What you're describing doesn't sound like just a bright/dark thing to me, and that's why EQ adjustments don't fix it, or at least don't do exactly what you expect. In my limited experience, neither does changing pickups.
I'm not trying to discourage you - experiment to you heart's content, and if you wind up with something you like...that's awesome. I'm also extrapolating a bit...I don't have a Custom 24 to play with.
But...I've had a similar experience with my 594, especially "compared" to my Les Paul. Which the internet says should sound extremely similar. They're both LP-ish, and they both have SD PAF clones...in the past, they both had Seth Lovers (the LP has different SD PAF clones now). The pickup positions along the string are different, which obviously changes things.
The nut, fret, and saddle materials and the fret size are all different...species of wood are the same, but the details are different. Finish is different. Etc.. All those things should be responsible for none to little of the difference, according to most of the internet.
The pickup positions alone might be responsible for what I'm hearing. Or not. I don't know.
What I do know, from doing something else and having a spectrum analyzer running while I was playing the other day....is that the overtone series that each guitar creates is very different.
The overtone series (the magnitude balance between different overtones of the fundamental(s) you're playing) are what's responsible for making one thing sound different from another when you're playing the same note. E.g., if you use a brickwall low pass filter just over the fundamental, you can make a guitar and a piano both sound basically like a sine wave synth, at least in terms of timbre (not envelope). That statement is not arguable.
What I noticed from seeing the spectrum analyzer out of the corner of my eye (and then actively watching it) is that (played clean) the 594 creates a very strong 1st overtone (louder than the fundamental - very common with electric guitars), and a good bit of 2nd and less 3rd overtones...and then the strength of subsequent ones dies off very quickly. This happens all up and down the neck.
My Les Paul, OTOH, creates an overtone series very similar for the first few, but the higher overtones are a lot louder. It looks like it's putting out more high end, and in a sense it is. But, it's because of the extended overtone series.
The fundamentals of guitars only go up to ~1.2k (for the high note on a 24-fret in standard tuning). Everything higher is overtones (and if you're playing clean, they come from the guitar).
Now....why these particular guitars are creating such different overtone series....that I don't know. But, they are. And that's why they sound different.
The effect is that a lot of of the high end on the 594 is created in the amp (when it's running dirty or at least not actually clean). Boosting high-end on the way in won't really make it sound like a bright Les Paul (not that I want it to).
I think that the effect of it not generating high overtones is responsible both for why people say PRSs lack soul (they literally sound less different from a pure sine wave than many other guitars) and why people who don't dislike them say they sound very "hifi" - they won't create the same intermodulation products when the amp is running dirty....it'll be a "cleaner" or "clearer" distortion sound, even when heavily distorted. That's also why the LP needs less gain to "scream" - the higher overtones from the guitar also distort, creating even more higher overtones, which is what we hear as distortion (along with flattening the envelope), and if nothing else, the PRS is going to create neither the high overtones nor the intermodulation products they create when you're playing dirty. The PRS will need more gain to "scream" as much, and that'll be true whether it's louder or not....and it'll never be "the same" unless you're running such high-gain that the amp basically turns everything into a square wave (which is what it actually takes for Glenn Fricker to be right that nothing matters except the speaker).
And it seems like you can't change it that much with changing pickups.
Experiment all you want. You may find something you like. But, you might end up just not liking the guitar. Until you dig into the details, PRSs don't make sense - it seems like they all "sound dark" even when they don't actually sound dark.
I kinda like it for my 594. It's better at high-gain than my LP....but I don't actually play high gain except for funzies. So, that doesn't matter to me. It's also a more "pure" sounding clean tone that I kind of like, though it's not "bright" like a strat clean, not at all. It's got its own thing going on despite them claiming it was supposed to be an "updated" LP designed by Ted McCarty. But, it's not a LP replacement. If that's what I'd wanted...I would have sold it by now.
When I saw (evidence of) that overtone series on the meter...all my feelings/judgements about my 594 suddenly made complete sense.
I'm not trying to discourage you - experiment to you heart's content, and if you wind up with something you like...that's awesome. I'm also extrapolating a bit...I don't have a Custom 24 to play with.
But...I've had a similar experience with my 594, especially "compared" to my Les Paul. Which the internet says should sound extremely similar. They're both LP-ish, and they both have SD PAF clones...in the past, they both had Seth Lovers (the LP has different SD PAF clones now). The pickup positions along the string are different, which obviously changes things.
The nut, fret, and saddle materials and the fret size are all different...species of wood are the same, but the details are different. Finish is different. Etc.. All those things should be responsible for none to little of the difference, according to most of the internet.
The pickup positions alone might be responsible for what I'm hearing. Or not. I don't know.
What I do know, from doing something else and having a spectrum analyzer running while I was playing the other day....is that the overtone series that each guitar creates is very different.
The overtone series (the magnitude balance between different overtones of the fundamental(s) you're playing) are what's responsible for making one thing sound different from another when you're playing the same note. E.g., if you use a brickwall low pass filter just over the fundamental, you can make a guitar and a piano both sound basically like a sine wave synth, at least in terms of timbre (not envelope). That statement is not arguable.
What I noticed from seeing the spectrum analyzer out of the corner of my eye (and then actively watching it) is that (played clean) the 594 creates a very strong 1st overtone (louder than the fundamental - very common with electric guitars), and a good bit of 2nd and less 3rd overtones...and then the strength of subsequent ones dies off very quickly. This happens all up and down the neck.
My Les Paul, OTOH, creates an overtone series very similar for the first few, but the higher overtones are a lot louder. It looks like it's putting out more high end, and in a sense it is. But, it's because of the extended overtone series.
The fundamentals of guitars only go up to ~1.2k (for the high note on a 24-fret in standard tuning). Everything higher is overtones (and if you're playing clean, they come from the guitar).
Now....why these particular guitars are creating such different overtone series....that I don't know. But, they are. And that's why they sound different.
The effect is that a lot of of the high end on the 594 is created in the amp (when it's running dirty or at least not actually clean). Boosting high-end on the way in won't really make it sound like a bright Les Paul (not that I want it to).
I think that the effect of it not generating high overtones is responsible both for why people say PRSs lack soul (they literally sound less different from a pure sine wave than many other guitars) and why people who don't dislike them say they sound very "hifi" - they won't create the same intermodulation products when the amp is running dirty....it'll be a "cleaner" or "clearer" distortion sound, even when heavily distorted. That's also why the LP needs less gain to "scream" - the higher overtones from the guitar also distort, creating even more higher overtones, which is what we hear as distortion (along with flattening the envelope), and if nothing else, the PRS is going to create neither the high overtones nor the intermodulation products they create when you're playing dirty. The PRS will need more gain to "scream" as much, and that'll be true whether it's louder or not....and it'll never be "the same" unless you're running such high-gain that the amp basically turns everything into a square wave (which is what it actually takes for Glenn Fricker to be right that nothing matters except the speaker).
And it seems like you can't change it that much with changing pickups.
Experiment all you want. You may find something you like. But, you might end up just not liking the guitar. Until you dig into the details, PRSs don't make sense - it seems like they all "sound dark" even when they don't actually sound dark.
I kinda like it for my 594. It's better at high-gain than my LP....but I don't actually play high gain except for funzies. So, that doesn't matter to me. It's also a more "pure" sounding clean tone that I kind of like, though it's not "bright" like a strat clean, not at all. It's got its own thing going on despite them claiming it was supposed to be an "updated" LP designed by Ted McCarty. But, it's not a LP replacement. If that's what I'd wanted...I would have sold it by now.
When I saw (evidence of) that overtone series on the meter...all my feelings/judgements about my 594 suddenly made complete sense.
but if you think the Thornbuckers are a bad call for somebody like me, I am all ears.