Help with GFS Li'l Puncher XL's

[fordfanjpn]

I put some GFS Li'l Puncher XL pickups in my new MJT Tele (pine body, Allparts TMO-FAT neck), and while they sound fine at home at low volume, on the gig they sounded very thin and flat. Either really bright and thin, or bassy and muffled, nothing in between. There seems to be no fat, juicy midrange in these pickups. So I wondering if lowering them (as suggested somewhere in another post) would make them thicker sounding, or if I just need to switch to something else. I'm playing primarily blues, swing and a touch of jazz, and I need a nice, fat, thick, juicy tone for most of that. FWIW, I seem to have had the most luck so far with the Fred Stuart Black Guard pickups, but I was hoping for something even fatter than those. Any help for me on this? TIA.

Bill

[kman900]

Hi Bill!

Are you sure you wired them the right way . . ? I think they use the same color codes as Seymour Duncan, but i can look it up.

Another thing could be that you tried to use them at the gig with your "single-coil-settings". I regularly run into some sound-incompatibilities when i switch guitars on the wrong sounds. Maybe you have to tweak your sounds a bit.

Here's how mine sound (distance blades to strings about 3mm):



At http://www0.fh-trier.de/~niesen/GFS/ you will find two sound clips. They are mp3s renamed to m3p . . just play them as they are in winamp or else, or rename them back to mp3 . .

Bridge . . GFS little puncher Modern Vintage Bridge, first part in series, second in parallel. Sound is a modeled Rectifier out of my VOX Tonelab.

Lead . . Neck pickup. First part series, second single coil (you will notice the hum) then parallel, next i fiddle a little with the tone pot, last part is the bridge pickup. Sound is the same with slightly more gain.

Cheers
Albert

[fordfanjpn]

Thanks Albert, that actually helps a lot. I'm beginning to think that maybe these pickups just aren't right for me.

You also gave me a great idea. I can't crank my amps up at home because I live in an apartment, but I just recently bought one of the new ToneLab ST units, and I can certainly use that with headphones and play as loud as I want. Maybe that will help me get a better handle on things. Now if I can just figure the darn thing out!

Bill

[kman900]

Originally Posted by fordfanjpn

I'm beginning to think that maybe these pickups just aren't right for me.

Maybe you give them a little more time . . as i used to play more singlecoil pickups in the past, i was very sceptical about these rail pickups. But now i even think about putting a set in one of my strats.
I use 250k Pots and a 0.022 uF cap, and i'm very happy with 'em. Actually the pots are push/pull types with a switching like this:
http://www.seymourduncan.com/pdfs/su...2v_2t_tspp.pdf

I find even the singlecoil sounds very usable, especially in the neck and middle position.

[fordfanjpn]

I'll try playing with the height adjustments and see if that helps. But I think I need something with a thicker midrange than these pickups seem to have. Thanks again for your suggestions.

Bill