Pickup Levels Neck Vs Bridge

[hessodreamy]

Have been experimenting with various different pickups on different guitars. I've put a couple of humuckers on my strat in neck and bridge position, and changed the wiring so you can have neck and bridge on, in parrallel.

Although the neck pickup is a little quieter than the bridge, when I switch them both on, the tone output is pretty much that of the mellow neck pickup, and I have to turn it down more in order to get a proper blend, leaving the neck pickup really quiet when on its own.

Is this normal? Is it just a matter of pickup matching or is there something I can do about it? On my LP style guitar i dont have this problem and get a good blend really easily.

Any ideas?

[thedoctor]

If you could, tell us what switch setup you are using. There may be a solution depending on the switch.

[hessodreamy]

The neck and bridge pickups are wired to a 3way LP style switch. Each has a coil tap to an on-off switch. Middle pickup is selected with another on off switch.

As I've had to cut the holes in the scratachplate to fit the humbuckers, is it possible that differences in pickup position (maybe half or 1 cm compared to a LP) could account for this? Only thing I can think of.

[Saber]

Lower output pickups generally also have lower coil resistance/impedance. When one is connected in parallel with a higher output pickup, its lower impedance acts as a load to the other pickup. So it's normal. It actually even happens with two identical pickups but to a much lesser extent that is hardly noticeable. That's why it's preferable not to have an immense difference in coil resistance if two pickups are used in parallel.