Really Bright Pickups on late 90s ASAT Classic

[shankyboy]

I recently picked up a late 90s ASAT Classic as a partner for my Fullerton Red Legacy. The Red on the ASAT is a different shade but close and the neck is a fantastically figured and gun oiled Maple. The only downside is that the stock MFD pickups are insanely bright. Way brighter than my 04 ASAT Classic. I have to roll the treble know just shy of all the way back in order to play it without feeling like my eardrums are being sliced. I opened up both ASAT cavities to see if maybe someone had changed cap values on the late 90s ASAT and they are identical. Has anyone ever encountered this or does anybody have any ideas why these pickups are so bright? Thanks in advance.

[NickHorne]

Sounds like someone fiddled with the red one! Should be an easy fix once you find the difference.
You checked cap values; how about POT values? Should both be 250K.
And the cap on the tone pot should have one leg attached to the wiper of the tone pot (middle tag), and the other to the track-end ("10" end) of the tone pot as well as a wire to the track-end of the volume pot & the 3-way.
If the tone pot's cap is wired with one end at the volume pot, with the tone pot's "10" end left disconnected, that would explain it. It'd be an easy mistake to make, as it's pretty standard Fender / Gibson wiring to do it that way; not right with most MFD's. G&L load them with the resistances of both pots, in most guitars, so the resistive load is 125K, not 250K. It's a good way of fine-tuning pickup response, if you have enough top-end in hand; nothing wrong with it at all.

A higher-value (500K?) pot in there would also brighten it up a lot.

Both changes at once would be horribly bright...

Here's how the circuit should be built:
http://www.glguitars.com/schematics/ASA ... iagram.pdf

Go slowly and methodically, it's amazingly easy to miss the obvious when looking at wiring! Put kettle on and get notepad out. I find writing / drawing it out as I look at it can help.

[shankyboy]

Thanks for the info. I will look into it and post what I find.

[shankyboy]

Problem solved. For some reason, the ground wire from the output jack had been relocated from the volume pot to the tone pot. When I moved it back to the volume pot, the pickups sounded like they should. I am assuming that, since there is already a ground between the volume pot and the Tone Pot, having the output jack ground on the tone pot created some sort of ground loop.