Guitar Gear Forum

Happy Easter to all. So I have a early 90's Fernandes HSS strat, which I replaced the factory bridge pup with a DiMarzio SD about 8 or 9 years ago. The electronics are all original. If I remember correctly, I eliminated the tone pot from the bridge pup circuit. I decided to bring it back into rotation after sitting on a wall hanger for a year or so. The guitar used to sound badass, but it sounded very nasal, plinky, and the output seemed to be lacking. I was going to bring it to last night's gig with my new 5150III, but I couldn't digest the tone. To make sure it wasn't the amp since I never really got much acquainted with it, I plugged in another strat with an EMG 85 in the bridge, and an Edwards LP with a JB in the bridge. Both sounded full, beefy, and had a lot more compression with high gain. Possible failing volume pot?

My money is on the switch failing/dirty. Volume pots usually don’t fail.

Do all of the pickups sound bad?

To be fair, the neck pup is a factory single coil, and I lower the middle one flush with the pick guard because it gets in my way. Hard to compare with them.

The SD in my SG is wired with two extra toggle switches: one is a split coil and I can't remember what the other does... maybe it's a phase switch?

Just spitballIng here but...
If it sounds nasally, maybe it was accidentally wired in with the phase is reversed?