Bridge pickup sounds louder than neck when overdriven?

[Coma White]

Hey there. I'm having a problem with my bridge pickup sounding louder than the neck pickup when I turn the overdrive on, even though they're pefectly balanced when playing clean. I've even tried lowering the bridge pickup until it's not as loud as the neck, and when I turn the overdrive on it's still louder than the neck. I've tried various eq experiments, and the only thing that seemed to make them have equal volume was turning the bass all the way down to 0 and mids and treble all the way to 10, but that sounds ear shattering and it's not a usable tone.

It almost feels like when I turn the overdrive on the neck pickup doesn't cut through and gets lost in the low mids, while the bridge pickup gets very trebly, and doesn't have any fullness, but they both sound nice, balanced and full when playing clean. Pickup height doesn't seem to affect it very much when overdriven, and eq only makes it worse, unless I go for an ice-picky setting, which balances it quite a bit, but is not a usable setting. What could be the problem? What should I try next?

 

[Mincer]

Re: Bridge pickup sounds louder than neck when overdriven?

Which pickups are they? My guess is that the bridge pickup is getting compressed due to the level of gain.

 

[AlexR]

Re: Bridge pickup sounds louder than neck when overdriven?

My guess would be that the bridge naturally hits the amp just where it produces a strong overdriven tone......like a low mids push for example.

What pickups and amp do you have.....and is it amp overdrive or a pedal that is your gain.

 

[Coma White]

Re: Bridge pickup sounds louder than neck when overdriven?

Which pickups are they? My guess is that the bridge pickup is getting compressed due to the level of gain.

My guess would be that the bridge naturally hits the amp just where it produces a strong overdriven tone......like a low mids push for example.

What pickups and amp do you have.....and is it amp overdrive or a pedal that is your gain.

That's the weird thing, it happens on both my mexican HSS strat with all stock pickups, and my cv60s with the YJM Fury pickups. It also happens on both my Roland Micro Cube GX, and the old Line6 Spider IV 15 I've got when I first started playing, and it's a little worse on the Line6 too. And if all that wasn't enough, both of my pedals cause it, a TS-808 reissue, and the Fender YJM overdrive. It's a little worse on the TS-808, the Fender is very bright by nature, and it makes the neck pickup a little brighter a well, which gives a bit more balance, the TS-808 seems to make the neck too muddy and flabby, and if I set the eq to fix that, the bridge becomes completely unusable, it's like an ice-pick. It's crazy, I'm seriously wondering if I'm just going deaf, this thing happens no matter what guitar/pedal/amp combination I use.

Also, it doesn't seem to happen so much with the amps' built in overdrives, unless I crank the gain, and with a pedal it seems to happen at any setting, even if all knobs are very low. It almost happens more when I turn it down, it's like it kinda gets compressed when I turn the gain loud, and the difference is less noticeable, although still there. It feels as if either the bridge has too much top-end, or the neck doesn't have enough top-end, and too much low end. The neck pickup gets completely lost in a mix, doesn't cut through at all, and the bridge cuts through way too much, if I play a bit on the bridge and switch to the neck it's like "wth? where did it go?"

Only way I've found to balance them out is to turn the mids and treble knobs all the way up to 10, but I don't like that tone, it's way too bright and soon as you turn the treble knob down some, there it goes again. This thing is really driving me crazy, and I can't for the life of me figure out what is causing it, so I don't even know what needs replacing. I'm lost guys, if anybody has a clue please let me know!

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Bridge pickup sounds louder than neck when overdriven?

That's the weird thing, it happens on both my mexican HSS strat with all stock pickups, and my cv60s with the YJM Fury pickups. It also happens on both my Roland Micro Cube GX, and the old Line6 Spider IV 15 I've got when I first started playing, and it's a little worse on the Line6 too. And if all that wasn't enough, both of my pedals cause it, a TS-808 reissue, and the Fender YJM overdrive. It's a little worse on the TS-808, the Fender is very bright by nature, and it makes the neck pickup a little brighter a well, which gives a bit more balance, the TS-808 seems to make the neck too muddy and flabby, and if I set the eq to fix that, the bridge becomes completely unusable, it's like an ice-pick. It's crazy, I'm seriously wondering if I'm just going deaf, this thing happens no matter what guitar/pedal/amp combination I use.

Also, it doesn't seem to happen so much with the amps' built in overdrives, unless I crank the gain, and with a pedal it seems to happen at any setting, even if all knobs are very low. It almost happens more when I turn it down, it's like it kinda gets compressed when I turn the gain loud, and the difference is less noticeable, although still there. It feels as if either the bridge has too much top-end, or the neck doesn't have enough top-end, and too much low end. The neck pickup gets completely lost in a mix, doesn't cut through at all, and the bridge cuts through way too much, if I play a bit on the bridge and switch to the neck it's like "wth? where did it go?"

Only way I've found to balance them out is to turn the mids and treble knobs all the way up to 10, but I don't like that tone, it's way too bright and soon as you turn the treble knob down some, there it goes again. This thing is really driving me crazy, and I can't for the life of me figure out what is causing it, so I don't even know what needs replacing. I'm lost guys, if anybody has a clue please let me know!

This shouldn't be happening. Not if you are a skilled and experienced guitarist.

I'd suggest getting together with someone who's a really good and experienced guitarist.

Explain what's going on and have him or her play through your stuff and if need be, set it up for you, including your guitar.

Do you have a guitar teacher? Or a friend who really knows what he or she is doing who could help you out?

I think you might need a little in person help and guidance from a more experienced mentor.

 

[Coma White]

Re: Bridge pickup sounds louder than neck when overdriven?

This shouldn't be happening. Not if you are a skilled and experienced guitarist.

I'd suggest getting together with someone who's a really good and experienced guitarist.

Explain what's going on and have him or her play through your stuff and if need be, set it up for you, including your guitar.

Do you have a guitar teacher? Or a friend who really knows what he or she is doing who could help you out?

I think you might need a little in person help and guidance from a more experienced mentor.

That won't be too easy, I don't really know a lot of people that play, only a couple of my friends, and they're not much more experienced than me. I don't have a teacher either, I learn on my own. I suppose I could get a friend to come over and experiment on this thing, but they won't really know what they'll be doing any more than I do, so I don't know if we'll get anywhere.

What would your best guess be on what may be the problem causing this?

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Bridge pickup sounds louder than neck when overdriven?

That won't be too easy, I don't really know a lot of people that play, only a couple of my friends, and they're not much more experienced than me. I don't have a teacher either, I learn on my own. I suppose I could get a friend to come over and experiment on this thing, but they won't really know what they'll be doing any more than I do, so I don't know if we'll get anywhere.

What would your best guess be on what may be the problem causing this?

My best guess is that your bridge pickup seems louder to you than you think it should be, when in reality it's not any louder than it would be in any of our guitars.

Perhaps you're not comfortable with the amount of treble that a bridge pickup naturally has, or the thin twangy tone of the bridge pickup compared to the fatter, fuller, bassier tone of the neck pickup.

Perhaps that extra treble makes it seem too loud to you when you stomp on your overdrive pedal, when in reality it's normal.

Maybe you haven't been playing long enough to know how to work with that trebley tone of your bridge pickup - so it feels out of control and too loud with your overdrive pedal.

Maybe you need to turn the level on your overdrive pedal down. Or the tone. Or the drive.

I remember, when I was a beginner 50 years ago and had only been playing a few weeks, showing off my 3 pickup Harmony Rocket guitar to someone and showing them how different the three settings on the selector switch sounded.

I had a name for the sounds of each position, and the bridge pickup position I called my banjo sound.

I actually thought that position #3 on the switch was for making my guitar sound like a banjo instead of a guitar!

You need a mentor. Someone to help you through this period. A teacher.

That would be my best guess.

 

[Coma White]

Re: Bridge pickup sounds louder than neck when overdriven?

My best guess is that your bridge pickup seems louder to you than you think it should be, when in reality it's not any louder than it would be in any of our guitars.

Perhaps you're not comfortable with the amount of treble that a bridge pickup naturally has, or the thin twangy tone of the bridge pickup compared to the fatter, fuller, bassier tone of the neck pickup.

Perhaps that extra treble makes it seem too loud to you when you stomp on your overdrive pedal, when in reality it's normal.

Maybe you haven't been playing long enough to know how to work with that trebley tone of your bridge pickup - so it feels out of control and too loud with your overdrive pedal.

Maybe you need to turn the level on your overdrive pedal down. Or the tone. Or the drive.

I remember, when I was a beginner 50 years ago and had only been playing a few weeks, showing off my 3 pickup Harmony Rocket guitar to someone and showing them how different the three settings on the selector switch sounded.

I had a name for the sounds of each position, and the bridge pickup position I called my banjo sound.

I actually thought that position #3 on the switch was for making my guitar sound like a banjo instead of a guitar!

You need a mentor. Someone to help you through this period. A teacher.

That would be my best guess.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to write that response man. You might be right and it might be just me. The trebly-ness doesn't bother me too much, but I can't seem to set everything so that I get a nice even output from both pickups without the eq leaning too much towards the trebly side of things.

Maybe the bridge pickup is not the problem, and it's the neck that gets too murky when I set the amp to get a nice round tone on the bridge.

An eq pedal could help shape the sound more than the amp 3-band eq allows. I have a compressor pedal which I never use because I prefer to have control over dynamics, and it's not true bypass either so I don't want it sucking up my tone, but maybe I could put that in the chain, turn the sustain and attack knobs all the way down, and use the tone knob to shape the tone a bit. Do you think that could help?

Maybe I can even use the compressor normally, without turning the sustain knob up too much so I don't lose dynamics, but still get a more balanced tone between the pickups.

It's just that when you see people playing strats they usually have a fairly balanced sound between the neck and bridge pickups, they both have their distinct voicings, but they have fairly similar volume, on mine it sounds like the volume is all over the place, and what sounds perfectly balanced in a dry clean setting, sounds very unbalanced when putting it through some gain.

I wish someone like you with more experience could just pick up my guitar for a couple of minutes and tell me if it's all in my head or there really is a problem. That'd be great.

I agree that having a more knowledgeable musician to guide me would be great. Or having a few people more experienced than me to jam with and learn things from.

 

[AlexR]

Re: Bridge pickup sounds louder than neck when overdriven?

Generally you set the tone for the neck pickup for a 2 humbucker guitar, then turn down the tone knob on the bridge so it rounds the tone off to where you feel like it is balancing out. Many of my guitars are that style, but equally I find that I play strats, teles and p90 equipped guitars too. I have to have 1 amp setting that does the trick for all of them......it takes some time though (even though I have 2 very nice amps too) to find the balance for all the different pickups and guitars I have. I can play my LP, put it down and pick up my strats and play them too with no difference in the basic tonal settings. My strats and teles tend to have bridge tone controls, or tone removed from the neck pickup so the eq can be tweaked the same way as the LP's

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Bridge pickup sounds louder than neck when overdriven?

A nice article by Pete Thorn. http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/22574-tone-tips-dialing-in-your-gear-for-great-sound