adjustable pole pieces?

[jacolyte]

hello, board; i'm a new member and this is my first post.

i just bought a new 4003 (s/n 08 17560); it's the 5th rick bass i've had in my 30+ year career. the last time i bought one must be 15 years ago, though, and i've noticed a few subtle differences from what i was used to.

my bass suffers from uneven volume across the strings, such that the E and G strings are rather quieter than the A and D. apparently, judging from a few posts i found in the archives, this is not an uncommon problem.

what i'm particularly curious about, therefore, is whether the polepieces are truly adjustable. my old 4001s and 4003s (dating between 1978 and about 1993) had what i'll "mushroom-style" polepieces; they had unbroken roughly hemispherical heads and didn't seem to be adjustable at all. the polepieces on the new 4003 have hex-key (allen wrench, whatever) holes in them, which suggests that they might be adjustable, but i'd hate to tweak one and find out it was epoxied in place or something.

i searched the archives, but didn't find a definitive answer to this; please forgive me if i'm raising a question which has already been answered.

thanks!

- jacolyte

p.s. there's also a tremendous difference between the two pickups' output levels, but i'm not especially bothered about that - who needs that neck pickup anyway.

[rickenbrother]

Pete, welcome to the forum. Your new bass should definitely have the adjustable pole pieces. Look at the tops of the polepieces and you'll see hex key holes.
Adjust the polepieces with an Allen key to the you the output you are looking for. Sometimes you might have to adjust the overall pickup height to get the desired output.

The bridge pickup has more travel room than the neck pickup, so it might be closer to the strings than the neck pickup is, which gives it more output.
You can try to raise the neck pickup if you want, but don't force the screws once they get more difficult to turn because the pickup has reached the end of it's travel room. Forcing the screws might crack the pickguard.