Epi LP pickup height.

[DECEMBER]

Yeah, I figured some of it had to do.with the design of the guitar. Probably the biggest factor is the short scale. I'm used a tight percussive bottom that I get from my teles bridge and. Ive pretty much figured out how to work around it. It does everything else so well I just play to it's strengths. It really is a great guitar.

Yeah, if you're used to single coils... Humbuckers do have a mushy bottom end, comparatively. I've had Gibson, a couple different Seymour Duncans, Epiphone, PRS, and ESP Designed LTD humbuckers and I just could not get down with the muddy flubby low end. The active ceramic made a big difference, but it really took that variable mid control to really dial out that muddiness. Now, whenever I play passive pickups, the first thing I think is "damn, I need that VMC to fix this!"
The pickups in the Modern should be better, but the Alnico Classic Pro set that came in my Epi LP Muse were the worst pickups I've ever had. So muddy, and the low end would distort on the clean channel, no matter how much gain. When it was my only guitar, I thought my amp was garbage, but I took it to the store and tried it thru $900 tube amps and it was the same. Not until I got another guitar and heard an actual clean tone thru my amp with it did I realize it was those pickups that were the problem.
I swapped them for SDs and it was so much better, and the split-coil mode sounded a whole lot better, too.
But, to me, the amount of improvement from stock -> SDs was the same as the improvement from SDs -> EMGs.

 

[DECEMBER]

You guys that want less mush and a more defined bass response might like to try a set of Ernie Ball Cobalt strings. They really tighten up the bass and especially with high gain.

Cool. I'm gonna try them. I found singles on StringsByMail.com. My set doesn't exist (54 38 28 20w 15 11). The smallest Cobalt they have is .022, so it'll have to just be the 3 bottom strings.

 

[3bolt79]

Cool. I'm gonna try them. I found singles on StringsByMail.com. My set doesn't exist (54 38 28 20w 15 11). The smallest Cobalt they have is .022, so it'll have to just be the 3 bottom strings.

I just got a new LP style Firefly. I strung it up with GHS 10-46 and the lower power chords were mushy. I had extra Cobat strings left over from an 11 string set that I robbed the trebles from. They were 26, 38, and 48.

I swapped out the wound strings and it made a huge difference. Power chords through my Mesa MK V 25 on that guitar are tight and grindy, just the way I like them.

 

[lpplayer]

I tend to set any humbuckers I have pretty low. They sound better to me that way. I just experiment until they are relatively equal in volume