The importance of pickup height

PunkKitty

PunkKitty

Horny bag of electric meat
I'm amazed at the tonal difference that pickup height makes. I installed a custom wound alnico 2 pickup in my First Act Sheena the other day. The tone sounded good, but kinda iffy. I was thinking of replacing it. Or maybe testing different caps with it. (I used a .022 mustard cap).

Today I learned the Bill Lawrence method for adjusting pickup height. HOLY CRAP! What a difference. That pickup doesn't sound good, it sounds GREAT!

For those that don't know the Bill Lawrence method, I'll shamelessly steal a quote from wildepickups.com
07/21/10
Height Adjustment

One of the most important and overlooked fine tuning methods is height adjustment of the pickups. When people bring their guitars to Bill, one of the first things he will do is adjust the height.

Following Bill's famous nickel method for height adjustment of your pickups can be a simple and effective point to achieve the tone your looking for.

The distance between pickup and string is a very important factor for output and sound.

As a general rule for the bridge pickup - put a nickel on top of the pickup under the high E string and play the highest note on that string. Adjust the height on that side of the pickup till the string touches the nickel. Repeat the same with the low E string, but use two nickels on top of each other. If this gives you too much output, you can reduce the height slightly. Don't forget that twice the distance will reduce the output by about 60%, and the sound will lose some lows. NOW, you can adjust the neck pickup to match the output of the bridge pickup. For the sound test, use stage volume.
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Mark Wein said:
I'll hve to try that. I usually just turn screws until ti sounds right :embarrassed:
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Ditto. I just turn the little screws until I get the sound I want. On one of my strats, the pickup tops are almost level with the guard. I'm sure that is 'wrong', but it makes the Texas Specials in the that guitar sound really good. :messedup:
 
Tiltsta said:
Ditto. I just turn the little screws until I get the sound I want. On one of my strats, the pickup tops are almost level with the guard. I'm sure that is 'wrong', but it makes the Texas Specials in the that guitar sound really good. :messedup:
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Regardless of the method, your likes and dislikes are most important. If you like the way a guitar sounds now, leave it alone. If you don't like something about the sound, start messing with pickup height first.
 
PunkKitty said:
Regardless of the method, your likes and dislikes are most important. If you like the way a guitar sounds now, leave it alone. If you don't like something about the sound, start messing with pickup height first.
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Yep. I have received a lot of strange looks and questions on that guitar over the years, but everyone who plays it agrees that it sounds great. Most people then ask me if I am sure the pickups are really texas specials, which supposedly suck.
 
I have my Strat's pup height set similar to what Eric Johnson has on his guitars. I got that out of Dan Erlewine's book. My Strat is HSS, and the two single coils are Texas Specials. I wasn't trying for EJ's tone, but I'll be damned if using those little tweaks didn't make it sound a lot fatter without a lot of effort. Something else I noticed is that I couldn't use the exact heights as listed in the book. I had a few strings that were real close to making contact on the neck pup if I fretted real high up the neck, so I adjusted that accordingly. I tried to keep the sound balanced between all of 'em. Trial and error, but it was kinda fun. Another small tweak that I did was to adjust the trem so it wasn't completely flat. I added an extra spring to compensate for the .009 or .010 string sets I commonly use. I think that having the trem a little tighter took out some of the flex down there. Seems that when I would bend a note, the trem would flutter all over the place 'cause there wasn't enough tension on it. Quirky beasts these geetars are.
 
Mark Wein said:
I'll hve to try that. I usually just turn screws until ti sounds right :embarrassed:
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I usually turn the screws till one comes out of the pickup. Then I spend the next hour trying to get it back in. Eventually I give up, take off the new strings I just put on....
 
I'm more amazed that people don't adjust their pickup height! The nickel thing has been around for a long time (and probably did start with Bill...he's probably been around since they've been minting nickels :wink: ) and is as good a starting point as using a ruler since it's really about personal preferences than anything.

Individual pole height, OTOH, I generally don't unless there are obvious string-to-string balance issues.
 
I usually season to taste on mine, but I agree that if you don't adjust your pup height you might be missing a much more favorable sound. I had not adjusted my artcore till yesterday and the stock pups don't suck anymore. I guess that one just needed a major tweaking to get the sound I wanted. I might go back and try the nickle thing just to see what all the koolaid is about.
 
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