Is this a pipe dream?

[misterwhizzy]

I want sparkling, crystal clear cleans out of the neck pickup in my Les Paul. The 59 isn't cutting it for me. Not with A5, A2, A4, or RCA3. I just can't dial out the bass. Any low-E notes drown everything else out. I have a 500k volume pot and a 0.01uF cap already installed. I have a WLH neck and a Screamin' Demon on hand.

How do I fix it?

 

[Chistopher]

Put it in parallel? Lighter guage bass strings?

 

[beaubrummels]

Demon neck, though I think the Full Shred neck is the least bass you can get?

WLH neck in parallel works great for clear clean neck. I used to keep mine in parallel all the time, even though I had Jimmy Page wiring.

 

[Demanic]

See if you can find a 59/Jazz Hybrid.
Less expensive, put a polished A4 in the 59.

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[Clint 55]

The Jazz is the most sparkling clean humbucker. Or if you like the sound of the 59 but just want to reduce the bass there are several ways. Use a cap in series between the coils or the demud mod which I forgot how is wired. Or use a bass cut knob since you're using an LP and have friggin 4 knobs at your disposal.

 

[Demanic]

The Jazz is the most sparkling clean humbucker. Or if you like the sound of the 59 but just want to reduce the bass there are several ways. Use a cap in series between the coils or the demud mod which I forgot how is wired. Or use a bass cut knob since you're using an LP and have friggin 4 knobs at your disposal.

The bass of the 59 with the top of the Jazz is a thing of beauty.

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[Clint 55]

It is nice. Hybrids are good and that specific one is quality.

 

[Aceman]

I want sparkling, crystal clear cleans out of the neck pickup in my Les Paul. The 59 isn't cutting it for me. Not with A5, A2, A4, or RCA3. I just can't dial out the bass. Any low-E notes drown everything else out. I have a 500k volume pot and a 0.01uF cap already installed. I have a WLH neck and a Screamin' Demon on hand.

How do I fix it?

Humbucker from Hell.

 

[misterwhizzy]

Put it in parallel? Lighter guage bass strings?

Really hard to wire the single-conductor 59 in parallel, but I think I’m going to give that wiring a shot with the WLH and see if it does the trick.

 

[Demanic]

It is nice. Hybrids are good and that specific one is quality.

It's Grail.

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[Ascension]

Humbucker from Hell.

I second this!

 

[freefrog]

Not a "pipe dream" IME/IMHO but nothing being perfect in this world, the "simplest most effective solutions" have downsides.

It has been discussed in topics like this one: https://www.mylespaul.com/threads/mu...pickup.477161/

Personally, I like to diminish the inductance of irremediably muddy neck PU's. And the first way to divide it (to 1/4 of its initial value) is... to wire a pickup in parallel.

If parallel wiring is too drastic, another way to lower the inductance is to put some inert LR circuit in parallel with the pickup. A choke / dummy coil plus a resistor do the job as long as the inductive / resistive values are right.

NOTE: the "humbucker from hell" is nothing else than a low inductance humbucker, not far from a Filter'Tron specs wise.

A real (vintage specs) VariTone can give really tight bass to a neck pickup in the last positions. But it requires a big beefy choke, difficult to find, and the circuit is not that simple to build / mount.

A Bill Lawrence Q filter properly implanted might work too, at least with powerful humbuckers.

All that being said... Les Paul or not, most of my guitars with neck humbuckers involve 50's wiring and give pleasing clean tones to my ears once the volume plus the tone set around 6,5/10: in this case, lowering the tone doesn't trim the treble, it widdens the bandwidth (counterintuitively, I know, but that's what happens).

Some people prefer treble bleed caps for a similar effect when the volume is lowered. That's not my case. YMMV.

Good luck in your quest.

 

[idsnowdog]

I have a Jazz with A4 and short hex heads. I was surprised by how even the tonality is and doesn't have any flubber at all.

 

[freefrog]

Short hex screw poles (IOW: hollow slugs) = less ferrous content = less inductance and a "condensed" magnetic field making the tone brighter... I'm not surprised if it works well with a Jazz model, which is in the (low) T-Top range when it comes to LR specs (and the interest of the A4 is understandable to me: weaker magnetism = more even sound).

Which brings my rambling to another way to lower the inductance: less iron in the pickup. Pulling off the screw poles is an ol' trick used by studio musicians. Effect shown here: https://youtu.be/3k9nS4JtANU

Many things are possible on this basis, like pulling off half of the screw poles and half of the slugs, in whatever order you want...

 

[chadd]

Humbucker from Hell.

Full Shred Neck would be my suggestion, but the HFH would work too

 

[alex1fly]

Ditch the humbucker and use a single coil or stacked HB voiced like a single coil. IME even the Jazz has some of those undesirable humbucker like qualities that you named.

 

[nienturi]

Lollar - El Rayo. Neck version has only 3,5K dc resistance.
https://www.lollarguitars.com/lollar-humbucker-pickups/el-rayo-humbucker

 

[misterwhizzy]

Swapped in my WLH neck wired in parallel, and I really think this is the ticket. Clear and bright, very well balanced. This may convince me to switch away from the bridge every once in a while. Best part? Totally free fix.