How to decrease the lows?

yeah, so, as many of you know (since I've been bragging a little bit about it, sorry!) I have recently gotten a new gibson sg. and I love it, however, when I'm playing, I'll be using the neck pickup (gibson 490R), and love the tone of it, then I switch to the bridge pickup (gibson 490T), and it's really bass-ey, it has a lot of low end, too much for my tastes. and I have the the tone knob on the neck pickup at about 5 or 6, and I love the tone, and on the bridge pickup I have the tone knob cranked all the way to the treble side, and it's still too bassy. also, it's really not any hotter then the neck pickup... would increasing/decreasing the pickup height help solve any of this? I just want it to either have less bass, or more treble/upper mids. should I consider getting the 498T pickup, which according to the gibson website has a higher output, and an increase in highs/upper mids... apparently due to the Alnico V magnets rather then the Alnico II's that I have. which leads me to another question I had, what are the benefits and flaws of the different kinds of pickup magnets? (Ceramic, Alnico II, and Alnico V) I'm just curious on that...

i would imagine magnets are to pickups what engines are to cars, at least that's what i remmember from physics in school, however, i skipped school alot, so you should probably get a second opinion on this one :p

Try moving the pickup away from the strings. It may just decrease everything. If that doesn't work try angling the pickup with the bass strings further from the PU than the top strings.

If that doesn't work you can use a bluesy distortion stomp box to add a little top end / turn down the bottom end with out adding any extra distortion.

What all Doc said is good advice as far as trying to fix your problem...

As far as pickups go... Your pickups probably have about the same output levels. The bridge may be slightly hotter by a few Hertz. Not hot enough for you to really tell the difference though. You may have to consider changing it out to get the tone that you want...

Now for the difference in magnets...The most common magnet types are alnico (a composite made of Aluminum, Nickel, and Cobalt) and ceramic. There are also different types of alnico, the most common being alnico 2 and alnico V (5). In general, pickups made with alnico 5 tend to have the warmest, “sweetest” tone. This is definitely contributing to your problems... Alnico 2 pickups will have more upper range frequencies, producing a slightly brighter, punchier tone. Ceramic magnet pickups often have the most output, and tend to have a harsher, more biting tone. This is because ceramic magnets are typically much stronger than their alnico counterparts. “Distortion” or “overdriven” pickups are nearly always made with ceramic magnets. There are plenty of exceptions to all this. Pickups made with Alnico can be engineered to have a harsh growl to them, while pickups with ceramic magnets can be made to produce a softer tone. So, Alnico 5 pickups can be modified to be brighter... usually they do this by wrapping an extra thousand or so more wire wraps around it to boost the output. You most likely won't find someone in your area that wuold want to do this for you though... haha. I would suggest trying out all that Doc said... then as a last resort look into the other Gibson humbuckers that are slightly hotter and that have either an Alnico 2 or Ceramic magnet. Hope this helps.

Good stuff aschleman, I never knew any of that.. How can you find out which type of magnet is in your pups?

Well, if you know what kind of pickups you have you can simply look up the manufacterer specs and the internet. They should tell the output levels, the resitance levels, inductance, along with what type of magnet they used. Sometimes you can tell just by listening to the tone of the pickups at a clean level. Like I said the Alnico 2 is brighter, the 5 is warmer and the Ceramics are slightly brighter with a touch of natural overdrive. But they can get tricky because they use the different overwound/underwound techniques to get varied tone... such as... The Texas Special Fender pickups are nothing more than an over wound Alnico 5. This gives it it's fat, yet biting tone. And if you heard them you would probably think they're either a ceramic or Alnico 2... But if you played an overwound Alnico 5 next to a standard wound Alnico 2, they will still sound different. So this is where pickup companies and guitar companies get the varied tones in their pickups. Just look around for what type of pickups are in your guitar and then try to find the specs for those pickups. They shouldn't be hard to find.

but the thing is, I already have alnico 2's! oh well, I'll try what Dr. Simon said, and decrease the pickup height, and if that still doesn't work, then I'll try changing out the pickup (later on, I can't afford to right now) and if that still doesn't work, then I'll get an eq pedal, and just flip that on when I switch to the bridge pickup.

I just put a Dimarzio Tone Zone in the bridge postiton of my SG. Sounds great, wish I had done it sooner. Might want to check into this pup as an alternative....