Re: Effects of Pickup Height on Tone
One of my favorite topics: And if you just want the specs - 5/16th of an inch. Be sure to arc the pole pieces so they match the radius of the fingerboard first. E strings should be lowest, D/G should be highest. A lot of people tweek the bass side down just a tad extra if it's a little boomy, especially for the neck pup.
Bottom line though- where ever it sounds best to you! That said there are a couple of schools of thought here:
1) The "As close as possible!" crowd: Motive here is maximum output based on maximum input.
2)Then there are the "Factory Specs": Motive there is that Gibson/Fender/etc. knows best.
3) Then there are the "Back it off's": These are usually "As close as possible's" who have decided to "back off" and ended up actually close to factory specs.
The closer the pup to the strings, the hotter the signal, but it will suck tone and kill sustain. Get too far away, you lose volume and sustain. I recommend going factory at first, and then adjusting to taste. It just takes a screw driver to change in a couple of seconds. Overall, though, between the general "hotness' of todays pups and the massive gain possible from amps, I generally say keep it back a bit. I think most who have had them too close will agree that it really improves the tone and sustain. With the gain on my amp dimed or using a fuzz box, the extrsa millimeter isn't worth it. In fact, a lot of your favorite searing metal tones of the past decade or so have been from medium gain pups (see slash....) through a raging stack. If you just can't get to where you want - you probably need a different amp. Slash doesn't have any problems with the AP2's...
