# Neck pickup louder than bridge. Solutions?



## mrfiftyfour (Jun 29, 2008)

I installed a set of GFS Dream 180's into a partscaster. One volume and 3 way switch. 
I'm 100% positive I''ve wired the pickups correctly but the neck pickup is quite a bit louder than the bridge. I've lower the neck pickup to the pickguard to no avail. Also, it's a bit muddy as well.
So my question is this: Can I install a resistor or something to even out the volume of the neck pickup and remove the muddiness?


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## bluesguitar1972 (Jul 16, 2011)

Not familiar with the pickups at all - but as a general rule, caps and pots can make a difference, but I doubt it will clear up severe muddiness on your neck pickups. As a start, I would check the ohms resistance. If the neck pickup has a higher rating, I would suggest swapping it with the bridge pickup. You want the hotter pickup in the bridge position to have more balanced output.


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## Shark (Jun 10, 2010)

How are you are 100% sure you've wired it correctly? Not picking on you, but I'm curious. It could be that perhaps you put the bridge in where the neck should go and vice versa, or you might have a dry solder joint, or you might have damaged the volume pot by overheating it, or it could even be a bad pickup. Other than that, I don't know. How does the bridge pickup sound?


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## mrfiftyfour (Jun 29, 2008)

The wiring job is fine. The pickups are labeled. It is possible that they are labeled improperly. I may try swapping positions.


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## Shark (Jun 10, 2010)

mrfiftyfour said:


> The wiring job is fine. The pickups are labeled. It is possible that they are labeled improperly. I may try swapping positions.


I'd check the readings first.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Do these have 2-conductor hookup cable or something more involved? I ask because it is possible you have wired up the bridge out of phase with itself, yielding a much smaller signal.

The suggestion to measure the DC resistance of the pickups - as wired to the volume pots - is a sensible one. I looked at the GFS website and couldn't find any numbers on them, so I'll make some up to illustrate. If, say, the neck measured 10k and the bridge measured 5.5k, that would suggest that one of the coils on the bridge PU is shorted somehow (I'm assuming the bridge is wound a little hotter than the neck, hence 5.5k). If the neck measured 10k and the bridge measured 9k, that would suggest they were mislabelled as neck and bridge. Although DC resistance is NOT directly equivalent to loudness, it is a common practice for matched pairs to use the same wire gauge, and for the bridge pickup to have some additional winds for a little more sensitivity. That will usually result in the bridge pickup measuring about 10% or so higher resistance than the neck unit. That's not true in all cases, but is common enough.


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## al3d (Oct 3, 2007)

check the Pup's Height also...


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## YJMUJRSRV (Jul 17, 2007)

gone fishing


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## allanr (Jan 11, 2012)

I dunno. ... That seems like a pretty broad generalization. I put GFS Mean 90 into PRS SE Custom that I had. I used it to replace the stock PRS 245 humbucker in the neck. The Mean 90 sounded great. Not quite as bold as a real P90, but close. I would definitely buy another. 

Answering the OPs question instead of dissing his choice of pick up would seem to be a much better approach here.

My guess is that the pickups are either out of phase with each other, or there is some other phase related problem.


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## davewrites (Oct 22, 2013)

I had an LP clone and installed a mismatched set of GFS 'buckers: Classic II neck and Vintage '59 bridge. Surprisingly, the neck was louder (set up with GFS recommended string heights/distance).

Since the neck was meant to be the cleaner pup and the bridge the hotter one, my solution was to lower the neck and raise the bridge until the volume toggled smoothly. 

The neck got a tad cleaner and the bridge a little hotter.

Win-win.


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