Pickup Height Adjustment

[axepilot]

Based on a current thread here, I'm curious........................

 

How many of you have experimented with different pickup heights, found your sweet spot and are happy?

 

 

How many of you have never tried this and just blamed the pickups?

 

How many of you were unaware that you can actually adjust the pickup height to suit your tone...................or believed that the pickup height is a value set in stone?

 

Not looking for guilty admissions..................................more food for thought.

[Stricken]

first one.

 

i started toying with the pickups on my RG the day I bought it.

[smorgdonkey]

Much experimentation on my part.

 

Single coils - I like them low with a fair amount of space between the strings and the top of the pickup/pole pieces.

 

Humbuckers - high output ones I generally like closer to the strings. If they aren't wound for really high output I move them around a bit.

 

Active pickups - for EMGs I put them as close to the strings as I can get them without making contact while playing. The magnetic pull is so low that there are no negative effects when this is done and in fact EMG recommends it. I also mod all of my EMG equipped guitars to the 18 volt system for more headroom, superior clarity and much more musical overall sound.

[balthazarr]

I've played around with them before.

What I found with HB's is that the intensity drops off, dramatically, the farther away from the strings. (square of the distance?)

But the controls should trim the sound well enough that it isn't necessary and permit the pups to be adjusted high enough so they don't touch the strings when played.

[GAS Man]

I have a hard time fiddling with them by ear. I usually go with the factory specs and leave it there. I remember trying to get a Pearly Gates to sound good in my Yamaha SBG700S. I took to messing around quite a bit with the individual pole piece height. Just couldn't get warmth or deep resonance out of that guitar. Sounded to much from the top of the guitar and too sharp. I finally gave up and brought it to a good tech to replace the pup with a ceramic pup. Later the tech told me I had the pole pieces too high. Well maybe so, but I started out with it at a setup that a luthier had done and it wasn't working at that lower height either. I guess if I had it still, I might try going even lower than where the first luthier had set the PG, but I did the best I could by ear.

 

So I guess the moral of my story is, my ears may not be the best for that kind of "dialing in", but yes, I'd always fiddle with that before tossing a pup.

 

But usually, I just go with factory specs and I'm happy. It was funny for me to notice today that I obviously hadn't checked the pup height on my SG Classic yet (unless the action has changed dramatically while in storage). Too many geetars I guess.

[axepilot]

One of the first things I do with a new guitar is to crank it up, check it out, and adjust the pickups. Sometimes, I end up back at factory settings................sometimes I don't.

[ew_]

# 1 here.

 

I usually do my adjusting with the guitar unplugged. Why? I can find the exact place where too much height begins to affect the sustain easier that way...

 

ew