Pick-up

[FLHX]

I have a 1990 Ibanez Radius 540r and the bridge pick-up sounds real muddy. If I run it through an eq it sounds better. Any ideas on a cleaner sounding pick-up I can put in it?

 

[deeaa]

I understand those pups are kinda warm sounding, but regarded rather good. If you are looking for absolutely most clarity and note separation, actives are the way to go IMO. I find all passive pups a little lacking in clarity department (except many single-coils but I prefer buckers). But I'd first check if bypassing tone controls/cap does anything to the sound. What do you add/cut with the EQ? Does it help any to adjust pickup height -lower the low end more, lower the mid polepieces a little?

Pretty impossible to recommend a pickup really for an unknown guitar...it can be a hit and miss affair...and by and large changing to similar type pickup IMO rarely makes very much difference.
Seymour Duncan has pretty extensive tone charts/example clips on their site.

 

[FLHX]

I've tried lowering the PU. With the eq I just raise the highs and keep the mids and low's at 0.

 

[Bookkeeper's Son]

I'm in agreement with Dee when he said, "by and large changing to similar type pickup IMO rarely makes very much difference". That said, perhaps a humbucker-size P90 would brighten things up. I replaced a hot bridge humbucker on my Epiphone Dot Studio with a GFS Mean 90, and it is considerably brighter and cleaner.

 

[Duffy]

What are you using as an amp? You might want to try a different amp. Also, you may want to check the strings - are they old?

Did you buy that guitar second hand? It is possible someone could have stripped out the decent bridge pickup and replaced it with something they were trying to get rid of. This type of shaky-ness isn't unheard of.