Pickup Levels

  • Thread starter Thread starter peritus
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peritus

peritus

The not fountain head
Excerpt from a tutorial I'm reading....

"Level your pickups — While hanging with your guitar guru, ask him/her to adjust your pickups so that they pick up each string equally. Or heck, pull out a screwdriver and do it yourself. Just be sure to level the pickups so that no string is unnecessarily louder than another while recording. "

Can anyone give me any tips on this subject?

Rather than using my ears to measure, I was thinking about creating a template session in my wav editor to record each string and measure levels (and tweak accordingly)...

Is there some better method? Should the guitar be in-hand while doing this test, or on the bench? Wouldn't a screw on each end of the picup be insufficent to accurately balance the volume????? Fingerpicking or flatpicking?? Lol :p

I'm known to be obsessive about this kinda stuff... Help is greatly appreciated!!! :D
 
adjust your pickup height when your holding it... like your playing it... your not recording with it on the bench are you?.... the entire guitar will resonate different while it's over your shoulder or in your lap... i'd suggest setting the height as close to the strings as possible... take into consideration of how loud it picks up your picking of the strings... thats the biggest dif really... you can eq the highs and lows later... just try and get a good loud output before you star to hear to much crap like hissing and so on...
 
Use your ears. There are too many variables for any kind of subjective testing. I mean, are you picking exactly the same on each string? And of course they are different pitches, and each string has a different harmonic content, so even if you picking IS perfectly even, they perceved volume is noticably different. Your ears do the best job.


Although we do have a couple of customers who will not decided if they want to buy a guitar until they have our shop manager adjust the pickups. They just are not happy with anyone elses adjustments.


Here is how we USUALLY do it. (There are other styles of setup, but for most people this works well). We set the bridge pickup so that it is about 1/16" from the high E when you fret the highest fret. Going lower can make a pretty significant change in the sound, but you will loose output. A lot of Funk guys like them much lower, as it makes the pickups a bit more chimey, with more bell like highs. But you don't want to go any higher than that, or you will start to loose sustain and have intonation problems (the magnets pull on the strings and actually pull them out of tune, and suck out all of the energy in the strings).

Once you have that high E set, adjust the low side of that pickup to be (perceved as) the same volume. If you have individual pole pieces, set the two E strings, and then adjust the pole pieces to make the rest of the strings even. The biggest issue here will be the first unwound string, which will need to be noticably lower than the last wound string (be those two strings the D and G or the G and B).

Once you have the neck pickup right (we start with the neck because it will tend to be the loudest, as the strings move the most as you get closer to the middle of the string), you adjust the other pickup(s) to match, volume wise. Again, start with your E strings, and adjust the middle strings as possible.

MOST people want their pickups to be as even as possible, but there are people who like for their bridge pickup to be a bit hotter so that when they switch to the bridge pickup they get a little bit of a volume boost for solos and such.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Just like to add to Light's instructions, conventional wisdom says that a single coil should not be as close to the strings as a humbucker as it can cause intonation problems, see the Fender site for adjusting single coils.
 
Also, don't forget the 'between sounds of how the PUs mix. I just got done adjusting the PUs on one of my teles. When I went to the middle position (both PUs on), it sounded like crap, so I had to re-adjust again until I found a sound I liked in all 3 positions. :)
 
Wow... I never imagined this was such an issue and I've been playing for 15 years (without any guitar teacher...which probably explains why I didn't know)... Thanks again guys!
 
Well, for some guys it's a big issue. Others just like to play there guitars. I don't think either of them are wrong, but the ones who worry less about this stuff are the lucky ones, if you ask me.



Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
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