Stupid Question - Pickup Height - Tele

[blkdog7]

I have a '52 Reissue Tele that is the Hot Rod version with the Seymour Duncan mini-humbucker pick-up in it.

Well, I did something stupid. Something VERY stupid. I knocked the guitar off of its stand and it crashed onto my cement floor on it's headstock. The humbucker that's at the neck position literally fell out of the guitar and the screws went with it.

I took the guitar took my local guitar fixer guy and he put the pick-up back in, adjusted the neck, etc.

After practice the other night I noticed the pick-up has completely moved and is now totally crooked. One end is way higher than the other. The high E side is like almost touching the strings and the low E side is about 0.25" away from the strings.

Now, here are the stupid questions:

Do I just turn the screws that are left and right of the humbucker to adjust the height? Or, is the height adjusted from within the guitar, on the other side of the pick-guard?

And, how far should the top of the humbucker be from the strings??

[ermghoti]

It's the screws. The bass side should be farther from the strings than the high strings, as they produce more signal. The pickup height is governed by sound. I try to get the strings across a pickup balanced, and each pickup balanced with the other. The farther from the strings, the larger the dynamic range, and the more treble you get. Closer produces a louder signal, at a cost of the aforementioned treble and range, and extremely close, the magnet can pull the strings enough to affect sustain.

[Dani Pace]

For a starting point I set a bridge pup as follows, treble side, about the distance of the thickness of a nickel, bass side, about two nickels thickness between the pup and the strings. This is a good starting point for most guitars. Depending on the desired tone and type of pup slight adjustments may be nessassary. You can go quite a bit lower than this but not much clocer to the strings (clocer will affect the sustain.)