Les Paul deluxe pickup in my Ibanez GB10 is a failure

[davang55]

I have a 2015 GB10 and yeah it seems hotter than the one in a late 80s GB10 that I once had. I contacted Ibanez and they said it never changed. Ok....

The hotter pickup would cut through a mix better but I liked the old ones better.

HaHA it never changed! Well all you need is a cheap ohmmeter to disprove that. (They claim it's an "alnico" GB special, maybe but other sources differ.) Many of us have an aversion to ceramic PUs, myself included.
FWIW, the Kent Armstrong Hand Wound tapped single coil has 7 or 10K options. The 7 K is "woodier" or maybe just brighter. 10K is "darker" or fatter if you will. Both good. That's why there's tone/volume controls put on guitars and amps. I usually check my tone "direct to DAW" to get a baseline. I can't remember where I saw the post but someone said they turn the volume down about midway and also the tone down with these new pickups as a workaround. I'm the first to want to go out and replace pickups etc. but I'm gonna try like hell to use this approach.

I recently started wearing hearing aids because my hearing had deteriorated with a 20db cut at 3k and above so know I don't know what I'm hearing anymore! I usually turn down the hearing correction about 25% when I play guitar because everything sounds too metallic otherwise.

Jeff

[Cunamara]

I've been proselytizing using the volume knob as one of the main ways to adjust tone on these guitars for years. With my GB10 (1981), I usually run the volume knob at 4-5 and the tone knob to taste, in response to the different tones stack characteristics of the amp, the room, etc. The pickups have enough output that even with the volume knob low, output is still good enough. The tone is softer on the attack and some of the highs are rolled off that way; if I turn the volume knob on the guitar up to, say, 8 and then compensate by turning down the volume on the amp, I get a brighter poppier sound a la George Benson. By playing with the knobs, you can get a wide range of tones out of the GB10. It doesn't have to sound like George (although you sure could do worse)!

Ceramic versus Alnico? A pair of my best-sounding pickups have neodymium magnets in them (Wilde Microcoils for Tele)! The type of magnet is by no means the determinant of sound for a pickup. One may design and build a soft, dark, fat sounding ceramic magnet pickup or a sharp, bright, cutting Alnico magnet pickup. Inductance, capacitance, eddy currents, use of capacitors and/or resistors, etc., all play a determining role in tone besides the type of magnet.

ISTR Hammertone posted that he has some original 1981 GB10 pickups that he can sell; I really think mine are outstanding and would certainly recommend those to anyone looking for a great neck mounted floating pickup.