Hey guys, thanks for the comments. :)
No, I didn't mean that I had to adjust the amps EQ - and the wiring is perfectly ok as well. ;)
It's just that all passive pickups have a resonance frequency - certain frequency ranges are transferred stronger in volume than others. The strength of that resonance peaks depends on many factors, but the position of the peak largely depends on the capacitance load the pickup 'sees'.
It's exactly the effect you have with different guitar cables. Since the conductors in a guitar cable are isolated from each other, they can store charge in between them - just like a normal foil, paper-in-oil, ceramic or whatever cap. With guitar cables that is dependent on the type of cable used and its length. With some cables the guitar sounds darker, with others more bright and open. That's not cable magic - as the ads would like us to believe - but simply a result of the capacitance load the pickup 'sees'.
A low capacitance load results in a higher resonance frequency, while increasing loads shift the frequency to the lower regions of the spectrum.
CLICK - scroll down half the page and you'll see a typical output curves of a passive pickup with different capacitance loads (higher load = shift to the left).
Plus - my first effect in the chain is a buffer. It transforms the passive pickups low current (= high-impedance; impedance = AC resistance) output to a high current (= low-impedance) signal, without actually increasing the voltage (= volume). It makes the pickup 'see' only the cable path leading to the buffer but not that behind it. So I can add loads and loads of effects behind the buffer without ever seeing a change in tone due to the increasing amounts of cable.
Plus - I'm using Elixir cables which have a low capacitance value of about 30 pF per meter, while other high-end cables typically have values of about about 80-90 pF per meter. So I can use a 9 m cable and get the same sound another cable would only offer at a length of 3 m.
Plus - I have replaced the tone pots in my guitar with caps-switches - C-Switches - for instance available from Helmuth Lemme (see link above). These switches have six positions: One without additional load, five with different caps of increasing value wired between ground and phase (or 'hot output') of the guitar. In a way I can 'simulate' different cables with that switch. Or in other words - I can choose to amplify the transmittance of high-frequency harmonics or those more close to the fundamental tone of a fretted note.
Argh, I have written too much. :P
Tobi 8)
