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Permalink Reply by Clock The Wolf on December 9, 2012 at 12:33pm

What do you mean by third string? From heaviest to lightest, or the other way around...

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on December 10, 2012 at 7:43am

Whichever 3rd string it is (and I'm guessing one of the smaller diameter ones), is either

1) not aligned with a pole piece, e.g., is between pole pieces

Or

2) you have the entire pickup perfectly flat, and thus need to adjust it upward some on one side. This often happens when the thinner strings, which have less mass and surface area to disrupt the pickup's mag field, are not actually perturbing, or are doing so only slightly when struck, the pickup's mag field.

Or

3) it's a combination of those two.


I just "repaired" a beautiful Carver tiger maple burst jazz box with both lipstick and piezo rod pickups, for a friend. Piezo worked fine, lipstick gave no sound. Then I saw that the adjustment screws on the lipstick were cranked all the way in, lowering the pup nearly an inch below the strings. A few backing off turns on the screws, with a slightly more up angle under the thinner strings, and viola! Poor guy had let it sit in its case for two years because he couldn't get the lipstick pup to work, was convinced he'd bought a lemon.

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Permalink Reply by Urban Bill on December 11, 2012 at 8:41am

Sorry for the hijack, but the alignment of the poles always made me wonder why I see the 4 pole P-bass style pickups on 3 string guitars.  Guess it works well or otherwise no one would build 'em that way.

/unhijack

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Permalink Reply by Slowpaw Steve T on December 10, 2012 at 9:23pm

if your third string is the unwound thin one try upgrading it, like from a 10 to a 13 - it will cut through the mix! (-:

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