This paper deals with single-tap equalization for the recently introduced FBMC-PAM system, a multicarrier scheme able to meet the requirements of cognitive radio such as high level of adjacent channel leakage ratio and asynchronous communications. The optimum single-tap gain in the minimum mean square error (MMSE) sense is derived and its performance is compared with that of previously considered receivers. It is shown that when the optimum MMSE single-tap gain is multiplied (before the real part extraction) by a zero-mean complex noncircular random variable (that is, when the zero-mean output of the standard matched filter has a complementary variance different from zero) the achieved performance can be better than that of other single-tap receivers and similar to that of a more advanced previously considered equalization structure.