How to set the height of your guitar pickups for optimal tone

[Music] the goal when adjusting the pickups on a Stratocaster is to get even volume when you're switching between the neck middle and bridge pickups and these settings can vary a little bit depending on the player and their style the way you strum and pick in relation to the pickups all play a role in achieving even volume when you're switching between all three some players will strum over the neck pickup and that'll make the sound of that pickup a little louder and a little more focus than the other pickups my personal style is I like to rest my hand mostly on the bridge there that puts my picking pattern somewhere between the middle and bridge pickup all these aspects of an individual style all play a part in how the pickup should be set in Dan early wines book how to make your electric guitar play great you'll see pickup height specs from a handful of great strat players including Eric Johnson and Stevie Ray Vaughn and in those specs you'll notice that no two players are alike they all have different pickup heights because they all have very different styles and you're no different in order to get the best sound out of your strap you need to set up the pickups to suit your style so this is my personal guitar so 90s Fernandes and I just installed a set of golden age single coil pickups in it and now I'm going to adjust the height to suit my ham fisted style of playing as a starting point we're gonna adjust the pickups to fender factory specs and then we're gonna start tweaking the setup from there so the first thing I'm gonna do is adjust the height of the bass sides of the pickup fender specs have them all the exact same measurement which is three thirty-seconds I'm gonna hold the low E string down at the last fret adjust that up that's it right around an eighth of an inch just just a little bit is my measurement they're three thirty-seconds I'm gonna do the same here and this measurement is the gap that's between the bottom of the string and the top of the pole piece of the pickup more close enough for now and then 5/64 on the treble side it's way low and again you'll notice that I'm holding my high E string down at the last fret we're making this adjustment okay now the pickups are adjusted to fender spec and that gets us into the ballpark for a final adjustment I like to start by getting a good sound out of my neck pickup and work my way back and the reason for that is magnetic pull because of the neck pickups location on the body if you get this pickup too close to the strings it can cause all sorts of strange and unwanted overtones people call it wolf tones or people call it Stratus it's not as important with the middle and bridge pickups because they're better supported by the bridge and are less prone to be pulled down by the magnets now for the fun part I'm gonna be making these adjustments in the playing position because gravity plays a little role in it when the guitar is laying on us back especially on the neck rest the strings are gonna be a little higher over the pickups than they are when they are in the playing position and also to have your amp set up the way you would normally have it you know you want to hear your guitar sound the way you like it and you're adjusting the pickups for that guitar sound alright I'm just gonna play the neck pickup for a while a little muddy on the low end I'm going to hold the e-string down on the last fret and I'm gonna bring it up just a little bit just to see if I can get a little more pronounced sound out of it but not close enough to introduce any of that magnetic pull we were talking about earlier so I'm going from 3/32 to 5/64 listen to it again a little bit [Music] I like that better because the low ends a little more pronounced and it's got a little more bite I mean a better attack I want a little bit more out of the high e so I'm gonna bring it up about the same amount probably just about one sixty-fourth of an inch [Music] I like it both measurements bass and treble I like at 1/16 of an inch so let's move to the middle pickup here in slightly more volume out of the neck pickup than I am the bridge so I'm going to bring up the middle pick up just a hair see if we can get that under control a little better [Music] switching between the two I'm calling that good let's look at that measurement a little closer and see what we ended up with 5/64 on the base side three sixty fourths on the treble side considerably different than stock fender measurements switched to the bridge pickup that's my favorite pickup so I'm going to kind of be focusing on this one a little more because it's what I use mainly [Music] yeah it's a little weak sounding compared to the other two so I'm going to bring it up and see what we end up with okay [Applause] [Music] [Applause] that's a good even sound so with the bridge pickup we ended up with a sixteenth on the bass side between the bottom and the string and the top of the pole piece three sixty fourths on the treble side I think we're there I have great individual sounds out of each of these pickups and I have a good even volume when switching between all three totally what I was looking for follow these steps and you can dial in your own guitar for your own playing style to sound the best that it possibly can to subscribe to our YouTube channel because we've got a lot more where this came from

Channel: StewMac

Views: 1,050,992

Keywords: guitar repair, guitar building, guitar making, electric guitar, diy, how to, trade secrets, luthier, lutherie, stewmac, fender stratocaster, stratocaster, strat, pickup height, adjust pickups, set pickups, guitar pickup, single coil pickup, erick coleman, single coil pickups, gutiar tech, guitar builder, guitar maker, luthiery, stewmac_guitar, heystewmac

Id: ROML4xsQK60

Length: 7min 34sec (454 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 07 2019