Too much bass

[Christian Short]

It has been a long time since i posted here. But I have been reading and following this forum for some years now.
Maybe this topic has come along before, but I cant seem to find it in the archive.

My tele, wich I built myself is sounding a little to heavy on the bass side.
Can I fix this in an easy way? Maybe put another capacitor in it?

[Greg Robinson]

Hi Christian,
What's your electronics setup as is?
You could add a high pass cap, but Tele's and Tele pickups are not normally known for being overly bass-y, quite the opposite. There may be something wrong.

[Mark Swanson]

Yes, we need more information please. Have you tried bypassing your controls and running the pickup directly to your amp? If you do that and the sound is right then something is wrong with your wiring.

[Nick Middleton]

It sounds like it could be as simple as the pickup being too close to the strings on the bass-side, or the treble-side not high enough causing a muddy-tone.

Can you give us a measurement of the gap between the top of the pickups to the bottom of the strings when pressing the strings down at the last fret of the neck?

Do this for both pickups and for the High & Low E-strings.

[David King]

If you have a brass cover on one of the pickups that can really dull down the tone. This was done on purpose because the pickups tended to the bright side.

[Christian Short]

Thanx for the quick responses guys.
Electronics setup is 250k volume and tone pots, 0.22uf capacitor, 3-way selector switch.
Gap between string and pickups:
Low E to bridge pickup 3mm
High E to neck pickup 2.5mm
Low E to bridge pickup 3mm
High E to neck pickup 2.5mm
Hope this is all ok.
It is A thinline tele with Iroko/Kambala body. Maybe a factor in the overall sound?
I will try to hook it up with the amp passing by the guitars electronics circuit this weekend.

[Mark Swanson]

Make sure that when you do that test, the pickup(s) are completely disconnected from the rest of the electronics, just straight to the amp. If it still sounds bad then you have bad pickups or a bad amp.

[David King]

Cheap cables are notorious for high cable capacitance. Cables can be a significant part of your overall sound.
I make all my cables from Canare quad4 microphone cable which has 4 separate conductors and a very solid wrapped shield. The other benefit of using this stuff is that it can handle speaker level amperage. Of course it's fantastic balanced mic cable too.

[Christian Short]

I did the pickuptest this weekend, and it seems that the problem lies there.
Thanks to all for the tips.