software

hi everyone i'm new to the forum and i have a question about the sound of some popular duncan bridge humbuckers. would you help me rate some of them from trebly to bassy? as i understand it now, it goes something like this:

full shred
distortion
jb
custom
invader

also, i just put a jb/jazz combo in my mahogany esp viper and i already have a jb in my alder esp stephen carpenter signature. i don't find the jb shrill at all - rolling down the tone knob a little tames it just fine. it's great for my heavy rhythm sounds - very resonant and crunchy. what i don't understand is, how does the pot value affect the sound of a pickup? for example, some people say that a 250k will help remove the shrillness from a jb, which i assume means that a higher value means more treble and a lower value means less. what will a 500k do? or a 300k? thanks a lot in advance for all your help.

Hey Rivenbeef, welcome to the forum!

Bump.

welcome rivenbeef. i will attempt to answer and i am sure many more forum bros will chime in soon enough.

how a pickup sounds is relative to the lows, mids and highs it has and how our ears perceive the almagation of the 3 factors. you more or less got it there. however, from the eq provided by sd, you will realize that the custom has more highs than the jb. that fact alone will rate the custom more trebly than the jb.why the jb sounds more trebly is because of having less lows as well as a spike in the hi-mids as opposed to the custom.

as for pots, 250k will bleed more treble to ground than a 500k. in other words, a pickup with 500k pot will sound more trebly than 250k because more highs are retained in the signal. if you have the same pickup in the same guitar, changing pot value will alter the treble response of a pickup. that's the general consensus why 250k pots are usually use for singlecoils and 500k for humbuckers. it is actually an inexpensive and effective way of altering a pickup's voicing plus its completely reversible.

dani