pickup height

[Leifdeliowa]

I have a special edition splatter strat that I installed some new pickups in the other day, I got a JB jr. in the bridge, a duckbucker in the mid, and a lil 59 in the neck. I really have no idea what the "proper" height for each of them should be. I've also noticed that the duckbucker has a seemingly smaller output or something.. it's quieter than the other two pups.. thoughts? help?

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: pickup height

There's no proper height, just trust your ears, and if anyone says different, tell 'em to piss off

BTW, welcome

[Aceman]

Re: pickup height

I gave this response a couple of days ago on this same topic. And tell JBFH that he can tell me to piss off directly if he wants! You don't have to do his dirty work for him. And I mean that with all due respect for his opinion....


Previous statement on the topic:
Whooaaaaaaa! I WAY disagree with that...

For example, the Gibson specs are:
Neck - 3/32 bass/treble
Bridge - 1/16 bass/treble

And since there is a string radius, the poles need adjusted slightly different for each string to follow the contour. every pup/guitar has a "sweet" spot. Too close and you start to kill sustain - the field doesn't allow for full vibration. Too far and you loose tone and volume. There is certainly a range where you can adjust to taste, but you really don't have to adjust much (quarter turn...)

Listen to a strat with flat versus staggered pole peices. That's a great example of how much of a difference it can make. I used to be a fan of ultra low action and high as possible pups, but after getting a really good set up, my guitar played AND sounded better.

No doubt you should ALWAYS go with what sounds best to you....but If I have spent 10 hours of my life doing this, I trust Gibson has spent 1000's of hours! And it's hard to know what's good without some point of reference. Such as you are a "As close as possible person" who never backed off far enough to hit the sweet spot!

So I recommend:
1> Get the factory specs and set those up
2> Spend some serious listening time, and make small adjustments each time
3>Try just single pole adjustments, as well as all six at the same time, and pairs and bass treble too.
4> Record if possible and listeb back a few days later
It takes some time to make four quarter turns and record the same set of licks, but I think you'll be surprised...
__________________

[Edgecrusher]

Re: pickup height

No doubt you should ALWAYS go with what sounds best to you....but If I have spent 10 hours of my life doing this, I trust Gibson has spent 1000's of hours!
2> Spend some serious listening time, and make small adjustments each time

I think you just took the long way to say what JBFH did.

And I'll beg to differ on the point of Gibson spending thousands of hours on this. First Gibson hasnt changed a set up spec in how many decades? And how much R+D was done originally? Not sure on that exactly but I'm suspecting the R+D that was done was spent mostly making things adjustable so they could suit a variety of players. Lasty I've never gotten a new Gibson that was set up worth a poo. They themselves dont follow their specs and they dont readily give them to the purchaser so you set it up to your own ears which is what it all comes down too anyways

[Mephis]

Re: pickup height

For the bridge get a 3mm pick, if it gently rubs on the strings and the bucker without bending the strings (notherwords, if it has the same clearence as a stubby pick you're good.)

And for the neck, you want like 5mm spacing from the pickup to the strings.(Stubby pick and a little bit of overhead)

Thats just what always seams balanced to me. Might work for you.
Forgive me if i sound insane.

[BlueGuitar]

Re: pickup height

(snip!)

I used to be a fan of ultra low action and high as possible pups, but after getting a really good set up, my guitar played AND sounded better.

When I put a set of Lindy Fralin Blues Specials in my favorite strat a few years ago I didn't notice how great they were right away because I had them set up close to the strings. When I eventually lowered them down a bit, it was like day and night. So I tried lowering pickups on my other guitars and in most cases it was an improvement.


EDITORIAL:
Back in the 60's and 70's we all wanted to maximize the output from our guitars so everybody was raising their pickups until they were almost touching the strings. Alembic was selling hot rod kits to replace the alnico magnets in our Gibson humbuckers with ceramic magnets, so that our guitars would overdrive our amps that much more.

However in the 70's and 80's it became obvious to many of us that our amplifiers should be providing the gain and distortion, and our guitars and pickups should providing a decent signal to drive our amps... with no need for our guitars to power Times Square on New Year's Eve!

I'm sure that many of you have noticed that the hard rock and heavy metal guitarists with a lot of distortion often chose a pickup that isn't known for its high gain; they presumably like the way it holds up when their amps are going ape-sh*t with distortion.

EDITORIAL mode: OFF

Some of my guitars do sound better with the pickups raised up a bit... as Aceman also suggested, try raising and lowering them to see what settings you prefer.

[Toenail-Tommy]

Re: pickup height

Buckers can go higher i believe, and the single coils at the neck position are the guilty ones for screwing wih sound, pitch and sustain. But a little tweak every few days still keeps me guessing about the sweet spot, and i must declare! : I'm within 1sixteenth of a turn from perfection...or am i imagining the sound differences. Ahhh, the joys of a tweak-a-thon. Next i'll go up a string guage, need a setup, trussrod, action, pickup height tweak.... aaaaah