Jazzmaster PU Sound Help

[min7b5]

Howdy all,

I just got around to redoing my JMJM and i opt with a pair of curtis novaks (CN confirmed these resistances are good).
Neck: JM-V (7.92k)
Bridge: JM-FAT (5.67k)

I have an issue though where to be the bridge sounds tinny and the neck sounds fat
There is also a major level output difference as well.

I checked the wiring and it all seems good.
3-way selector

Up-7.92k
Mid-3.3k
Down-5.67k

Does anyone else have experience with these pickups and can help out on heights?

Also, since I was going from a JMJM, I needed to add a second piece of foam under the neck PU, but could it be possible i need foam under the bridge to raise it even higher. Since the stock JMJM pu's were thicker, more foam is required for the JM-V.

Any would be appreciated. It's not what I was expecting tonally as it seems backwards.

[Danley]

Even Jazzmaster pickups with more ‘spread’ between bridge and neck DCR (Squier or the Duncan Hot set) tend to balance best with the bridge set much closer to the strings than the neck pickup. Something causes the Jazzmaster neck position to just sound monstrous in my experience, compared to the bridge.

[jvin248]

.

Pickup heights matter, even 1/8th inch can make good/bad.

Find the youtube videos 'joe walsh gibsonuk setup' #5 and #6 where he sets pickup heights by ear. Different guitar and different pickups but the process is the same.

.

[solfege]

Something is wrong with that bridge pickup. It should have more DCR than the neck not less.

[min7b5]

Something is wrong with that bridge pickup. It should have more DCR than the neck not less.

Not the case. It's what I thought normally as that is convention. But curtis has said that the bridge pickup uses larger wire gauge and different construction, which is why the resistance is lower.

That said it still seems odd to me.
I just measured the heights after levelling them for equal volume and I'm at
Neck : 8 mm from bottom of string
Bridge : 5mm

Do these heights seem normal? There is such a huge did difference in height that I'm not used to.


Edit : these were not taken by pressing down the strings at the last fret. Though they still seem odd

[solfege]

OK, trust Curtis.

The 8 and 5 thing does not seem out of whack. Typically the bridge is a fair bit higher, especially not doing the last fret thing. The Novak FATs might not need to be as high as typical JM bridge pickups, but your ears are what matter here.

[andy_tchp]

I usually have the bridge pickup almost touching the strings, and the neck pickup wherever it sounds best.

They never have the perceived sound of being 'equal output', it's just the nature of where the pickups are located and the huge amount of bottom end picked up/produced by the neck pickup hitting your amp, compared with the near-absence of bottom end produced by the bridge pickup - the string physically just doesn't vibrate that much there.

(And there's more to pickup output than DCR measured on a multimeter.)

[Rgand]

I find that the bridge pickup needs to be somewhat closer to the strrings. These pickups are a good example of that. I just adjust heights until they sound right together.

[Shadoweclipse13]

Any updates with this? Figure it out?

[min7b5]

I think I've got something that makes me happy. I set the neck pickup almost perfectly flush with the pickgaurd and have the bridge close to the strings, but not close enough to where it seems very harsh.
The outputs are pretty equal in this position.
Treble and bass side I can't really tweak. I'll have to get better foam underneath to do something like that, but I don't think it's a big deal.

Has anyone experimented with springs underneath? Only foam seems like a very poor way to mount the pickups, no?

[Embenny]

I think Stewmac is selling foam that has built-in springs, but I've usually gone with regular foam on offsets, other than Mustangs (just regular rubber tubes or springs a la strat since they're pickguard-mounted).

I just want to chime in to confirm that it's absolutely normal for the JM-FAT to be lower DCR. It uses a lower gauge (thicker) wire, which has a lower resistance per given length/number of turns. It's the same reason something like a Hot Rails can have a resistance of 14k in the footprint of a strat pickup, by using a smaller wire with higher resistance per turn. That's one of the many reasons that you can't just compared DC resistance between two pickups to guess their respective outputs.

The JM-FAT is indeed higher-output and bassier than a vintage-style JM pickup, but not dramatically so. Just enough to make the imbalance between tonality of neck and bridge a bit less severe.

My experience with JM pickups has been that the amp makes a huge difference to how "imbalanced" the pickups seem to be. The reason is that a neck JM pickup outputs a TON of bass. If you have an amp/speaker with a higher bass cutoff frequency, you notice this less. When you have an amp with thunderous low end, it can become distracting and cause serious problems.

I run a digital rig these days and run a high-pass filter to cut out the true bass frequencies that cause issues with live or recorded mixes (where you're just stepping on the toes of the bass, kick drums, and toms) and don't struggle nearly as much with balancing neck and bridge pickups anymore. I had one "JM-in-a-HB-size" type pickup in one of my Gretsches that used to be just impossible to balance with the bridge pickup because that pickup/guitar combo was putting out serious bass through my half-stack.

TLDR: An EQ pedal/high-pass filter set inthe 70-150Hz range (depending on what instruments you're playing with) can make a dramatic difference in fixing this problem, but is often overlooked.