New guitar is somewhat bright. Thinking of purchasing a darker pickup.

[Flare4roach]

Hey all,

First post...listen, I purchased a discontinued Zemaitis Japanese production single cut guitar last January and really dig it. It has a wonderful wider C shape neck. It's essentially an Asian Les Paul but it does not feature a maple cap. I did not opt for the metal top, mine's all African Mahogany, both the body and neck. It played great right out of the box but I soon tired of the proprietary ceramic pickups. They were very hot and it produced a very pronounced mid-honk that gave me ear fatigue so I quickly opted for new pickups. I purchased a set from Wolftone (Dr. Vintage in the neck and a Marshallhead w/ A2 magnet in the bridge) but immediately after installing, my tech said "that's very bright!". I ignored him and took it home.

Love the Dr. Vintage in the neck but the A2 Marshallhead is indeed bright. I've spoken with Wolfe and adjusted both my pickup height and pole pieces. It's a little better but not nearly as darkened as I would like it. I thought perhaps matching the Dr. Vintage neck with a Dr. Vintage bridge but Wolfe doesn't think that would help whatsoever so I'm stuck.

Here's where I'm thinking. I LOVE my Antiquities in my Les Paul Classic. The aged magnet really softens the pickup's attack and provides that airy inspired tone that just sounds so good in my Classic. I'm now toying with the idea of getting a Retrospec'd Antiquity bridge pickup but also wondered if I shouldn't try a Seth Lover instead so that I don't have 2 guitars that sound so similar.

I'm concerned how a Seth would sound in my Zemaitis...without the maple cap....would that darken the pickup? Am I better off on the Antiquity? Need advice.

Thanks!

PS. I also put stainless steel frets on the guitar. I don't think this would have any weight on the pickup tone but thought I might add this information for consideration.

[hamerfan]

A Seth is bright and clear, a Ant is a bit duller.
I had a similar problem with Bareknuckle Stormy Mondays in my ES. I set the volume pot to about 8 (until the bridge volume matched to the neck pup) and lowered the tone put until I liked it. For soloing I switch the channel on the amp and go up on the bridge volume to 10.

[GuitarDoc]

Your guitar has a tone pot, right? There's no law that says it has to remain on 10. Turning the tone pot down usually decreases the pup's brightness.
You are also probably playing through an amp which also has at least a single tone pot but probably has a treble, middle, and bass pot. Have you tried turning the treble pot down?

I purposely put bright pups in my builds because it is so easy to get rid of the high treble tones if they're not wanted, but it is impossible to get them when you want them if they aren't there in the pup to begin with.

Another trick is to replace the screw pole pieces with one that have a lower carbon content. Check with the mfr to see what poles he put in, probably 1020, and replace them with 1016 (or lower if you can find them) to take the treble's edge off.

[Mincer]

Welcome to the forum!

If your guitar is bright, and you still want to keep the same power of the pickups (vintage output), I'd suggest the Alnico II Pro. The Seths are less bright and more honky than the Ants, but it isn't like night and day. Going to a Seth won't help the brightness problem.

[alex1fly]

Sounds like in this situation you can replace the pickups if you are genuinely interested in trying some different pickups. But you just got this guitar and put new pickups in it, so maybe you're just interested in changing the tone. Have you done much playing with the tone knob, amp EQ, other settings in your chain? There's also the option of changing your pots to a lower value, but boy it sure it easy for me to darken the tone of my brightest guitars with some quick knob adjustment.

[Flare4roach]

I appreciate the insight to my question and yes, I've played around with all volume/tone knobs and set my EQ on my amp every which way. Still not happy with the pickup. I'm a little stumped because I would have thought the all mahogany body would have allowed for a darker tone than one with a maple cap. I'm guessing I'm going to go shop for another bridge pickup to see what matches.

[Benjy_26]

If you don't mind an unconventional look, I'd try out the PATB-3. It still sounds *very* much like a PAF, but it's thicker and more rounded out than all of the other Duncan PAF offerings I've tried.

[Clint 55]

Vintage wound pickups are brighter in general than hotter wound pickups even though they aren't marketed that way. So I would absolutely not recommend a Seth or Ant bridge if you want a darker sound. I agree with the other recommendations. Would point out that the archetypal dark bridge hum is the Custom Custom.

[Aceman]

I'll second the A2P.

As for the guitar wood, between construction and general variability...nothing is tonally certain. There is bright mahogany, and dull maple. extreme, yes, but they happen.

[Chistopher]

Skip to the last paragraph if you're not interested in reading a big ol' wall of text about improving your playing.

I've been in the guitar modding community for a little over five years. If there's one distilled piece of wisdom I've learned in that time that I could dispense to you it is this:

You will never learn how to sculpt your tone with your fingers if you only ever replace problem parts.

Before you yank out the pickup, do some experimenting with your pick attack. Pay close attention to the nuance of your stroke. How steep is your picking angle? Do you drag your pick or does your wrist flick about halfway through? Is the plane of the pick perpendicular or twisted relative to the strings? What location do you pick over? Then experiment with changing these variables. It may sound dumb at first, because after all, if you get shirt tailored and the sleeves are too long, the tailor doesn't tell you "you'll get used to it", but after a while you gain the ability to change your done from bright and twangy to thick and powerful with little more than your hands.


Buy a 250k and 100k tone control pot. Replace the tone control with the 250k, and if that's still to bright try the 100k. It's a lot cheaper to buy a pot than a pickup if all you're trying to do is dampen some highs.

[ThreeChordWonder]

Try changing from a 500k pot to a 250k one and /or going to a 0.047 cap, or even higher. A lot cheaper than a new pickup.

The fewer the ohms upstream of the cap, the more amps the cap will see. The bigger the cap, the more treble gets cut. I read that on the internet, so it must be true, right?

[Chistopher]

The fewer the ohms upstream of the cap, the more amps the cap will see. The bigger the cap, the more treble gets cut. I read that on the internet, so it must be true, right?

A little lesson about caps. From a signal perspective their big thing is that they block direct current. 0 Hz is purely direct current, the more Hz in a frequency the further the signal is from a direct current, the less efficient a cap is at blocking it. The bigger the cap, the higher frequencies it can pass.

You may ask "if it passes high frequencies, how come it's used as a low pass filter in a guitar?" That's because the high frequencies that the cap allows to pass are sent to the ground, because electricity follows the most direct path to ground.

A colorful metaphor would be a water slide. If you have a small slide, only the little tiny treble children would want to go down the slide, wheras if you have a massive amusement park slide, the bigger bass kids would want to go down it. The resistance is like the guy at the top of the slide tellings the kids not to go down as fast, ie limiting the volume drop of the filtered frequencies. If you were using this filter as a bass cut, the output of your guitar would be at the bottom of the slide. If you were using it as a standard tone control, the slide would send all its passengers straight into the fiery depths of hell.

Amperage is like the temperature of the slide, it doesn't effect whether big or little kids ride it, the only concern is that if the slide is too hot, it will catch fire and won't work right. As this is a passive system, that's where the metaphor falls apart.

[ThreeChordWonder]

Thanks for that. I really had no idea...

[ThreeChordWonder]

It's called a low pass filter, by the way, because low(er) frequencies pass through to the desired destination, while high(er) frequencies don't. In our case they get dumped to ground through the cap.

If you get into the Laplace transforms and transfer functions you can calculate which frequencies will and will not pass through the filter. Me? It's been 35 years since I last used a Laplace transform, and I'm not about to start again now.

[eclecticsynergy]

Marshallhead is rich sounding but still a pretty crunchy wind, even with an A2.
You could get a handful of 470K resistors for $2 and experiment with them as jumpers, letting it see 250K volume and tone pots.
But since it's substantially too bright in this guitar, that probably wouldn't be enough.

I concur that the Seth & Antiquity are more airy & vintagey - kinda the opposite direction you want to be going.
CustomCustom was a better rec for a bright guitar.
PATB-3 is a great steer too.

I actually think this sounds like a job for something with big fat lows, like the Air Zone.
Airing softens the A5 attack and gives a more vintagey feel. Not too much louder than a Marshallhead.
You might need to raise your neck pickup a tad for best balance, depending on your tastes.