Seth Lover P'up & Pole Piece Height

[ckisgen]

For all of you cats with Seth Lovers - what is your preferred pickup and or pole piece heights?

I have a 90s Les Paul Standard and just recently had Seth's put in (replaced 490R/498T...shudder). I'm trying to fine tune things based on my rig and am trying to get a feel from others who have been playing these for longer than I have...it's a whole different ball game from my 490R / 498T setup, of course. With the 490R I had to lower the pickup to essentially flush with the ring and raise the pole pieces up a bit to tame the mud and try and coax a bit of clarity. So far with my Seth's the bridge pickup is raised pretty high (prob can't go TOO much higher) and my neck is low-ish but the neck is already possibly a hair louder than the bridge..so not sure how much more I can raise the neck. I'd like to try and get a BIT more clarity out of the neck if possible. But obviously it needs to be balanced to a degree with the bridge as well in overall output/volume (my personal preference is a completely balanced neck and bridge..maybe the bridge just slightly hotter but not by much).


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[jeremy]

Re: Seth Lover P'up & Pole Piece Height

i have the pole pieces a touch below the cover on the bridge pup and i have the poles raised slightly above the cover on the neck pup

 

[Boogie Bill]

Re: Seth Lover P'up & Pole Piece Height

I do the same as Jeremy.

Bill

 

[Leon Of Late]

Re: Seth Lover P'up & Pole Piece Height

I radius the pole pieces to roughly match the radius of the strings. My starting point is with all of the pole pieces level with the cover. I don't get too crazy and break out radius tools to make sure the pole pieces are identical to the strings..... just eyeball it.

 

[ItsaBass]

Re: Seth Lover P'up & Pole Piece Height

Set your overall pickup heights to get the tone/clarity; adjust the pole pieces to help balance their volumes without significantly affecting the "global" adjustment. Where they sit and how they look doesn't matter, unless you get to the point of the pickup actually interfering with the vibration of the strings. You might not ever get a great balance in volume. But you learn to get around it by playing different things on each pickup.

 

[beaubrummels]

Re: Seth Lover P'up & Pole Piece Height

Re: Seth Lover P'up & Pole Piece Height

Poles level with the pickup cover, per Seymour's preference. Bridge level with or a bit above the ring. Neck level with the body route (below the ring)

 

[Natman]

Re: Seth Lover P'up & Pole Piece Height

Re: Seth Lover P'up & Pole Piece Height

The imbalance between the two positions is the ONLY thing that bothers me with Seths. Each pickup is great on its own but I had my neck pickup below the pickup ring on my Hamer Newport Pro. After years of tweaking I still didn't like how the bridge sounded weaker so I opted for an unpotted SH-16 with A2 magnet. Problem solved!

 

[LtKojak]

Re: Seth Lover P'up & Pole Piece Height

In my case, the neck p'up's "sweet spot" is located @ 3.78mm from the 6th string and 3.28mm from the 1st string, while the bridge is 2.56mm from the 6th string and 2.36 mm from the 1st string, measures taken with a caliper with an electronic display, pressing both strings @ the 22nd fret.

I'll set the bridge p'up even closer to the strings next time I change'em; can't do it now because the springs are too long, so it just won't go any higher.

HTH,