Les Paul Custom - Muddy sounding neck pickup.

[guitarnerdswe]

Suhr Pete Thorn Thornbucker. Place that in the neck. Amazing PUP's

You beat me too it... Fantastic pickup in general, but especially for muddy guitars.

 

[Budda]

Old strings will not help your cause haha. Or if you've worn the tip off your pick.

 

[USMC_Trev]

*Cobalt

(yes there is/can be copper in the alloy as well, but Cobalt is what's in the designation)

Yep cobalt Freudian typo, the symbol for copper is Cu on the periodic table.

 

[The Schwartz]

A humbucker-sized P90 might be what the doctor ordered. If your current pickup has a cover on it, you could try having it removed. Uncovered pickups, at least to me, sound a tad brighter.

 

[1234]

I was curious to know if anyone else finds that the neck pick-up on their Les Paul sounds muddy and if so, are there any other things you've tried that helped, besides replacing the pickups.

I have an 87 LPC, with 1980 T-Tops in it. When I first got it, I found both pickups sounded really muddy. I checked the pots and they were 300k pots, so I swapped them out for 550K CTS pots. That made a huge difference for the bridge pickup, but the neck pickup still sounds muddy. I've experimented with pickup height, pole height, etc., and it still sounds muddy. It's currently wired using the 50's style wiring configuration.

I've done quite a few searches on the Internet and it seems to be a fairly common issue. While I was searching, I came across this solution on the Seymour Duncan website and I was going to give it a shot...it's a simple mod. I have a .05 ceramic cap, which should be close enough.

https://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/tips-and-tricks/mod-squad-muddy-sounding-neck-pickup

I'm a bit late to this one but here goes...
My Les Paul Custom had that 498T/R combination.
I found the bridge pickup a bit too middy, replaced it with Burstbucker 3, similar output, but I like it better.
As for the neck, terribly muddy, same as you.
I got a DiMarzio Humbucker from Hell put in there and it did the job.
You can read what it's for on the website,
Despite its name, it's not one of them macho metal pickups.
On mine, still sounds like a neck pickup, but got rid of the mud.