Level out Eclipse neck pickup?

[mrjamiam]

I have new pickups in my Eclipse, yay me!  The bridge is sounding great (to me; all tone is subjective of course) but I think the neck needs some tweaking.  I did some reading about Firebird pickups in Firebirds, and folks say that they are sensitive to their angle to the strings.  Manipulating the pickup with my fingers while ringing the strings does seem to bear this out - I think they sound fuller when (close to) parallel to the strings.  Using the stock shiny metal rings on the Eclipse, the neck pickup is definitely slanted at an angle to the strings, with the high side next to the fretboard.  The rings are just flat pieces of metal, not built up asymmetrically like most full-size humbucker rings.  Stuffing plastic foam under the bridge side of the neck pickup helps to level it out some, but it's still off.  I suppose that I could look at shimming the bridge side of the neck pickup ring to raise it a bit and level it out with respect to the strings.  Has anyone done this?  Or are there other solutions?

[Caddie]

call murkat. He helped me fix that problem on my Eclipse with a very simple rewire. Unsolder a wire from wire lug C, resolder it to lug B.  I am totally soldering impaired but even numbnuts here was successful.  I cannot recall precisely what he told me to do.  Even if I did remember I could tell ya but I'd have to kill ya. I don't want to kill ya, but its an HFC rule.  Contact murkat, he's a super delegate here at the HFC, murkat is not obligated to kill ya.  He's an HFC Elite!

Cheers!

caddie

[carfish7]

I had this issue with a Burny from the olden days. Turns out the metal PU cover was soldered on there at an angle. Of course, that was obvious when the pickup was out and I could view the bottom. It gave the appearance of the entire pickup leaning but this was not the case.

[BadgerDave]

I usually find that the cause of slanted pickups in flat rings is a tight output wire pulling the base of the pickup down on the side of the connection.  You might try giving it some slack in the pickup cavity and then adjusting as necessary with a foam shim if you want to add forward lean.

You can also get unwanted lean if the pickup mounting springs are too long - they compress too tightly and/or budge out forcing the pickup to twist forward or backward.  Mounting springs are often much too long.

[Victor (Fret Friend)]

I got the same problem on the bridge pick-up in my Firebird! I've put some layers of bent card under it for now but it's not an ideal fix as it's now static and non-adjustable...

[aknapp]

1 hour ago, BadgerDave said:

I usually find that the cause of slanted pickups in flat rings is a tight output wire pulling the base of the pickup down on the side of the connection.  You might try giving it some slack in the pickup cavity and then adjusting as necessary with a foam shim if you want to add forward lean.

You can also get unwanted lean if the pickup mounting springs are too long - they compress too tightly and/or budge out forcing the pickup to twist forward or backward.  Mounting springs are often much too long.

Good call.