Have I installed my Lollars improperly?

[coyoteblue]

I installed a set of regular Lollar JM pickups a month ago and have struggled to get a balanced sound. Lollar says resistance is roughly 8.8 ohms on the neck and 8.4 on the bridge. Today I measured and resistance on my guitar, pickups installed, was 8 on the bridge and 8.5 on the neck. Lollar's site says it doesn't matter which direction pickups go when installed but I wonder if I made a mistake installing. Could there be an installation issue? Should I switch wiring for the two? No instructions came with the pickups and I can't see anything online that relates directly to the JM.Any suggestions or links would help. Thanks.

[Embenny]

Resistance isn't output, and vintage Fender pickups were specced the same for neck and bridge with random variation, so a 500 ohm difference with the neck being higher like yours was quite common.

Flip them around if you prefer. It won't be a dramatic difference. There's nothing wrong either way.

[coyoteblue]

Thanks, again.

[øøøøøøø]

Yeah, I'd flip them and see if you like it better. Might as well have the higher output pickup in the bridge slot.

I will add a caveat, though-- it's not uncommon to have the bridge pickup on a JM feel weaker than the neck. I have a 1962 JM that I love, and in its stock configuration I never could get the bridge pickup to feel anything but smaller than the neck pickup. The neck position I loved, the middle position I loved, but I struggled to find much use for the bridge position.

I ultimately decided to go "half jazzblaster." I had Curtis Novak make me a "stealth" WRHB that fit under the stock JM cover and in the stock JM rout, and put the original pickup away for safekeeping.

In so doing, I lost what I loved about the middle position, but gained a very useful bridge pickup that actually feels balanced with the neck. I can use the two sounds in one piece of music, and the guitar responds in a logical and intuitive way.

But that was very much a personal decision, and I'm not advocating anyone else to go that route.

[Embenny]

It's true that vintage style JM pickups are quite light on the low end and guts. That's part of what makes the middle position sound so great, kind of like the Tele Deluxes with the WRHB in the neck. Something about a full, warm neck pickup in parallel with a lower output, thinner bridge pickup in parallel creates this wonderful tone in the middle position.

When I got my '66 Jag, the bridge pickup was stuck in the shrunken tort pickguard, and was about a cm from the strings. Of course, this meant that the bridge position sounded absolutely terrible. Just uselessly low output and thin. But the neck pickup was divine, and I was quite shocked at how amazing the middle position actually sounded like that. Different from any guitar I had owned, for obvious reasons. I did fix the pickguard and set the pickup height properly after that, but it was an interesting exercise.