Custom, and it's really strange. Actually I don't know if this is a amp or pickup related problem, but please help me out.

    Here's the deal. When I play the Custom with clean sounds, everything is OK. But when I hit on the distortion from a pedal (Proco Rat), the sound initially chokes (it is quieter and darker). Whenever I strum the bass strings with the distortion on, this happens. After a second or less the sound becomes normal. What the heck is going on?

    I tried lowering the pickup, and actually THIS HELPED to solve the problem. But I think I am sacrificing tone by having to set the pickup too low (it's about 3-4 millimeters from the bass strings now). Is there another solution to this.

    I did suspect the distortion pedal for a while. No, that's not it - I tried other ones, as well (actually, I tried two different Rats), with the same problem. Then, I started thinking thst it's the amp. It's a 30W 1964 Selmer Thunderbird, which has served me great before. I'm playing quite modern stuff with quite a lot of distortion and saturation (think Weezer). Maybe it's the pre-amp of the amp that's causing the signal choke? Maybe I'm pushing it too hard (my band tends to play really loud). However, my previous guitars/pickups have not produced the same signal loss with the same amp and the same distortion unit. Even my MusicMan Stingray guitar and its active electronics didn't do this.

    So, around it goes. Maybe it's because of the Custom in the new strat. I understand these pickups are quite high output, but can I properly functioning Custom cause these kind of problems?

    What's your diagnosis, doctors? What can I do?

    Thanks for reading!

    MIKKO from FINLAND

  • #2
    Re: SH-5 Custom chokes - help!

    I'd check the tubes in the amp, the output of the Custom combined with the boost from the Rat may be swamping out a marginal tube. At any rate, it sounds like an amp problem.
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