I recently set up my guitar and everything is awesome except I'm wondering how far away from the strings my pickups should be. I have a samick les paul copy aka 2 humbuckers. I'm reading from Dan Erlewine's "Guitar Player Repair guide" and he recommends the bridge pickup to be 1/16" from the strings and the neck pickup to be 3/32". The reason I don't think this is right is ,on my guitar at least, this puts the pickups at their maximum heights. Any ball park figures would be awesome.
Thanks
Fret a string one at a time on the last fret and look to make sure the pole pieces of the pickups are about 3/16" to 1/4" of an inch away from the bottom of each string.
Plug in your guitar just like you normally would play with your Volume and Tone knobs adjusted on the guitar about half way, but your amp settings where you normally would have them. Switch over to your neck pickup and start striking note's the way you normally play. It is important to do everything in a position you would normally play in. listen carefully and focus your attention to the sound and tone.
Play a note and turn the height adjustment screws raising the pickup closer to the strings and listen to the change in sound. The closer the pole piece's are to the strings the different the tone will become, if you get to close you will notice what is commonly called wolf tone which is a muddy overdriven sound. If that occurs back the pickup down till you find the sweet spot.
Then switch to your other pickup and repeat the process. Its kind of a trial and error, along with finding where they sound the best to you. Which is was known as the sweet spot.
Hope this helped.
Joe
