Gibson Les Paul Standard 2017 neck pickup choice

[Obo]

I have Black Dog/Riff Raff in a Les Paul and its a great combo.

The Riff Raff splits well in the neck too.

Do you have enough output compared to bridge humbucker when you split ?

[Brow]

I have Black Dog/Riff Raff in a Les Paul and its a great combo.

The Riff Raff splits well in the neck too.

Do you have enough output compared to bridge humbucker when you split ?

Yeah, seems to work fine. The BD to me feels like a hotter pickup than it actually is due to the big mid push.

I also have no load tone pots on both pickups, which seems to help with a bit of extra brightness.

[Obo]

Order has been placed   

BD/VHII with 4x 550k long shaft pots + 0.022/0.015 caps 

Looking forward to upgrade the guitar, will inform you with results !

thanks for your info guys :)

[Obo]

Hi guys,
so my Black Dog/VHII pups has been installed finally.
I could not be more wrong about my pickups choice :(
I wrote to Ben French my findings :

Hi Ben,

The pickups were installed yesterday by profesional luthier here in Slovakia.
Unfortunately,  the result is that the pickups sounds very different in a negative way from what I thought it will be.
The pickups has much less output than previous Gibson Burstbuckers Pros, especially the Black Dog in a bridge. (Very strange)
Much thinner sound now, they are set as close to strings as possible though.
Obviously, my choice of Black Dog/VH II was not right.
It seems that the only option now is to unistall them and send back to you and choose something from contemporary line (Have no idea which one as my opinion of what should be right for me has been challenged) :-D

I have read on BKP page that I can send them back after 14 days of purchase.
The thing is that the pickups needs to be uninstalled out of guitar, my luthier can do this, but he will be not available for next week or so, because of business trip he has to do.
So In case you will confirm we can swap the pickups for something else, it can be delivered back to BKP maybe in the beggining of Jun, calendar week 23.

Would this be possible ?
thanks in advance,
Tomas

[darkandrew]

I've got to be honest, your description of the new pickups doesn't sound how I'd expect them to either. Could it be that they were not installed correctly? I've never had a BD but I have had a VHii neck, and that was very full sounding - definitely a lot fuller and less bright than the BB Pro neck that I had.

[Telerocker]

I suspect the wiring is not ok, because I don't have problems with any of my BKP's. No one sounds thin.

[Obo]

HereŽs my email communication :

Bare Knuckle Pickups
11:21
   
Hi Tomas,

A Black Dog should be more powerful than any BB pickup. Are you 100% sure they are wired up correctly? If they are not wired up right then you may hear single coil tones or out of phase tones - both of which would be much quieter and weaker.

So regular Gibson wiring? No push pulls? Can you send a photo of the wiring cavity?


Tomas Obester <obestertomas@gmail.com>
11:32

Hi,

The technician used attached wiring diagram.
I asked him, he is 100% sure everything has been done according to diagram (He is PRO level guy, doing guitar mainentance for biggest slovakian music store)
However, those BKP pots which I received are not push-pull, so we used 2x 550K BKP pots for volume and left 2x gibson CTS 500k pots on tone, they are wired as push-pull.
When used in single coil mode, the sound of both pickups is very weak.
0.022 and 0.015 caps are also installed.
I can make a photo of that and send it to you when IŽll get back home.

--------------------------------
I have no idea why it sounds like that guys, but according to guy, everything is wired correctly.
I will post photo of the cavity here later today.

[Dave Sloven]

BKP pickups are wired red to hot, black and bare to ground.

Is the wiring diagram a BKP diagram?

[Obo]

Yes, it is BKP diagram from site

[Dave Sloven]

If he's wired it as per the diagram there would be two possibilities:

1. A bad solder joint (or two)
2. A fault with the pickup(s)

It would seem strange if there were multiple bad solder joints or more than one pickup faulty though, and you say that both pickups are effected.  This makes me suspect that there is something wrong with the wiring somewhere in terms of following the diagram, because both pickups are effected.  It might be an issue with one of the reused components that is common to both pickups, such as the selector switch.

[Obo]

Please check guys, pics of cavity attached

[Dave Sloven]

For me it's hard to see what's going on with the terminals on the push-pulls, but it looks like you have the hot and ground wires attached to the right lugs, same with the selector switch.

Because of the big caps I'm having trouble seeing how they are connected to the tone pots.  The volume pot end looks correct.

[Obo]

I got reply from BKP team that everything is wired correctly.

It looks like I need maybe Holidivers for more compression and fatness..hopefully

[Telerocker]

I don't know what kind of music you play, but if you're looking for a powerful and thick pickup with PAF-pedigree I would inspect the Crawler too.

[Obo]

Bridge should be - fat, thick, dark, chunky, and obviously more compression tha BD
neck - chimey, tight, enough power to use in single coil mode also and singing tone when used with overdrive.
VHII has more bass than BB pro neck