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Today I put my Japanese Excellent 65 and Super Custom 64 against my US 71 post Ventures model to see how they stacked up against each other.The clear winner was the Ex 65 believe it or not.Played through a clean channel it had a bigger, louder sound by quite a margin.Very odd when you consider the 65 is the lowest priced Japanese model and I paid $1250 Australian for it while the higher end SC64 cost $2150 Aus and the 71 was $2500 Aus second hand.Figure that one out.

Interesting. Are all the guitars set up the same - ie string gauge, pickup height? Have you measured the resistance of the pickups? I'd be curious which guitar has the highest output and if that's the major factor here.

mosman wrote:Today I put my Japanese Excellent 65 and Super Custom 64 against my US 71 post Ventures model to see how they stacked up against each other.The clear winner was the Ex 65 believe it or not.

Not surprised by this at all. My Excellent 65 is my #1 stage guitar for a good reason: it sounds fantastic.
I tried a bunch of Japanese Mosrites before I bought the Excellent, and it was the only one that really sounded like the old Mosrite I used to have.

Hey Zak, I can't figure out why the higher end SC 64 doesn't stack up so well against the Ex65.I actually sold a 65 last year to help pay for the SC64, figuring the 64 would have the better sound.I wish I'd kept it now.

All I know is that the 65 comes with something Mosrite Japan calls "L2000" pickups, and the more expensive models come with "L3200" or "L4000" pickups, depending on the model. I always assumed that the other pickups were wound hotter, but I may be totally mistaken here.
There is always the possibility that your Super Custom is a dud.

This may seem obvious, but are the pickups on both guitars the same distance from the strings? If not, that may be a big factor.

Hey, for what it's worth, check the value of the volume potentiometer on the SC. My excellent 65 had 250K pots and didn't sound right. I installed a 1M volume pot and it came alive. Apparently most excellents have 500K pots, but mine at least didn't so it might be worth a look to see if that's the bottleneck.