It appears that the Franz repros on the NS X175's, Aristocrats, etc have the same output on both neck and bridge pu's....which means all things being equal, the neck pu is going to be louder. My tech guy did a great job dialing the pu's in. He dropped the poles on the neck pu down flush with the cover, then only raised any poles just enough to get volume balance between the strings. He basically did the same with the bridge pu, but instead of dropping the poles flush with the cover, they are slightly higher at the lowest point and then slightly raised to attain string volume balance. That gets them very close and simply setting the volume on the bridge pu a half step higher than the neck pu creates a perfect balance. I was fortunate that the fret crowns were all level on the guitar. However, the nut slots were a bit high and needed attention to gain maximum playability. The guitar is strung with DR Blues Pure Nickels 10-46's, with the action set at 4/64ths on the low E @ the 12th fret and a hair lower on the the high E @ the 12th fret with just a slight amount of relief. Even with 10-46's, I can hit the strings pretty hard without buzz or rattle.