Holy Diver Set in Les Paul - Harsh Bridge?

[Hammerheart]

A while back I put a Holy Diver set in my Les Paul Traditional. I haven't had a lot of play time on it until recently as I've been playing more on different guitars so I've had the set in there a while and never really tested it properly. It could do with a proper setup again.

Now I've picked up the guitar again I'm finding the neck pup sounds good. Neck Holy Divers are well regarded after all. A while ago I had a Holy Diver in my strat and I loved that.
Bearing in mind I'm not an expert or an experienced gig player... With this guitar I'm finding the bridge pickup has zero bottom end its all top mids and the top end is brittle and harsh. To my ears it doesn't sound very well paired with the neck at all. They could not be any more different. The neck pickup is always much louder too. Could there be a fault somewhere?

I'm playing it though a Rocker 15 combo, an Orange TH30 with Jim Root cab and a Marshall JCM2000 1w Anniversary.

[capac]

Maybe you wired it to single coil mode?

[Hammerheart]

Maybe you wired it to single coil mode?

With braided 2 wire connections that would be difficult.

[capac]

I guess ;).

[oneblackened]

Sounds like there's a fault to me.

[Hammerheart]

Ive desoldered the pups from the guitar and stuck a multimeter across them. 8k for the neck and no reading on the bridge pup at all. Time to contact BKP me thinks.

[stratguy23]

Ya definitely sounds like there is something wrong with the bridge pickup both because of the multimeter result and the tones you’re getting. I would not use harsh to describe the Holy Diver. I’ve only used it in a Strat with a Floyd (which should be brighter than a Les Paul), and it had plenty of bottom end.

[Hammerheart]

Yeah. I had one in a strat awhile back too. That sounded great. That’s why I was so confused by how rough this sounded. I’m surprised I got any sound from it at all if it’s open circuit.

[darkbluemurder]

With this guitar I'm finding the bridge pickup has zero bottom end its all top mids and the top end is brittle and harsh. To my ears it doesn't sound very well paired with the neck at all. They could not be any more different. The neck pickup is always much louder too. Could there be a fault somewhere?

This does not sound normal, and your measurements confirmed it. A correctly working HD bridge balances fine even with a stronger neck pickup than the HD neck, e.g. a Cold Sweat neck. No reading means infinite resistance, i.e. either one of the wires at the coils is not connected correctly to the wire, or there is an open coil. Hopefully it is the connection of one of the wires as this can be repaired without too much trouble.

Good luck
Stephan

[Hammerheart]

Well it’s still under guarantee and they received it back today so I’ll find out soon.

[capac]

I'm sure you won't be left without a (working) pickup ;).