pickup to string distance on a hollow body

[zoomjay]

Okay, another question about my Jay Turser 139 hollow body... (think replica of Gibson 330) it has a set of P90's in it that I am not really lovin'..... although, upon further inspection I noticed that the distance between the strings and the pickups on this guitar is probably 2x what it is on my Les Paul and Strat.

Is there a design reason that this distance is so much more than my other electrics... or did they simply use short pickups on it as a cost savings??? If I use some dog ear shims to raise the pickups... will it liven things up a bit... or will it simply be more of the same...

This is my first hollow body... so, I am trying to sort this out and understand it a bit better....

Thank you in advance.

 

[blueman335]

Re: pickup to string distance on a hollow body

it has a set of P90's in it that I am not really lovin'..... although, upon further inspection I noticed that the distance between the strings and the pickups on this guitar is probably 2x what it is on my Les Paul and Strat.

Ah ha! that's going to effect tone. Can you raise the pole pieces & get them up to the normal height? Lot fuller tone that way.

 

[super rad stuff]

Re: pickup to string distance on a hollow body

see if you can get any sort of shims to raise the entire pickups, i think that'd help you get a mellower tone if you simultaniously lowered the adjustable screw poles.

 

[zoomjay]

Re: pickup to string distance on a hollow body

I just ordered a set of specific "dog ear" shims for it... I am wondering how close I shoujld go... should they be as close as my other two... or somewhere in the middle??? (I can trim the shims).... or, I could just put them on; see how it sounds and go from there.... Good news about the shims is that I really don't have to mod the guitar at all..

 

[ES350]

Re: pickup to string distance on a hollow body

There are some wood repros of the old school plastic dogear rings floating around out there; Epi used them on a few of their P90 models.

 

[blueman335]

Re: pickup to string distance on a hollow body

I just ordered a set of specific "dog ear" shims for it... I am wondering how close I should go... should they be as close as my other two.

Yes. I do it normal distance on mine.

 

[zoomjay]

Re: pickup to string distance on a hollow body

to follow up on this one.. I did receive the shims.. put them in... and, bluntly, a whole new guitar emerged. The distance is still a bit more than my other ones.... although this guitar sounds much, much better... a highly recommended mod for this guitar (JT-139) and cheap too ($ 20.00 - e-bay)

 

[blueman335]

Re: pickup to string distance on a hollow body

to follow up on this one.. I did receive the shims.. put them in... and, bluntly, a whole new guitar emerged. The distance is still a bit more than my other ones.... although this guitar sounds much, much better... a highly recommended mod for this guitar (JT-139) and cheap too ($ 20.00 - e-bay)

Excellent news. PU's just have to be reasonably close to the strings to get good tone; you saw the difference. A drawback to P-90's is the lack of built-in height adjustment, but that's also a benefit as you get a more direct contact with the body, and more wood tone.

On a soap bar SG, I used cedar shims (from a hardware store) to direct mount the P-90's to, and it gives more mids, low end, and sustain to the sound.