SG bass weak neck pickup

[quietarea@gmail]

After seeing videos of the SG Bass where the bass sounded fantastic, ringing harmonics and all, I bought the  "gently used: 2018 with the Babicz bridge (not the awful "stock" Gibson and Epiphone one that is so short it lets the thread windings on the bridge ends of the strings lie on the bridge saddles!). Neck pickup is terribly unbalanced. Booming A, almost not-present E. Read a lot of posts about the faint E. Took the bass to Jon Mouradian "my" luthier. He found the body perfectly resonant acoustically, so no 'wood' issues. The bridge pickup was then easily adjusted by way of the pole screws and a slight rise of the E side of it for good output and balance. BUT the neck pickup is just faulty. Jon figured out and demonstrated: the magnet bars are too short to pick up the E properly. He pressed down the E and A and pushed them sideways toward the D, at @  the 17th fret, then plucked them. Very strong output from the E when displaced toward the D side. Back in its place, the E is faint. Crap pickup, no remedy except to replace it, but there may not be any "drop in" replacement because the 2018 pickup core is significantly smaller, and the body rout smaller, than previous gibson "mudbuckers". So it's a one-pickup bass at present. 

[Big Bill]

Perhaps your luthier can recommend a guy to rewind the pickup. Its an Inexpensive procedure.