JazzN vastly overpowering a Custom coil

[jafo]

Hello, all. Here's a weird one for you. I've got a JazzN in, well, the neck position, and a C5 in the bridge. The neck pup is a little degaussed and is about a half-inch further than the C5 from the strings, yet it overpowers it by a good 6db (measured via a lot of switch toggling). I'd noticed the same problem when the C5 was a CC. I have it wired correctly -- green and bare to ground, red and white together, isolated, and black to hot; and a screwdriver tap test (and a lack of hum) shows that the coils are active when they should be.

It's a bright sound, really bright, and thin.

Fwiw, a PC matches the JazzN in volume just fine.

Even if the wires were applied wrongly to the coils, I'm pretty sure there's no possibility that I've gotten the pup in parallel mode (even though it does have some of that characteristic cluck), since there's only one out and both coils are active. I've tried different magnets, and still have the same basic issue.

Can anybody offer any light on this? TIA.

 

[Funkfingers]

Re: JazzN vastly overpowering a Custom coil

How far did you disassemble the pickup? Although Duncan output conductors are colour coded, the start/finish wires of the individual bobbins are usually black and white per coil.

Have you swapped the magnet? The new magnet may not be gaussed properly.

Alternatively, something could be shorting out inside the coils of the pickup.

It is even possible that, through the act of sliding in a replacement magnet, you have dislodged the solder that connects the pickup's ground wire(s) to the baseplate.

 

[jafo]

Re: JazzN vastly overpowering a Custom coil

Yah, it was magnets... turns out that you can overly degauss a magnet, especially if you keep everything in the same box...