Les paul neck Humbucker woofy

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Leftylespaul

Member
Hello all
New to the fm9. Sensational device!
Just wondering what the suggested adjustment is to the factory presets, as the majority of them sound really woofy and mushy through the neck Humbucker of my Les paul. I am using vintage PAF replica pickups so nothing too crazy.
Thanks all!
 
Leftylespaul said:
Hello all
New to the fm9. Sensational device!
Just wondering what the suggested adjustment is to the factory presets, as the majority of them sound really woofy and mushy through the neck Humbucker of my Les paul. I am using vintage PAF replica pickups so nothing too crazy.
Thanks all!
Click to expand...
Literally all my guitaring life it's been hard to get my bridge and neck pickups making sense at the same time. I can adjust the amp for a nice fat bridge tone, but then neck is all vowels with no bite. Or I can make neck ballsy with some edge, but then bridge is thin and shrill.

Any amp, any guitar, same same.

With the Axe I can try to fix that with different scenes for neck and bridge, but I don't want to have to be near a footswitch all the time. Plus also, I doubt that Real Players have to do that, makes me feel like I'm Doing It Wrong.

So I compromise. Not too trebly, not too woofy.

Other than that, if you're waiting for the punch line where The Secret is revealed, sorry, wrong post :)
 
Leftylespaul said:
Hello all
New to the fm9. Sensational device!
Just wondering what the suggested adjustment is to the factory presets, as the majority of them sound really woofy and mushy through the neck Humbucker of my Les paul. I am using vintage PAF replica pickups so nothing too crazy.
Thanks all!
Click to expand...
It’s not the modeler. It’s most likely the setup of the guitar, or the monitoring system or the volume.

I have single coils and humbuckers and they go from sounding like a grand piano’s clarity, to screaming Marshall or Mesa stacks.

Share a factory preset that duplicates the problem so we can all play along, and how you are listening.
 
My dawg, dial the amp in (bass and treble) on your neck pu, so it has tight bass and crisp highs. Lower your bridge pu tone to 5 or so and you’re cookin with gas
 
Leftylespaul said:
Hello all
New to the fm9. Sensational device!
Just wondering what the suggested adjustment is to the factory presets, as the majority of them sound really woofy and mushy through the neck Humbucker of my Les paul. I am using vintage PAF replica pickups so nothing too crazy.
Thanks all!
Click to expand...
Back off the neck pickup about 1/8", then raise the pole pieces. If that's not quite enough difference, repeat....
 
Leftylespaul said:
Hello all
New to the fm9. Sensational device!
Just wondering what the suggested adjustment is to the factory presets, as the majority of them sound really woofy and mushy through the neck Humbucker of my Les paul. I am using vintage PAF replica pickups so nothing too crazy.
Thanks all!
Click to expand...
As has been suggested, lower the neck pickup a bit, but also use the volume control of the neck pickup to get more clarity.
 
All of the above. But since you have a FAS modeler why not set one or two amp channels up for neck and middle? Plus I generally don’t run my neck wide open either. Also helps to have a treble bleed on it.
 
This is something I’ve admittedly related to as well! I’ve been playing for quite some time and through all of my experiences, it always seems to end up that way too haha and my neck pickups have always been in the vein of PAF neck pickup territory. I hear a lot of people when they flip to the neck pickup like “clean tone neck pickup on les paul” and always wonder to myself “how are you getting that clean and clear of a neck pickup tone??” Hahaha

Always learning to dial in better tone haha perhaps I try to dial in too big of a sound on the bridge as well, which I’ve been learning isn’t always best for context of a mix, so maybe dialing in the tone for a neck pickup (and pickup height—lowered within reason; too low gets darker and weaker I find) and finding that balance between the two pickups is the key.

There’s also situations where a specific amp just works better and gives you that cleaner bell like tone without the tubbiness, so there’s that too.
 
One thing I noticed is that on some stock presets the output levels on the different scenes were mostly below the line. I found that raising all the Scène output block levels really helped a lot. Not sure why or how that is, but just my observation!
 
I’ve modified a couple of my guitars with a slight bass cut (high pass filter) that operates only when the neck pickup is selected alone. You need a special pickup selector switch to do this properly on a twin humbucker guitar.
 
GM Arts said:
I’ve modified a couple of my guitars with a slight bass cut (high pass filter) that operates only when the neck pickup is selected alone. You need a special pickup selector switch to do this properly on a twin humbucker guitar.
Click to expand...
Besides the switching, what circuit did you use for that exactly? Is it a normal-ish humbucker, in the usual impedance range?
 
Leftylespaul said:
Hello all
New to the fm9. Sensational device!
Just wondering what the suggested adjustment is to the factory presets, as the majority of them sound really woofy and mushy through the neck Humbucker of my Les paul. I am using vintage PAF replica pickups so nothing too crazy.
Thanks all!
Click to expand...
Been struggling with woofy neck pickups for decades. Been trying to get Pages’ SIBLY neck tone from TSRTS. Lowered the neck pickup, set the pole piece screws higher to simulate a single coil, etc, not much luck. Bought a lot of PAF clones.

Went from an A2 magnet to an A5, that helped a lot. Tried A3 & A4, but felt that the A5 was clearest. Along with this went from 8k to 7.4K, and it wasn’t until I went down to 6.8k with a Vineham Telepaf in PAF size that I got what I wanted. Figured out along the way that an Echoplex with the delay time set to 100ms was a big part of that tone.

Magnet type and strength(Gauss) matter, DC resistance and inductance matters, wire size/type matters. So many factors combine to make a lot of variation, it’s been a long battle.
 
To Dave M: I just used a capacitor, probably around 2.2nF between the neck tone and neck volume (pickup goes direct to tone control). The special pickup selector switch shorts the cap when using both pickup so there’s no change to that sound.
 
I would start with, what are your cab block Lo & Hi cuts set to?
A setting I find works a lot for me, Lo cut 80hz, Hi cut 5000hz.
Of course it depends on a lot of other factors.
This helps me get right in the ball park.
 
Therickyjones said:
My dawg, dial the amp in (bass and treble) on your neck pu, so it has tight bass and crisp highs. Lower your bridge pu tone to 5 or so and you’re cookin with gas
Click to expand...

Yeah, that.

I put a "taper resistor" in parallel with my bridge tone pots so that the knob on 10 sounds like it's on ~5 and I can actually use the whole range of the knob instead of all the tones I like being crammed into the bottom of the pot.
 
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