Hya all
Have just received a complete hss set up consisting of a pair of irish tours and a crawler humbucker.
Very very pleased with the tones and quality was wondering if someone could give me an idea for setting the pickup heights or at least a starting point to get the best out of them.
Thanks
Well... Mostly depends on your tastes, I'd say. Some claim to have a very exact method (usually including lots of electronic and monitoring gear) to adjust pups height for "optimal" results, some only swear by vendor's official documentation (when there's one), but the most commonly used method is still AFAICT the good old "trial&error" one...
Anyway, here are a couple considerations, but bear in mind that I'm by no way an "expert" at adjusting pups
Basically, pups closer to the strings will give a more "in your face" tone, more output, and may induce a lost of sustain if very close (magnetic field acting on the string etc) - but I'm not sure whether this last point is proven or belongs to urban myths. With pups farther from the strings, you'll have more "air", more of the "wood" tone - and obviously less output. The best advice I can give you here is to fiddle a bit and find out by yourself which option you prefer.
Also you probably want to have a good balance between your pups, so you'll probably have to make some compromise to get there. Given that a same pup at same height will be louder on the neck and quieter on the bridge ( due to the string's oscillation having more amplitude toward the neck), you'd probably be better starting with adjusting the neck for tone, then the bridge for balance with the neck, then lather-rinse-repeat until you get both a correct balance and tones that please you on both pups. Then it will be time to worry about the middle pup...
FWIW, if you're like me, you'll probably fiddle with your pups height for at least week or two :mrgreen:
