Duncan Custom Custom and Pearly Gates on bright guitar

[CarlosG]

Hi!
I had JB/59 sets in guitars that sounded pretty dull from the wood, and sounds great.
I have strat with poplar body, maple Neck with rosewood fingerboard, stainless steel frets and prs bridge with brass saddles. The strat sound very bright ans shiny from wood.
I bought another JB, it sounds very bright, too glassy, lacks depth with this strat.
I have 250k vol pot.
I'm thinking of adding a 500k or 250k tone pot to darken it. I'm also thinking of putting in some graph tech string saver saddles because the strat sounded darker with them.
If that doesn't work, I'll have to think of another set. I was thinking Custom Custom and Pearly Gates. I play 80s hair metal, heavy metal and hard rock.
I also heard that Dimarzio Tone Zone is a cure for bright guitars.
What do you think?

 

[freefrog]

I have 250k vol pot.
I'm thinking of adding a 500k or 250k tone pot to darken it. [...] What do you think?

I think about tricks that I've already shared many times... and that I'll share again below, FWIW.

https://www.fralinpickups.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Resistor-In-Parallel.png.webp

https://youtu.be/5u-6DHH_EuE?si=3K1cnsRy5fgwnKF8&t=302

https://youtu.be/if1NrMvQjv4?si=6W9RN5N75WoQyhEB&t=260

https://youtu.be/u2sjeVQpS94?si=GW9Lwl-MOR3GJaEp&t=401

 

[Mincer]

You could also try a magnet swap in the JB...for some people, that's enough. It wasn't for me, but some people really like it.

 

[jeremy]

i have a very bright/thin sounding tele. i run a jb in the bridge with a 250k volume and 500k master tone and i like it a lot. i usually use vintage output pups so im used to more high end than many people. i would add a 250k tone pot and see if that does the trick. do you have a 59n in this as well? how does the neck pup sound?

 

[Butch Snyder]

I have a PRS Swamp Ash Special SE. I replaced the stock pickups with the following:

1. Bridge: Custom Custom
2. Middle: Alnico 2 Pro single coil (APS-1)
3. Neck: Pearly Gates

Definitely an improvement. Much warmer and thicker and with more character, personality, and have a much more organic character to the tone. I'm working on putting together a video of the guitar with these pickups. When I wanted to replace the stock pickups, I knew I wanted to use the Pearly Gates and Alnico 2 Pro single coil. Was convenient because I already had them. I just needed to figure out a bridge pickup to use. I love Alnico 2 magnets. I was leaning toward a Pearly Gates bridge pickup. A few guys here recommended the Custom Custom. I bought one. Great set.

 

[Aceman]

If this Strat has a Floyd, you'll be in EVH 1984 territory. Or even if it doesn't.

I think a CC/PG would sound fantastic in a Strat - I had it in a Les Paul and really liked it.

 

[freefrog]

BTW and as I've at disposal a few lab data about Dual-Resonance (which characterizes a Tone Zone among other DM's): it's not possible to emulate the slight difference of volume and Q factor between coils due to the use of different wire gauges... BUT it's doable to mimic the comb filtering effect due to the related capacitive mismatching. That's largely where the smooth sound comes from in a TZ if you ask me.

The trick is to add a very LOW value capacitor to ground from the junction between coils (at the point used for splitting coils, where red and white are connected in a 4-cond. Duncan). When I say "low", I talk about caps from 10pF to 47pF as a starting point. Increase the capacitance if needed but be conscious that several hundreds of picoFarad will start to affect the main resonant peak.

Between 10pF and higher values, the tonal curve will exhibit changing secondary peaks and dips. Some values should exagerate the brigthness, some others should tame it at various notch frequencies. Doing that without measuring resonant peaks is a shot in the dark but I still think it's doable by ear, as long as the values aforementioned are tried methodically.

FWIW.