EBMM Stingray Special H . . . is this normal?

[PhinDog]

UPDATE: I don't have the new strings yet, so I can't report on that. But I adjusted the pickup height. Somebody in this bass's past did the standard Stingray fix. The G side of the pickup was 3.5mm below the string and the E side was 4mm below the string. Conventional wisdom would indicate that they did the right thing. But I wanted to test the hypothesis.

I looked up the factory spec. It's 4.76mm at the G string with the pickup on the same plane as the pick guard -- a whopping 1.26mm farther away than what was on my bass. So, I adjusted the pickup height to factory spec and . . . the results were pretty dramatic. Now, there's balance across all four strings. Huge improvement. And the tone on the D and G strings is vastly improved. Not perfect, but much improved. You can actually hear a musical note on 16th-note runs now. (Before, 16th notes on the G string were pretty indistinct. You could hear that you struck a string, but you couldn't pick out what note it was.) The strings still give off a kind of muffled or muted tone -- a little furry -- but I'm hopeful that a new set of strings will improve that somewhat.

Things moved in the right direction in a big way. Thanks for all the help!

Hey FlashBazbo! I realize this thread is old, hopefully I can re-ignite it a bit. I just did the same thing as you. I bought an unseen/played used Stingray Special 5 HH and it is acting the same way, except I am not getting much on the BEA strings. I did notice that the pickup is tilted down away from the low end strings. I'll start there. As well as some new strings. Every Stingray Special 5 I've played seemed to have such great even tone and this one just isn't doing it. I hope the great deal I got online doesn't mean it's going back.
How did yours come along? Did you end up keeping it or returning it?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Les Fret]

UPDATE: I don't have the new strings yet, so I can't report on that. But I adjusted the pickup height. Somebody in this bass's past did the standard Stingray fix. The G side of the pickup was 3.5mm below the string and the E side was 4mm below the string. Conventional wisdom would indicate that they did the right thing. But I wanted to test the hypothesis.

I looked up the factory spec. It's 4.76mm at the G string with the pickup on the same plane as the pick guard -- a whopping 1.26mm farther away than what was on my bass. So, I adjusted the pickup height to factory spec and . . . the results were pretty dramatic. Now, there's balance across all four strings. Huge improvement. And the tone on the D and G strings is vastly improved. Not perfect, but much improved. You can actually hear a musical note on 16th-note runs now. (Before, 16th notes on the G string were pretty indistinct. You could hear that you struck a string, but you couldn't pick out what note it was.) The strings still give off a kind of muffled or muted tone -- a little furry -- but I'm hopeful that a new set of strings will improve that somewhat.

Things moved in the right direction in a big way. Thanks for all the help!

Maybe it was the infamous string pull? Normally 1mm shouldn’t make that much difference though.