Tribute Bluesboy Pickup Balance

[unbrokenChainz]

Hello all -- I recently picked up a sweet Tribute Bluesboy on one of Musician's Friends SDOTD deals. It plays beautifully, but the issue I can't seem to resolve is getting a decent tone balance between the neck humbucker and bridge single coil.

The humbucker just really lacks clarity; dark and muddy. I can get it to a good place by adjusting the amp EQ but then both the middle and bridge-only positions are extremely ice-picky. When I use the amp eq to tone down the bridge pickup a touch, then the humbucker is just sludge.

I checked the wiring and everything looks fine (as best I am able to tell). I've read about switching the pots out to 500k and putting a resistor in front of the bridge pup. I'm leaning towards doing that but I'm surprised that's needed to get it sounding correct out of the box (i.e. why would G&L put out a guitar that is so out of balance).

I'm hoping I'm missing something obvious. Any help please? Anyone else experience this (and fix it)?

Thanks so much.

[mikemjr12]

I have a tribute semi-hollow bluesboy with the MFD bridge pickup and stock neck pup. Unfortunately (or not) that's kind of how the guitar is. You have a dark/smooth neck pickup and a bright bridge and it can be frustrating dial in just one amp tone that you can easily switch back and fourth between. I play mine through a mesa boogie mark v, so I'm able to set different EQs for each of the 3 channels that correspond to whichever pickup i play on that channel. But because, generally speaking, you need to crank treble and cut bass on the neck and need the reverse on the bridge, it takes some other external solution like multi-channels or an EQ pedal of some sort. I agree the pickup selection is difficult to work with, but that's also sort of the charm is that you have this guitar with an unusual pickup selection that's almost counter intuitive but works on some level.

Oh and one final note - when I play live, the neck pickup actually works really well with the Mark V. At stage volume, the added bass combined with the tone controls of the amp makes it highly usable. The issue is more pronounced at quieter levels for sure.

[Fumble fingers]

same with my USA version with Seymore Duncans too from factory ... just how that style of humbucker is until you throw some power at it , not good for quiet playing , mine sounds good with both pu's together at low volume .... some switch out the neck pup where I'm in a situation where I can put some power to them and that makes them come alive so I'll sacrifice some low volume quality

[themikeaustin]

Lowering the bridge pickup can help cut the treble and increase the sustain, IMO.