I can't tell you how many of my guitars I've sold because they didn't sound 'right' and I just couldn't FEEL them. My guess is some of that may have had to do with nut and saddle materials.
I never even considered the idea
Hey man, I hear ya. Now I'm not saying that was the case with you, but it may well have been.
How I assessed my situation was simple. The guitar sounded good unplugged, it also sounded decent with the stock humbucker that was in there. So since the main thing was a change of pickup, I knew I had to look at the other elements at play.
Well I stuck in a dp100 in place of the stock pickup, and suddenly it was bright, or brittle and had too much "bite" I guess. So this left me scratching my head, "dimarzio super distortion sound bad? what the hell??? This cannot be" So I changed pick material for that guitar. Instantly less bite. It just so happened that pick material I normally use is designed to give a bite and I suppose generate some trebel. But in a sweet way. Kinda like human nail. Anyways, using that type of pick on the bright/too much bitey sounding guitar is gonna sound.......................well too harsh!! So the answer? Use a softer sounding pick........................or change saddles to something less bright. In my case I changed pick
But in a bizare table of balance I can show you the results:
Guitar A - non steel saddles - Bright/Bite/Trebel Sounding Pick - dp100 = GOOD!
Guitar B - Steel Saddles - Bright/Bite/Trebel Sounding Pick - dp100 = BAD!
ok so......................
Guitar B - Steel Saddles - Nylon Softer Sounding/ Softer Attack Pick - dp100 = GOOD!
I realise I have gone full on guitar geek here and I also realise that my explanation is very basic but it gets my point across about material.
There are other factors at play, I mean I'm comparing two strat esque guitars here, but one is a full on strat and the other is a more "super strat". I'm pretty sure one is also basswood (superstrat)and one is alder (stratocaster). But this also supports the reason why one guitar is brighter than the other, basswood is darker sounding than alder as far as I know. Both have bolt on necks.
What I might do to the stratocaster is further darken it by adding a big sustain block. Can anyone tell me if a big block will have this effect? Making the tone bolder is darkening in my opinion. I have only ever added a big block to one guitar and it definitley darkened it, nearly too much.