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I recently purchased a set of 57/62 pickups complete with wiring and scratch plate, (all set to drop into the guitar and to merely solder the jack plug in). I recently had a bit of a bad experience with AxesRus and one of their pickup assemblies where on receiving the assembly the vol knob had been put into the bridge tone position...when I eventually installed the bits all the selected pup variations were all wrong sound wise and so AxesRus took them back to inspect them. When I eventually got the assembly back I wasn't happy with the result and so gave it up as a bad job and hence the purchase of the 57/62s.

The 57/62 pole pieces on all three pups had been very low set on the 1st and 2nd string and the whole pickup had been adjusted to be sitting high on the scratch plate,(obviously to compensate for the inevetable drop in volume). After installation I set the treble side of the pups to be even higher in order to get somewhere near a decent volume on the first two strings- the third string now being a tad bit strong, however I'm pleased with the set as there are much more harmonics to hear and the bridge pup gives a good sound (to my ears)
I do wonder why Fender don't sort these anomalies out in this day and age instead of just leaving their pups as they were back in the day of 7.5" radius necks.

Incidentally I wouldn't call the 57/62s a 'modern' set of pups as they don't imitate the sounds you get from a current day Strat where you get a much ballsier sound from the inbetween positions- here the sounds are much more bassy.

It is normal to set Fender single-coil pickups - and for that matter, many other brands too - higher on the treble side than on the bass side. It's what you expect to see and is not usually regarded as a "fault".

The same certainly applies to Burns pickups. The only way to avoid the need for "height angling" would be to have individually-adjustable polepieces.

I set my 57/62s with the top of the cover the following heights above the scratchplate:

Neck pickup - bass side 1/16 inch, treble side 1/8.
Middle - 1/8 and 3/16.
Bridge - 3/16 and 1/4.

(For those of you who insist on using those silly French inches, that's 1.5, 3, 4.5 and 6mm.)

This gives me a perfect balance. I use 12-54 with a plain third - I find a wound third does sound a bit weak.

Apparently you can adjust the individual pole pieces by heating the pole pieces and pushing them into a different height, using a soldering iron for about 30 seconds- I wonder if anyone here has tried this...

Tigerdaisy wrote:Apparently you can adjust the individual pole pieces by heating the pole pieces and pushing them into a different height, using a soldering iron for about 30 seconds- I wonder if anyone here has tried this...

Fender Jaguar pickups used to allow movement, and even replacement and/or swapping around, of the polepiece magnets without going to such lengths.

Tigerdaisy wrote:Apparently you can adjust the individual pole pieces by heating the pole pieces and pushing them into a different height, using a soldering iron for about 30 seconds- I wonder if anyone here has tried this...

I have adjusted some modern pu's using that method. Most modern pu's have pole pieces inside a thin plastic sleeve and do not directly contact the windings. The soldering iron melts any wax after about 30 secs making it easier to push pole pieces. Of course you cannot know for sure , especially on old vintage pu's , so some risk has to be accepted if you want to do this. I did this on my G pole mainly on modern Fender Pu's and all was fine.

It is worth nothing that the original 57/62 pu's had a a DC resistance of about 5.7kohm , but Fender released a newer set notably on the Fender Classic Player Strat which have a DC rexitance of around 6kohm.

I had a 57 RI Strat with the original spec 5.7 kohm, but found the bridge a little thin, I now have the newer 6.k set and they seem much better.

Tigerdaisy wrote:Apparently you can adjust the individual pole pieces by heating the pole pieces and pushing them into a different height, using a soldering iron for about 30 seconds- I wonder if anyone here has tried this...

Hi Martin,
You can use that method on modern ceramic bar pick ups that have a plastic bobbin but I would not recommend doing it to decent pick ups that tend to have the windings in contact with the pole pieces. I have heated them up and even changed the pole pieces for alnico ones of differing lengths on cheap far eastern ceramic bar pick ups with good results, but like I said I would not try it on decent/valuable pick ups(not worth the risk). Hope this helps.
Cheers Phil.

Thanks for all the replies! Maybe I'll need to use a compressor to even out the volumes...

You can buy small neodymium circular magnets at 1, 2 or 3 mm thick very cheaply, and they just sit on top of the poles. I used this method with a few years ago on a Wilkinson Telecaster bridge pickup and it worked well. You just raise the poles either side of the high one.

Len