Useless Rick neck PUP

[Gastambide]

I have an '84 Ric 4003, which I had Bartolini pickups put into years ago (passive). On the recommendation of Bill Bartolini, himself, I put the bridge pup in the neck position, and vice-versa. Ever since, the neck pup sounds horrendous! Nothing but mud. (Imagine the worst hollow bodied, 60's bass with flatwound strings and the tone rolled completely off! Yeah, it's that bad.) The pickup is virtually uselss, therefore I play with only the bridge pickup (single coil), and try to boost bass in the EQ or pre-amp. I am wondering if something could have been wired wrong when the job was done that would yield such a poor tone? One thing I will admit to doing (which may have been a bad idea at the time) was to file the corners of that pickup down a little in order to make it fit into the chrome pup surround from the stock pickup. I don't think I got into the windings, but thought it might be worth mentioning. Anyways, the pickup has equivalent output compared to the other...it just has the muddiest, least defined, punch-weak tone imaginable.

Any suggestions?

 

[Petary791]

Hey I can't help you but may I ask why the reccomendation is to put the neck one in the bridge and bridge in neck?

 

[Gastambide]

The idea was to supposedly get a brighter sound, by putting the neck pickup (which is a single coil) in the bridge position. Apparently folks at Bartolini discovered this was actually more desirable than their original plan for some players.

 

[pkr2]

Did it ever work right?

It sort of sounds like the wires may be crossed from the pup.
I' not sure that I'd trust the colors to be right. Probably be better just to swap them .

 

[keb]

I had Barts for awhile in my Rick. Maybe the specs on those pickups have changed over the years (I bought mine maybe a year, year and a half ago), as the neck pickup in my set was a split coil humbucker (basically a P pickup inside a soapbar.) It is brighter than the bridge pickup (a dual coil humbucker.) I tried reversing the pickups once, and while the neck pickup in the bridge position was fine, the bridge pickup in the neck position was a little boomy, but it wasn't into EB-0 sea of mud territory. Still, it sounded a little unbalanced.