organicmccall
Harley Benton Club Junior Member
SC-550 Tobacco Flame, King-CE, CLA-15M, CLD-41S WN, CLF-200 WN
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Post by organicmccall on Feb 14, 2019 15:01:18 GMT
Hello everyone, i have a SC-550 that overall is pretty nice, but the bridge pickup is fairly muddy. Any ideas of a fix and/or replacement pickups? More of an acoustic player, so this is fairly new to me. Thanks in advance.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2019 15:37:52 GMT
Humbuckers can generally sound muddy. Go for singel coil pickups if you desire more crystal clean tones, like a P90 in a humbucker format.
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608 posts
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Post by oghkhood on Feb 15, 2019 18:47:16 GMT
Humbuckers can generally sound muddy. Go for singel coil pickups if you desire more crystal clean tones, like a P90 in a humbucker format. A friend's L550 Paradise was upgraded with Tonerider pups : AC4 neck + AC2 bridge. They are an interesting vintage spirit alternative to P94. These low grade Alnico magnet can also give a very nice singing clean, while still being able to cruch like humbuckers do
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153 posts
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Post by r3v3nt0n on Feb 16, 2019 10:47:09 GMT
Try removing pickup covers.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2019 11:19:07 GMT
Try removing pickup covers. Did that been there dont do it You get nothign out of it. My tone was still the muddy bucker. I even tried the screw removal to get a more P90 kind of tone but got only a pickup with 50% less volume and still very muddy. This was on my Wilkinson neck pup of me old L-450Plus
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2019 11:21:54 GMT
best long term solution is get a new pickup from a brand you trust makes good clear soudning pickups like Ironstone, Seymour Duncan, DiMarzio ... the Tone Riders seem also like a good stuff and the Irongear gets good reviews.
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153 posts
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Post by r3v3nt0n on Feb 16, 2019 11:50:48 GMT
Try removing pickup covers. Did that been there dont do it You get nothign out of it. My tone was still the muddy bucker. I even tried the screw removal to get a more P90 kind of tone but got only a pickup with 50% less volume and still very muddy. This was on my Wilkinson neck pup of me old L-450Plus I was going for the simplest, cheapest solution. Changing pickups is always an option, though finding the ones that sound good to you is not simply buying a brand and you're good to go. It might not work as you would want and you could spend quite some money there.
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freeman
Harley Benton Club Junior Member
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Post by freeman on Feb 16, 2019 13:44:54 GMT
You might think about having a look at the capacitors and the pots before you invest in new pickups and end up with the same outcome. If you find the sound too dark maybe try some with a lower value. I think Les Pauls usually have 0.22's but you would need to check what you have in there. Some people swear by 0.15's on the neck and 0.22's on the bridge, others use 010's, 0.13's etc. They're cheap so you could just try some out. As far as the pots go, they're a little more expensive than caps but a good set of cts 500's with a 50's wiring setup isn't a bad thing.
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3,457 posts
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Post by LeoThunder on Feb 16, 2019 14:25:55 GMT
You might think about having a look at the capacitors and the pots before you invest in new pickups and end up with the same outcome. If you find the sound too dark maybe try some with a lower value. I think Les Pauls usually have 0.22's but you would need to check what you have in there. Some people swear by 0.15's on the neck and 0.22's on the bridge, others use 010's, 0.13's etc. They're cheap so you could just try some out. As far as the pots go, they're a little more expensive than caps but a good set of cts 500's with a 50's wiring setup isn't a bad thing. The pots in there are already 500k. Changing them will change nothing unless the volume pots are replaced with a higher value. I understand the value of capacitors makes very little difference with the tone "open" but that might be wrong. Someone please correct me if needed. What can be done to improve "brightness" is replace the tone pots with some that go truly open when on full, taking the capacitor out of the circuit. Further options are : 1) new strings 2) lower the pick-up in case it is so high it affects the tone 3) replace the volume pots with push-pull and wire them so they allow to switch each pick-up from series to parallel (sounds like a single coil but brighter and hum-bucking)
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Post by blindwilly3fingers on Feb 16, 2019 15:28:44 GMT
Capacitor value will have an effect on the tone. The type of capacitor IMHO is barely audible although many people swear by orange drops, tropical fish,vitamin q etc. I personally would measure the output and resistance of your pick ups, not just the k value (resistance) but also Inductance (Henries) as this is a better guide for output. There is no point swapping pick ups similar to what you already have. The pots can affect the tone as they can vary a fair bit I have some pots that are pretty wide of their stated value. 250k stated measured reading 210k, 500k stated measured reading 560k. So it is worth checking them. You can also add a treble bleed capacitor to the wiring circuit .
Honestly it's trial and error to find a sound that suits you. What I like may not be what you like. Good luck 😉
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Post by Vincent on Feb 16, 2019 17:37:09 GMT
Before buying new pickups you can try a high pass filter to give you more treble and less bass. Grab a cheap bag of multi value capacitors from ebay. You might need a magnifyin glass to read the codes. You can find a capacitor code chart on the Internet. This is what to do. Take a capacitor and put it in series with the hot lead of the pickup to wherever it is now. For convenience you might want to wire two small leads with aligator clips dangling temporarily outside the control cavity. This makes it easier to swap caps and find the sound that you prefer. You can remove the test leads and solder in your preferred cap later.
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