How to set the height of your guitar pickups for optimal tone
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- Опубликовано: 6 фев 2019
- When it comes to setting the height of your guitar's pickups there's no "one size fits all" approach. In this video Erick shows how you can adjust the height of your guitar pickups to fit YOUR playing style.
Thanks to The D-Rays for the music!
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Honestly this is simpler than most make it out to be. You adjust and you listen. When you like what you hear, you're good...
right, there really no need for correct adjustments, just do what sounds good😂
Ayyy I set mine high cause I like the springy twang sound
I'm always adjusting mine. I can't find perfect
This is how I do it
Yes, but for a lot of guitar players, we enjoy learning the science behind the art. Just makes one that much better/more knowledgeable, creative, and saved a lot of time and money learning from others mistakes. Like someone wrote below, or above here now, we are always tinkering, a lifelong activity. Just getting that screenshot of some of SRV‘s adjustments, and what I gathered from this guy, I had a blast tinkering on my new Strat last night. And I’m looking forward to this winter break to really dialing in a couple of these newer fenders. 🤘🏻🇺🇸🎸
Funny, when you said it sounded muddy, I expected you to lower the bass side, but making it higher actually made it sound clearer. Good tips! Cheers
That was the opposite of what I've been doing, too. I just swapped out my pickguard and didn't really consider pickup heights. Then I plugged it in, and it sounded terrible. Got it set nice now, though!
Thanks to your video on setting pickup height, this really has come in handy in getting the best sound from the electric cigar box guitars I build. It's a seeming small detail that can easily get overlooked by those of us who build CBG's, but pays off in huge dividends. Thanks again!
At first I was very puzzled because I was looking up on youtube how to achieve the 'right' height for the pickups not expecting to find all different kind of heights amongst other musicians. Finally I decided to stick to your measurements due to the fact you'r referring to Fender specs. That did it for me. Thx for sharing !
I think it was very good that he pointed out that pickup height preferences are a personal thing. People get way to wrapped up
In measurements when in reality you need to let your ear tell you when the pickup is the “correct” height.
Same with string heights ..I like a higher string height than fender spec on strats .I find fenders height way too low for me.
Ive never use any tools, except a tuner. I do everything by sound and feel.
Thank you very much for taking the time to record this video. Very informative and helpful.
Thank you! This helped me so much! I thought they were fine, and was trying to use eq to shape my sound - but I did a fresh tune up on both my Jaguar and Les Paul and then ran them DI thru an interface, to a pair of studio headphones, and followed this procedure. Ended up putting the very hot pickups in both WAY lower than I ever would have otherwise and wow do they sound good and clean! My Les Paul I never turned up past half volume, and never used both pickups at the same time and now it just sounds good all over (to me).
Using a clean setting on the amp might have helped us hear the difference.
Right...!!!
Agreed re: doing it on a clean setting.
But, I heard him say at 3:25 you should *"...have your amp setup the way you would normally have it"* .
Perhaps, he should not have done this tutorial to his personal tastes/needs for his personal guitar, and more for teaching, by using a clean amp, clean setup.
[Then, do his personal setup off camera, afterward.]
@@socialmeaslesinpartnership1252 He is literally being paid to play his guitar in this video 🤦♂️ 😂
@@socialmeaslesinpartnership1252 Clearly that is not the case, he is literally both getting paid, and playing his guitar, but I can see that opinions vary, and perhaps the accuracy of statements made in a troll post is not important to everyone, carry on. Your contribution to the video surely was more helpful in assisting others to adjust their pickups than the contribution of this man.
Id want it muddy..
This was an expensive video for me. I liked the sound of his Fernandes so much, I went out and bought one . . .
they are decent guitars for sure
They’re great with a pickup upgrade!!!!! JV guitars 👍👍 🎸
I had a white one back in the day, awesome guitar !
I own a '90 Fernandes Strat and upgraded pups with Custom 69. Great guitars
Really? It sounded ok at best.
This is such a great tutorial! Good audio, good video, good explanation!
Thanks very much. I have a very old Vox spitfire. It’s been sitting in the gig bag for at least 30 years. I recently decided to get back into it and noticed that the bridge pickup (on the treble side) is all the way down ! Even below the body of the guitar! Now, I have a good idea how to adjust it . THANK YOU VERY MUCH !!
"They all have different pickup heights because they have different styles... and you're no different!"
I thought about this for a while.
I came for the tech tutorial, stayed for the philosophizing
So if you’re a country boy, your pickup’s height is always much taller than a non country boy. Usually have bigger tires too.
So what you thinking about nowwwwww?
@@cardbored_ closer to god
Thanks for sharing; I hope this is as simple as you make it look. Power to the players!
Actually, due to the way a Fender style single coil pickup is constructed, if the pole pieces, which are the magnets in this style of pickup, are too close to the strings the magnetic field can adversely affect intonation. So going by ear you might think, "hey this sounds great" and then get frustrated when you notice later on a string sounds off on part of the fretboard and you can't seem to get the saddle in a spot where the intonation is right. Lower those suckers, and like magic, you can now intonate your string again.
*Come on man... These pickups have been set insanely high ...*
Great vid. There are as many different preferences for height and how to set it as there are Strat players. I favor the bridge pickup as well, but my methodology has always been to put everything at about 1/8" to start (eyeballed). Then I dial the bridge pickup till I like it, though as a recording engineer, I usually lower what I don't like rather than raise to get more of what I do like. Once I've got the bridge pickup where I like it, I get the tonal balance of the neck pickup as I like it, then compare the volume of the neck and bridge, and then usually lower the neck pickup equally on both sides to even out volume with the bridge pickup. Lastly, I adjust the middle pickup. I never use it by itself, so I usually just adjust it so positions 2 and 4 on the 5-way sound as quacky as I like. Keeping this pickup lower, and lowering rather than raising generally, helps keep me from getting things too close and causing weird magnetic overtones.
Thanks, this will help immensely with a project I'm doing, replacing pickups for the first time.
Whatever works. Depends on string gauge and desired effect. The lace sensors allow a setup closer to the strings at the neck.
My humbuckers sit lowest than the single coils on my SSH Strat, since the HB's are naturally louder. So sinking them more balances the volume so it doesnt surprise u when you switch pickups live. And my singles sits low than this demo to begin with.
Its all in your preferences.
Tks for those specs. I also own a Fernandes like yours and God I love it more than almost every Strats I've tried.
Thanks for the vid , it really helped me , before my guitar tone was doing some sort of "glitches" by not going in a straight line ... anyways .. after tho it really sounds great by strumming soft or hard . In both ways it sounds good and the "glitches" are no more :) Apreciate the help !
I'm glad I'm not the only one looking at this and feeling like those pickups are higher than I would ever go for.
Yeah thats right...best advice ive ever gotten is the Dan Platansky method,as found on youtube,lower them right down and you will find the giutar actually plays better,now aint that funny,then you just tweak your amp/pedals to make up for any volume loss...which will be minimal because the strings can now ring more because the pickup magnets are not interfering with them.
Damned stewmac; measure also in metric !!
Just convert it or learn a bit of imperial, it's honestly great for certain situations. Coming from a no-bullshit Canadian
Orpheas Malliamanis In all honesty, it's probably because their tools are measured in imperial. I see it all the time with woodworking
imperial and metric have their own benefits
Amen. Just give me a number. I switched over 3 yrs ago. Never looked back!
@@redbeardedberserker I guess the "argh" and facepalm sound of 193 Countries using the metric system is louder than the laughing of the imperial countries of Burma, Liberia and... what was it... oh, wait... the US of A...
6:10 EHHHH
Damn you beat me to it 😂
Funny af
*Eihh*
@@yboy898 Hahahahahaha dead
Gracious. Everybody has their preferences, and what's right for you, is right! As a Stratocaster player of 57 years, I dunk the neck PUP nearly down to the pickguard; set the middle a bit higher, and the bridge higher still, keeping it away from the playing hand. The biggest problem, is that consarned raised third polepiece, hovering underneath an unwound 3rd string. Cannot for the life of me figure out why Fender keeps making a wound polepiece in an unwound world ...
My advice is to measure your starting point. Then you won't be afraid to try out different heights.
When calibrating two/three pickups to each other I listen to their characteristics. Neither of the pickups should be dominant when being switched together.
Thanks. This tutorial woke me up on how I never gave a second thought to the height of my pups. Now I'm gonna take the chance to have a look and tweak around 👏 👏
xperia9x My dad has been a touring musician for 30+ years. I started playing around 1993. I started purposefully adjusting pickup height in 2019. And only then because I had a neck pup fall into the cavity and I had to pull everything apart and reset it. And I was like, “I don’t know where this thing is supposed to sit.” Here I sat, with 25 years of playing, my father gigging all my life, plus the interwebs, and I never once gave a thought to where my pickups sat in relation to the strings. Better late than never I guess 🤷🏻♂️😂😂
It’s possible that the factory specs are fine. I have adjusted my pickups on some of my guitars but I’ve also left some to the factory specs
Doing this with distortion on seems strange to me..
Great tutorial. Thanks for stressing the personal dynamics rather than making it a cookie cutter lesson based on Fender specs.
Yes after a long time it finally released thx
0:49 Hair went from passionate Erick to cool Erick
Great tips. I have an early 2000's Fernandes AFR-55 in my collection. Very underrated Japaneese guitars in my opinion.
Learned some good stuff from this video!
Helpful info and great video. Thank you.
Excellent! I really appreciate these videos. Thank you!
Thanks for watching!
Thanks for sharing a fine tutorial. However it would be interesting to have a clean tone section too.
How many of us in our youth bought replacement pickups, thinking the ones in the guitar sounded like crap? Never occurred to me then that maybe they just needed to be adjusted to find the sweet spot. I even returned boutique pickups I didn’t like, saying the “sound was no better!” Now I’m obsessive about dialing in the perfect tone. I also use my volume and tone controls like never before to fine tune things further with different amp settings. It’s very subjective from the comments I’ve read here. Thanks StewMac.
Well said David, I agree completely!
David Smith you are so right. Confession: I played for 20 years before I knew how important pickup adjustment was to my tone. I picked up a $50 Squier bullet recently on a used guitar site. It was the first adjustment I made. Even this little cheap thing sounds pretty good simply because I dialed in the pickups. Crazy
great vid. simple and straight to the point.
Thanks man , brilliant playing!!!!
This is very helpful. Thanks!
I appreciate this heads up, I'll put this to good use when adjusting my DiMazio pick ups when I get them
I just play a telecaster jammed on the bridge pickup. It came well set up out of the box, I'm pretty sure I've tweaked everything else but the height of that pickup. Just make sure it all sounds good to you!
I like my single coils low end 5/32 and the high end 3/32. It makes a strat much more articulate.I can always kick on my overdrive if I need more sound.
Yeah, 3/64 is too close. Fuzz city
Eric you rock buddy.
Excellent video.
I keep my strat pickups very low for more sustain and even tone and using booster to bring it up, works well ;)
I did, but i think you loss a little of body.
@@91sandman19 put them a little higher
@@Manu-xk1ub haha
Great tips👍🏻
Thanks buddy, that helped a lot!
great advice. thank you
Since I’m very confused I just set it to be as high output as possible without playing issues, then balanced it between the pickup that was outputting the least so I didn’t have one pickup louder than the other. The higher the output the less gain I need to use and therefore, less hum/noise.
I did not balance the output of the low strings with the high strings, low strings are louder than high ones, I figured this was fine because I’ll need less gain to chug, and the high strings still come through with chords and leads. I’m a more dynamic player anyway, so it fits. Also I like the sound of somewhat muddy chords.
I don’t how anyone else does this, I wish there were more guidelines lol.
Jimi was very particular about his guitar setups, though he did experiment a lot, thank goodness!
i set mine to factory specs and i will observe. great video
Thank you! I learned a lot.
I like the pick ups set higher and closer to the strings. The signal seems more powerful & stronger going into the amp. Seems to sound like I'm getting more dynamically from the Bass, Middle & Treble EQ on the amp. The Echo/Reverb length & depth is what it is for the amp. The amp I have is an open back amp and it doesn't seem to have the bass that a closed cabinet puts out. With the warmer tone from a higher pickup, that bass is more present. I also have a closed back amp and that really has a deeper thump at max settings. But that's what the EQ knobs on the amp & tone knobs on the guitar are for. The volume also has more effect with EQ & tone settings with a stronger signal. Too far away for the pickups, the bridge only pickup setting sounds too nasally treble on that open back amp. Now it sounds more powerful and stronger with the bridge only pickup setting. The rest of the pickup combinations are not too strong or too weak as well. It definitely is a preference. My Bullet SSS HT is never going to have the tone of my Epiphone LP, but with warmer tone than the Bullet strat had, it's as close as it's ever been now. I don't want it to sound the same, but it was too weak before.
I love that copper pick guard
When i played strat i had them waaay lower than that. With the treble side slightly raised.
We all play so differently lmao.
Very helpful. Thanks!
This guy is a genius!
My pick hand improved so much when i got rid of my strat and its volume knob early on as a beginner
Those pickups sound fantastic! 👍🏻
Thank you a lot , have pickups in the mail coming my way soon and it’s my 1st time replacing pickups on my Strat ,
I’ve got my fingers cross 🤞🤞it’ll be fine...
After adjusting the pickups to the high E string, check the pickup height at the low E again. It will have risen, too, because the pivot is further away at the adjustment screw!
Yep good info. Sweet simple and easy. Sharing is caring!
Excellent info, alot of players/beginners don't know this! Thanks, an we'll be see'n ya again! Tahuya Shawn.
Thank you so much!
Love the doodling
That explains my horrible tone during my garage bad days. I had the pickups as high as I could get them on my flying V, because it made more volume, but I could never figure out why my sustain was nonexistent, so I compensated that with a compression pedal, dialed up to max. That of course caused all kinds of weird issues with noise and unwanted overtones, so I had to have a noise gate, which of course was dialed up as high a threshold as I could get and still have something come out the speakers. Then of course I had to have all the modulation effects that everyone else was using like delay, flanger, and phaser before at the front of my signal, so you can imagine the mess that came out in the end with the gain turned up full. It's a wonder anyone could tell the difference between different songs. It's also why I kept my day job. At least my tone is good these days, lol.
In his setup video, Joe Walsh mentions adjusting the height of the bottom of the pickup (first string end) and top of the pickup (6th string end) independently, if necessary, to make sure the volume is consistent between the first and 6th strings.
Great tutorial 🙏🙏🙏🙌
I run mine high on the bridge (Hotrail pickup) low in the middle and medium-high at the neck. With the way I've wired the pickups it allows the middle to blend and supplement the bridge but for the neck and bridge to give my tone the full Monty. It's wired to allow neck and bridge to be used together (aiming for a kinda Tele tone).
Nice, thanks bro
Very useful, thanx. Ps your Fernandes is wonderful
Thanks for sharing.
Awesome awesome video.. Thank you!
Awesome wisdom ❤ Thank you Masters.
Erick your awesome
killer tone
Thanks brother...
Hey if he likes it then that is good enough for him, it is a very subjective thing. I personally would have gone for the cleanest sound I could get (no electronics/distortion) but that is my subjectivity. Very nice presentation, I like it
Thanks for the added information ..that was well explained...thank you.......now this is leading me to another question ?? What would accurately measure the difference between staggered poles and flat poles ....would a common string tuner measure pitchyness (could all the strings be in tune but pitchy)......between the level poles and staggered poles ..or what accurate measuring instrument could be used.....
very helpful
I was changing, and measuring heights, and chasing sound forever, Now I have my pickups all the way down that the pickup covers are flush flat with the pick guard now, and it’s giving off serious tone and harmonics that it never did before. - 2008 American Olympic Strat w/factory pickups.
Like that gold!
Wow, such a good video
Glad you enjoyed it!
It's funny how Fender specs them so high. I watched a post by Dan Patlansky a few years back and he lowers his Strat pickups as low as they'll go (his were almost level with the pickguard). I did it with my Texas Specials and, while they're no longer as hot, the sustain and tone both increased.
Thank You
He has a single ply pickguard, which is thinner than a 3 ply and makes the pickups look adjusted higher. But it is the distance between the bottom of the E and e strings and the top of their pickup pole pieces that count.
I always put the pickups so that the top of the pole pieces are dead center between the body/pickguard and the outer strings. Afterwards I fine tune the hight to get the preferred balance between sustain and output. Oh yeah, and I always put the middle pickup level with the pickguard (or as low as it'll go) as to not have it get in the way of my picking
Many thanks, very clear tutorial, an I found it very helpful! I jus been doin mine by ear fer like 45 years, but mebbe gittin out my machinist's ruler will facilitate reproducibility, an save me some time, when I tear down one of my axes...
And maybe it won't. Stick to what you know (if you like it)!
Great tips thanks :-)
Oh man. It depends all on your ears. Just play with the pickup height and give it a listen.
I used to have a tuning device called a Strobopick by Planet Wave that projected strobed led light on the string and if you had the pickups too close you can visually see the stratiitis on the on the strings. The frequency would wobble back and forth (this was with alnico 2). I found that putting pickups lower than what you're showing gives a purer tone, if that's what you're looking for.
How would he even know, he's got so much distortion on the guitar?
Great video. I need to experiment with my hss strat. Bridge pickup is way too loud compared to others.
Yes, it's a matter of taste. I prefer the pickups on the Strat at a distance of at least 5 mm from the strings.
Thank you for The Cramps sticker ~ I always do it by ear (who cares what F recommends?)
Exactly they still make pickups with staggered pole pieces so what do they know.. :P
I find that lowering my pickups gives me more dynamics between amp and guitar. Sounds more expressive...
Good tip! I understand that farther away from the pups you may have less volume but more sustain since the magnets are farther from the strings.
Same except mid, i keep it half way. Prolly related to where i swing my pick tho.
same here......I can get far more quality and distinct overtones with the pickups far lower than factory specs
I've taken close looks at guitarist's pups whether humbuckers or SC & probably 90% have them really low, barely above the pickguard or frames of the humbuckers. Their sound still is awsum.
Couldn't disagree more. The further away the pups are, the more muddy and undefined they become, taking away ALL of the characteristics which make those particular pups special.
No need for a ruler if you have a set of drill bits. Pick the size you want and stick it to the magnet. Adjust it til it touches the string. I discovered this kinda by accident. It works!
Awesome guitar dude. Would love a Fernandes
Thank you for an informative video on adjusting strat pickups!
Sweet Japanese Fernandes strat!!