Bluesboy pickup change out

[markmilbourn]

Hello, I have a question that, after looking around on the web, I couldn't find an answer. So, I thought I'd ask it here. I have a 2014 Asat Classic Bluesboy Tribute. It's semi-hollow, ash body w/F-hole. My question is this: The G&L AS4255C alnico neck humbucker that comes with the guitar sounds rather dark to me. In comparison the American made Bluesboy has a Seymour Duncan Seth Lover HB in the neck position, but I haven't played nor heard one on a Bluesboy. So, do any of you out there know what the sound difference is between the two pickups. I'm thinking about putting the SD Seth Lovers in, but I don't want to spend the money if there's not going to be much change in sound.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[blargfromouterspace]

Balance between a bright bridge pickup and the very warm neck pickup is hard thing to get right on the Bluesboy, I've been experimenting with different stuff for the whole time I've had mine - about 5 years now! The Seth Lover probably wont get you what you're after. A big part of the problem is that the Bluesboy uses 250k pots, which make the humbucker even darker than usual (usually they're paired with 500k pots). My suggestion would be to get a humbucker from a custom builder who can make you one for the very purpose of matching up nicely with a single coil at the bridge, I got one through THIS GUY who offers one as a standard model. Its as close as I've found to being a good combination, but I can't help but prefer a standard telecaster neck pickup in there.

Best of luck with it all, if you find another solution I'd be glad to hear it

[markmilbourn]

So after nosing around a bit on the site you recommended, I have to ask, which pick up did you decide to get? There are several options to chose from.

[blargfromouterspace]

I went with the Telebucker 3, thats what the guy who runs that place recommended. My Bluesboy has been set up with a regular Tele neck pickup for quite a while now though.

[NickHorne]

There is one change you may be able to try, if the Tribute wiring is the same as the USA model; I'm not sure whether this is the case or not but it's simple to find out.

G&Ls often wire their tone controls such that the pickups see a resistive load of 125Kohms, and not the 250K you might expect.
They do this by wiring the tone cap from the clockwise (viewed-from-guitar-front) track end of the tone pot to its wiper, and the connection from the volume pot goes to the clockwise track end of the tone pot also.
My USA Bluesboy is like this.
The Fender / Gibson way of doing this is to wire the tone cap from the clockwise end of the volume pot to the wiper of the tone pot, with nothing connected to the clockwise end of the tone pot.
The anticlockwise ends are of course always just to ground.

Changing the circuit to the Fender scheme will reduce the resistive load (becomes 250K) and liberate more high end.

If the bridge pickup is now too bright, you can simply add a 250K resistor across it (at the switch, not at the pickup itself, to avoid disturbing any delicate bits) and then its load will be back to stock without affecting the humbucker.

And you could take this further, and fit a 500K volume pot, and then your extra load resistor would want to be around 160K instead of 250K in order for the bridge pickup to see the resistive load that it originally had.

The various schematics here and at G&L's site may help to clarify.

[Craig]

Perhaps this post will help: Bluesboy tribute wiring/pickups.