J pickup.... string balance issue

I have a 1997 Ibanez active SR800 with the P/J pickup setup.

I cannot get the bridge J pickup to balance evenly across the strings....the 'E' is always a bit louder....of course I see no way to individually adjust polepieces because the J pickup is covered anyway.

What should I do to try to get the J not so loud on the 'E' string?

The P neck pickup balances perfectly because it can be adjusted moreso than the J pickup.

 

I've already done this......the 'E' continues to sound louder than the 'A' no matter how far I drop it.

I agree flat poles don't seem to make sense in this respect but I have no problem with my 72 Musicmaster bass balancing or my 85 Peavey Foundation which has the Super Ferrites set up like a J bass.

I guess there is the possibility the 'A' string is somehow at fault being weaker?

I got to thinking......maybe the pickup itself is not adjusting when I adjust it because it has a cover......you know, only the cover is adjusting properly?

 

Walter, the E string can be lowered enough that it is not as loud as the D and G string....I can even get the E to BALANCE with the D and G string but at THAT point the A is still softer than the E and a bit softer than the D & G.

The A overall is not as loud with the strings adjusted following the curvature of the board.

The EQ is set flat on guitar and amp.....even with EQ adjustment which I tried out of desperation the E is louder than the A

Follow me?

When I get the E to balance with the D & G the A string is softer in volume than all of them.

I have tried raising the E string way high and it FINALLY balances in volume but it is higher than I have ever set an E string at that point....I always try to follow the curvature of the fingerboard to set string height....in this case the E needs to be higher than normal to get even close to even in volume.

 

Yes, they are active and I've heard great things on the Dimarzio area J pickups.....but....

I decided to raise the pickups as high as possible when I discovered they would not stay in place adjusted very high.

So...I pulled the strings and pulled the pickups, which have foam underneath, but I needed to add a bit more foam as the stock foam wasn't tall enough to allow the pickups to stay adjusted higher.

I put it all back together.......first thing I noticed with the pickups higher it is QUITE A BIT louder but not too compressed and mushy or gainy......whoever adjusted the pickups before had them up as far as they would go with the factory foam (I recently got this bass)... now they will sit closer to the strings with the added foam.

Guess what? NOW the J pickup is more even across the strings after much string height adjustment!

Apparently the factory foam compressed under the pickups just enough where the pickups would not sit close enough to the strings.

The G string seems close to the pickup but sounds fine....there seems to be a narrow range of where these pickups can sit under the strings.

Its too late to really crank the bass up but it sounds more balanced....I will know more tomorrow.

 

Yes!

I had no idea the active pickups needed to be that close to the strings but I am a newbie to the bass world coming from the guitar world.

It appears the added foam was the solution.

 

I don't know if EMG made or designed these pickups or not.

I still have the E string raised individually a bit more than I like, but I managed to get it pretty well balanced.

Definitely many pickups have more magnetic pull....fully charged A5 magnet types whereas A2 are normally softer magnetic field.

The Duncan SPB-2 Hot P bass pickup definitely does not like to be too close to the strings or it gets mushy.