I hate the adjustment of Mustang pickups

[Aidan63]

Is it just me, or has anyone else found that Mustang pickups are prone to stripping the adjustment threading in their bases ?

 

My Classic Vibe 60s Mustang bass came with really tight scratchplate to pickup cover clearance (which also caused some ghosting) and the threads in the original pickups stripped out because the cover wasn't free to move when being adjusted for height, so I ended up making some steel plates to fit under the pickups and drilled and tapped them to M3 (which is the screw originally fitted) and clearanced the guard a little so they could move a bit more freely. But I ended up changing the pickups for Nordstrands - but the holes in the Nordstrands were smaller than M3 and little spare material around the outside to allow for using M3s, so I ended up having to buy some smaller diameter US imperial screws with 28tpi, like many guitar humbuckers use, and they have been okay, but after changing strings today I found the string balance a little out so went to adjust the height and pop, stripped the thread in the EA pickup at the A end, so now I'm going to have to pull the scratch plate and probably de-solder the pickups and fanny on again making some plates to achieve adjustability. I know the Mustang was a cheaper instrument originally but for frells sake why haven't the pickup manufacturers moved to use proper metal threaded inserts in the pickup bass instead of relying on a small hole in the base which is made out of fibreboard and reliant on the adjustment screw cutting a thread and then not wearing the fine threads or the base plate splitting when working under tension from the springs.

 

Leo did not get this right, imho, and afaic the modern pickup makers are equally culpable for not improving the basic design, just copying it, for cheapness and originalities sake. I wonder if this is part of the reason so many Mustangs from Fender now have Precision pickups in them, not because they sound better but because they are less likely to suffer adjustment failure issues. ?

 

grrrrr, colour me pissed 😈

 

I'm tempted to just modify the instrument to take the Fideltron pickup I have in my spares box, but that is a big job and I could end up buggering it up completely