Lollar Regal JM pups overdrive like crazy...

[greysun]

I can echo the sentiment above, but I also understand the desire for everything to work well in your signal chain without having to change things for different guitars. I suspect this is a modern day problem, and older players really just dealt with pickup differences as needed, if not embraced them. When people went from a strat to a les Paul, it probably meant that they *wanted* more breakup and didn’t expect beautiful clean tones, for example.

That's how I originally thought about it - that was just the "hot" guitar, but my pedals veer from overdrive to fuzz already, so I was never grabbing it even though I like its sound and love the guitar. Like you said: modern problem. And again - I haven't had that much experience with humbuckers... I've been a "single coil for life" guy forever, but lately I'm feeling like a change - there's something interesting about humbuckers in jazzmaster packages, cause they're not going to sound like JM pickups but they're also not going to sound like other classic humbuckers, so I'm secretly loving the experimentation - even if that means hiccups like this along the way, hehe.

With all that being said, the treble bleed should be all that you need if you’re ok having your normal volume on the guitar at 7-8 or so. Treble bleeds are really simple to install, and I don’t even desolder anything if putting it in a guitar that’s already wired up. It’s usually fine to just solder onto the top of the lugs rather than putting the treble bleed legs inside the lugs with the other wires. Hopefully that description makes sense.

I'll take a look at this - it might be the best of all the worlds so far. I do have other guitars that might have deeper routes, so that's always an option, but the thought of rewiring them all is... not cute.

Thank you, everyone who replied here - this was quite helpful. Really appreciate it!

[whatisdust]

Have you tried contacting Lollar Pickups about this issue you are having? I also wonder if there is something going on with your wiring that could be causing the distortion you are experiencing. The treble bleed isn’t going to help with the distortion, it will help clean up any muddiness that comes with turning down your volume control.

[alexpigment]

Have you tried contacting Lollar Pickups about this issue you are having? I also wonder if there is something going on with your wiring that could be causing the distortion you are experiencing. The treble bleed isn’t going to help with the distortion, it will help clean up any muddiness that comes with turning down your volume control.

I think you may have misread a few things in the thread. The pickups in question are hot (~11k), and so the same signal chain he uses for his other guitars (single coils) is resulting in an overdriven sound with the new pickups. He can't physically lower the pickups any further due to the cavity depth in the guitar. This overdrive goes away when he turns the volume knob down to 8, but that results in a loss of highs. Hence the recommendation for a treble bleed, assuming he's OK with using the volume knob around 8 to achieve a gain structure similar to what he's used to with his single coil guitars.

[Dr. Ooh]

100% you just need to dial in your settings differently.

If you’re used to lower output single coils, you just haven’t got used to dialing it in properly.

You’re never going to be able to switch from singles to wide range humbuckers without changing amp settings. When I switch from my jazzmaster with traditional pickups, to my
Jazzmaster with wide range, it’s just a totally different setting. And I can get super clean tones on all my fender amps.

Your amp is a little different than a standard deluxe, so start with the bright switch off, master all the way up, channel volume at like 2-3, bass 2-3, mids 5, treble 5, and adjust from there.

[greysun]

100% you just need to dial in your settings differently.

If you’re used to lower output single coils, you just haven’t got used to dialing it in properly.

You’re never going to be able to switch from singles to wide range humbuckers without changing amp settings. When I switch from my jazzmaster with traditional pickups, to my
Jazzmaster with wide range, it’s just a totally different setting. And I can get super clean tones on all my fender amps.

Your amp is a little different than a standard deluxe, so start with the bright switch off, master all the way up, channel volume at like 2-3, bass 2-3, mids 5, treble 5, and adjust from there.

Ooooh… I hadn’t given the bright switch a thought. I wonder if there’s potential there to flip it (though the sound is different, I might be able to make that work with these…) I’ll give that a quick shot!

[eternal learner]

I must agree with those that suggest a treble bleed and turn the guitar vol down. This is a relatively quick and $4 cheap thing to do and totally reversible if you don't like it.