Help w/ superstrat

alex1fly

Well-known member
Hey all. Hoping for some help with a Jackson super strat I have. HT-6, the Misha sig with MM1 pickups. Basically when I'm on Neck, Bridge, or Neck/Bridge there's a ton of piercing high end that is hard to dial out... turn down the treble/presence and it's muddy, leave the treble/presence up and it's quite unpleasant. There's also huge thudding attack at the front of the note, regardless of where I set the guitar volume or adjust the pickup height. So I'm thinking through whether to replace the pickups, try different tone capacitor, etc. What would you all do?

On the flip side, the notch tones sound great. The 5 way is wired to do inner coils in position 2 and outer coils in position 4. Quite nice. If I swap pickups, it'd be great to not lose these tones... but not a deal breaker.

For reference I play blues/jazz and 00s rock/metal through a Helix, Fender model and 5150 model. So I need sweetness and touch sensitivity in the clean realm, and tight definition for palm mute chug rhythms and huge six-string chords in the high gain realm. I'm able to achieve this balance with my other guitars (Tele w/ Duncan stacks, LP w/ 490s, Strat w/ EMG Ss, PRS SE w/ Dimarzio Transition and Bluebucker) but this one is eluding me a bit.
 
Are your pickups hum cancelling in the 2 & 4 positions? If they are, this is sort of like the Do it All wiring. Do you happen to have any information about the pickups currently in the guitar?
 
I’d guess they’re ceramic something or other. Here’s a peak under the hood. Magnet in the middle, some metal spacers or smaller magnets on either side of the main magnet, and then a couple reddish spacer looking things on either side of those.
 

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Anyways, for anyone interested I just put a EMG Revelation set in there and it sounds a lot better. Less weird attack, less harsh hand, notch tones still sound good.
 
Don't be afraid to radically tilt your pickups.

I have a few different pickups that were super bright, attacky, and somewhat thin.

Carvin's h22t.

Dimarzio norton

Tonerider rebel 90.

All ended up about an 1/8" or so lower on the treble side.
they also ended up very balanced sounding.

Yeah, it looks very odd, but it works great.
 
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