I have a 60 Tribute Les Paul, which comes with two P90s. Those pickups are installed via Gibson Quick Connect. The Gibson P90 (true P90) comes with a 4 conductor wire - never seen that before. Anyway, I needed a humbucker in the bridge, and ordered a custom shop Pearly Gates in a P90 housing.
I purchased a third party terminal (quick connect plug) and using the SD color coding guide, and the outgoing bridge P90 as a template, I matched the wires of the Pearly Gates to the correct slots of the new terminal. Once plugged in, the PG had very low output and sounded pretty trebly. It was completely overpowered by the neck P90. It was also out of phase with the neck pickup, when the selector was in the middle position. I redid the terminal connection, this time using the neck P90 as a template, and this solved the out of phase issue. However, the PG continues to have very low output compared to the P90. I tried lowering the P90, but you have to get to a point where it becomes completely lifeless to really match the outputs. I can't raise the PG any higher because it starts to have really ugly high frequency artifacts.
I'm mostly a DiMarzio guy, and this is really my first foray into the world of Seymour Duncan, so I've never played a Pearly Gates before and don't know what it's supposed to sound like. But, comparing the output of this PG to other guitars, I'd say it's significantly lower than any other humbucker in my possession: Gibson 57+ sounds like a fire-breathing monster compared to it, and even my TV Jones Filtertrons are significantly hotter.
To me, it almost sounds like the pickup is running in parallel rather than in series, but that shouldn't be possible given how the quick connect seems to be wired. It does not appear to be split though - no hum.
Anyway, any help anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated (though, please don't say "just rip out the quick connect;" it's staying).
I purchased a third party terminal (quick connect plug) and using the SD color coding guide, and the outgoing bridge P90 as a template, I matched the wires of the Pearly Gates to the correct slots of the new terminal. Once plugged in, the PG had very low output and sounded pretty trebly. It was completely overpowered by the neck P90. It was also out of phase with the neck pickup, when the selector was in the middle position. I redid the terminal connection, this time using the neck P90 as a template, and this solved the out of phase issue. However, the PG continues to have very low output compared to the P90. I tried lowering the P90, but you have to get to a point where it becomes completely lifeless to really match the outputs. I can't raise the PG any higher because it starts to have really ugly high frequency artifacts.
I'm mostly a DiMarzio guy, and this is really my first foray into the world of Seymour Duncan, so I've never played a Pearly Gates before and don't know what it's supposed to sound like. But, comparing the output of this PG to other guitars, I'd say it's significantly lower than any other humbucker in my possession: Gibson 57+ sounds like a fire-breathing monster compared to it, and even my TV Jones Filtertrons are significantly hotter.
To me, it almost sounds like the pickup is running in parallel rather than in series, but that shouldn't be possible given how the quick connect seems to be wired. It does not appear to be split though - no hum.
Anyway, any help anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated (though, please don't say "just rip out the quick connect;" it's staying).
