Rebel Yell

[Acolmiztli]

Back in June I purchased the 'Rebel Yell' humbucker - Calibrated Covered Set.

I've noticed that there is quite a volume difference between the bridge and neck pickup. Is this cheifly going to be down to pickup height? Or could something else be going on? Maybe I should measure the ohmage of each pickup; is it possible that the labels on the wires were the wrong way round? I just followed the labelling when I soldered the pickups in...

Anyone else got a calibrated pair, and have you experienced this? I've got an Orville Les Paul for reference.

[darrenw5094]

Calibrated pair should be evenly matched volume wise. Maybe pull them and re-install them.

[Acolmiztli]

Neck is definitely a lot louder than the bridge. Pretty sure I haven't guffed up any of the electronics. I'll check it out... tbh, the whole thing could do with gutting and rewiring from the ground up. Throw in some new pots and replace the caps.

[TheyCallMeVolume]

I've noticed that a bit too, maybe just raise the bridge pickup or lower the neck?

[Acolmiztli]

Can't raise the bridge pickup without some serious squealing going on. Think I'm as low as I can go with the neck. Will have to double check.

[TheyCallMeVolume]

There's definitely something fishy going on here...

[richard]

All sounds a bit alarming. I don't have a volume imbalance with my RYs and I didn't get any squealing with the bridge pup very close to the strings. What guitar are they in ? What amp do you use ? How much gain are you using ? can you do pics ?

[BigB]

There's definitely something fishy going on here...

Indeed. Don't have RY but my other calibrated sets are very finely balanced and I never had any squealing problem with BKPs even under massive gain.

[sjwebb90]

I have a calibrated short leg set in my PRS Custom 22. The pickups are evenly balanced with no sqealing. On the PRS holding the E strings down at the last fret and measuring top of pickup to underside of string, as a starting point before tweaking it, about 2.5mm ish on both pickups.

Have your pickups short or long legs?  If you are unable to lower the neck pick it maybe bottoming out on the legs. Or maybe the pickup cable is coiled and jamming under the pickup.

Just a thought.

[darkbluemurder]

I have the RY set and found them perfectly balanced in volume and tone without having to fiddle much with pickup height.

But even if the pickup heights were extremely mismatched you still should not get a vast difference in output. The RY bridge is wound a lot hotter than the RY neck to match each other in volume. Check the DC resistance with a digital multimeter (DMM). You should get about 7k to 8k ohms for the neck and about 14k to 15k for the bridge pickup.

If the readings are in that range listen for noise. Does the bridge pickup hum noticeably more than the neck pickup? If so, check the bridge pickup's wiring (do you have a 4 conductor)? The BKP main site has the standard wiring diagram.

If everything is wired correctly, the problem could be in the associated wiring circuitry. Try swapping the connections of the pickups, i.e. solder the neck pickup to where the bridge pickup was soldered and vice versa. If the bridge pickup is still lower in volume, then it's not the circuitry.

Please let us know how you get on.

Good luck
Stephan

[Acolmiztli]

I'll have a looksie at the soldering. Perhaps its a dodgy connection and I've just not spotted it. Neither pickups noticably hums however.

[Acolmiztli]

Think I solved it. I got some chunkier springs and replaced the pickup springs, and it allowed me to lower the neck and raise the bridge, without them going all wobbly bollocks on me!