Nailbomb/VHII trouble, part infinity

[jesperbc]

I need help. Badly!

I have an ESP LTD MH1000, 25.5" scale, mahogany body, three-piece maple set-neck-though (deeper set neck), rosewood fretboard, TOM bridge w. string-through-body, Earvana nut and Sperzel locking tuners. Stringed with D'Addario NYXL 11-52 (at the moment - different brands of strings don't really affect the problem I'm having) and tuned to drop C.

It's equipped with an alnico Nailbomb in the bridge and a VHII in the neck - pretty much what has been touted at the quintessential metal pickup combo in some circles of the modern metal/djent community on Facebook.

Both pickups are installed with coil split, by a guy with an electrical engineering degree halfway under his belt, who knows how to solder, how to read a pickup wiring schematic and has been modding his own guitars for years. 500k volume pot, 500k Bourns push/pull tone knob, 0.022 cap on the tone pot.

The VHII is full and warm, like a hot PAF neck pickup, maybe a tiny bit too fat, but the A-bomb is obscenely fat in the low end - morbidly obese. I just can't rid of the insane amount of bass. Here's what I've tried:

- Raising and lowering the pickups. To get the right amount of saturation for distortion they've been raised around 2 mm. from the strings. I've also tried adjusting the pole pieces.

- Bought a 10-band MXR KFK1 EQ pedal and dropped 31.25 Hz, 62.5 Hz and 125 Hz by 12dB, dropped 250 Hz by 6dB and raised 500 Hz by around 3dB. This helped a little, but the low end is still very overpowering.

- I've run the EQ in front of several different distortion and fuzz pedals, some with cut/boost circuits, some with regular tone controls, and most recently running a DOD Carcosa fuzz with the hi-cut knob at 3 o'clock (allowing most of the highs through) after the EQ enabled. Luckily this fuzz has a healty dose of mids, mostly lower mids, so it growls sufficiently.

- Today I had an acquaitance look over my rig. He runs his own repair shop fixing guitars and amps, he has played metal in several different bands, helped build rigs for other metal bands in the local area and is involved in a local recording studio. Upon listening to my rig he identified the problem to be, and I'm paraphrasing here, right around or below the "palmmute range" just below where my amp's EQ starts working.

Now, I'm plugging into an Orange Rocker 30 - not the most versatile amp, EQ-wise. The clean channel is just volume knob, but the amp is voiced really well. My Strat, Tele and a friend's Les Paul all sound great on the clean channel. The dirty channel has volume, gain and a 3-band EQ. Dialing the bass all the way down doesn't really help either. I have an Orange 2x12" open-back cab. I've tested the guitar on my other amp; an Orange TH100, thorugh a Line 6 POD HD500X, a Fender Hot Rod Deville and a Diezel Einstein w. a Marshall 4x12" cab connected.

It's... always... the... f***ing... same. There's just too much bass. 

I play a mix of modern metal (think Deftones) and sludge rock/metal and/or alternative metal (think less technically advanced Baroness, Mastodon, The Sword with focus on riffs and groove).

What can I do?

TL;DR: Halp! Too much bass. What to do? Get different pickups?

[Dave Sloven]

If it is that bassy I would try an Emerald or Rebel Yell bridge pickup

[Duck2587]

Every pick up will respond much different in any guitar. Your guitar is mahogany and already has a natural bass enhancement as it is due to its shape, scale length and your tuning. Plus mahogany is so called warmer than other tone woods. Go for the ceramic nail bomb. Much tighter. Also still present and a little more angry. 

[Yellowjacket]

Wow.  Maple neck, mahogany body guitars are interesting beasts.  I have an A-Bomb in a Les Paul and it's all angry, snarling mids and warm highs.    That being said, it's tuned in E standard with 10 - 46 strings.

I find as you tune lower with larger strings, the bass frequencies begin to predominate, and often in an ugly way.  I'm not sure how an A-Bomb would handle this treatment, but I anticipate it wouldn't be pretty.  11 - 52 aren't overly heavy strings, but I've tried 11 - 56 and I start to have to rely on more aggressive EQ settings, even with the Rebel Yell equipped guitar.   I suspect the string weight is part of the 'problem' but it is also unavoidable since you require string tension for lower tunings.

If you wish to try different pickups, the Rebel Yell or Painkiller bridge will both cut some of those low frequencies. 

My friend has a 7 string schecter with a maple neck / mahogany body and a 26.5 scale.  He uses a Painkiller in the bridge.  The pickup does help, but the extended range does necessitate aggressive EQ settings and / or a boost. 
I have 11 - 59s on my maple neck / basswood body 7 string with a juggerset and I also require aggressive EQ settings.  Basically, when I say aggressive, I mean turning the treble up past noon, mids buried, and bass at zero. 


The other option is to get an OD / Boost pedal.  Protone has an attack OD pedal which has a dial to select the amount of bass cut.  This sounds like it will deal nicely with the woofy bass frequencies you are experiencing. 

  https://protonepedals.com/product/attack-overdrive/

If you are in the market for a new amplifier for modern metal and you don't want to fuss around with pickups, boost pedals, etc., I highly recommend a ReVv.  Your guitar in it's current format will work fine with one of these amps. 

https://www.facebook.com/RevvAmplification/?fref=ts

https://www.facebook.com/misha.mansoor/videos/10154378326159533

7 string, no boost. 

[ericsabbath]

Try lowering only the the bass side of the pickups a couple millimiters
You will lose some output, but you should get rid of some of the flub
Having a tube screamer or sd1 based overdrive helps
But Yes,  usually the string gauge has a lot to do with this sort of issue
You could try regular 49-11

[jesperbc]

I'm f***ing embarrassed to write this, but turns out the guy who installed them made a mess of the soldering of grounds, etc. to the volume pots. A mess of old solder on top of newer solder on top of brand new solder. I had another friend go over the wiring. We couldn't find any flaws in how everything was connected, so we decided to remove the tone pot, the cap and the coil split to rule as much as possible out. After removing a lot of old solder on the volume pot and wiring the pickups to the blade switch and the volume pot, this thing RIPS! Holy sheeet, it's aggressive. And tight.

Lesson learned: ALWAYS get a second opinion.

Gonna put in a 0.015 uf cap and a non-push/pull tone pot, I think, and the see how that sounds. :)

[Dave Sloven]

Was the guy who installed them initially just some mate who thought he could solder, or is he actually presenting himself as a professional??  If the former then he's overestimated his abilities but basically was being a nice guy in trying to help you out; if the latter then that's misrepresentation and the guy needs to spend some time watching youtube lessons on soldering or something!!!