Tone issue in JP6

[Warpig21]

Hi everyone,

New here, first post. Did a search but it's an odd problem and didn't find much. Apologies, if the issue is addressed and I missed it...

Last year I bought my first BKP, a Brute Force Humbucker, then this month I bought an Alnico Warpig. Love them. They are amazing. So much so, that I'm looking at my other guitars to see what I need to buy next :)

But the curiosity was getting to me and I wanted to hear them in my Ernie Ball JP6. I have taken care to match the correct wiring of the Bareknuckles to the PCB (which is color coded for Dimarzio). Unfortunately, when either the Warpig or Brute Force are in, they exhibit a tone that is best described as turning down the tone knob maybe 1/3. Battery is fresh.

I desoldered and reconnected to no avail. When I exhausted myself trying to figure it out, I put the original pick up back in. Sounded full and cutting again.

For further troubleshooting, my guitar is the model with the piezo. So the signal does go through a preamp, but after talking with Ernie Ball CS, they didn't believe that the preamp would be imparting that much color to the signal. Also said that Petrucci worked closely with Dimarzio for the guitar and that the voicing is more of the pickup than the preamp. CS stated the the main function of the preamp is for managing output and tone for the piezo side of things in addition to the option of mono or stereo output, not so much tone for the magnetic side.

So back to square 1. At that point, I ordered new pots and wiring harnesses- basically gutted the electronics of the guitar. Which since it is a 2002 model, heavily gigged, I didn't really mind updating the electronics anyway.... But even still, the weird tone still comes from those pickups.

FYI the updated wiring consisted of new switches, new 500k pots and new capacitor, even a new preamp for good measure.

To take it a step further, these pickups, in other guitars are sounding as though there is no issue...

Is it possible that my guitar doesn't like the Bare Knuckles? Or has someone had similar issue? Maybe not even with the same guitar, but maybe I'm missing something?

Would love any ideas to try. Many thanks in advance for your comments.
Thanks!

[Dave Sloven]

Are these alternative pickups for the bridge slot?  Or is one of them the neck?

The alnico Warpig is one of the darkest pickups in the range (another example is the Crawler).  If you put it in a very dark guitar it will sound too dark. I had this problem with an Explorer, then I moved it to an SG where it was fine.

What were you doing with the Brute Force?  Us that in the neck position?

The JP6 pickups might be considerably brighter than the War Pig

Bare Knuckle have a lot of different pickups.  This one might be not great in that guitar

[Dave Sloven]

It seems like this type of guitar might do better with a brighter alnico pickup with tight bottom end, good high mids, etc like the Rebel Yell, Emerald, or Impulse.

This is just a guess based on comments seen online.  You should contact BKP directly.  They are very helpful

[Warpig21]

Thank you for the reply...
The Brute Force was me just being curious. It’s real home is in another guitar. The Warpig was intended for the Musicman. I tried them both in the bridge position.

The guitar to my ear leans a bit on the darker side of the bright spectrum if that makes sense. Still bright, not my brightest guitar by any means. I was thinking that this pickup may be a nice balance to that.

Though, I hadn’t considered that maybe my perception of “bright” may not be a reasonable one. So the dark pickup may indeed be to dark.

I appreciate the suggested pickups. Those were ones that I was very curious about from the beginning. So it’s encouraging to hear the suggestions to support my earlier thinking.

It seems that maybe there was nothing wrong per se? I don’t think I’ve ever heard a guitar and pickups get along in such a pronounced way (that I didn’t like) I guess I was a little shocked.

This forum seems very cool. Looking forward to interacting more...