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I always brought the pickup as high as possible.
I read somewhere that you get more overtones when it's set lower.
Any tone monkeys out there playing with this?
Alan

Depends on the pickups and the guitars. Do what sounds best for you.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

What Chris said pup height is an individual thing to your amp, guitar and pups.

You can go too high though and this is a common issue with folks who mess up their own guitars and then relent and come in for professional service. A pup too close can result in tuning instability, false reads while setting intonation and a warbling sound can be heard at times too.

Some decent references for folks wanting to adjust their own pup height and even mess with the individual pole pieces are out here if you google Jason Lollar pick-up adjustment and if you go to the Throbak (superb PAF recreations) site and watch the principals, Jon's excellent video on adjusting pups.

I will typically start at a nominal height of about 1/8" from string to top of pole (With string fretted at highest fret to set the neck height only) Starting with the neck pick up as a complete unit given all adjustments.

From there it is by ear. Up and down a bit at first to hear which way to go and then listen for the sweet spot on the open E's. Once happy with that I check string ballance and tone string to string and adjust individual poles as required where applicable. Then I check the pick up with a few chords and make any final tweaks.

After the neck pick up I will bring the bridge pick up into out put balance by adjusting overall P-up height to balance the E's between pick ups. Once volume matches the pickup is set the exact same way as before in three steps with a final check of balance between p-ups and final tweaks made. this is the last step of my set up before intonation as magnetic pull from the pickups will change intonation some just as gravity does.

That last part is what most miss. The intonation. Especially when adjusting individual pole pieces. And this is also why some p-ups like S type with highly staggered poles don't seem to respond as well to adjustment.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

I set my pickups so I can fit a US dime between the strings and pickup on the treble side. Then set the bass side lower. That’s for the bridge pickup. I set the neck pickup a bit lower since there’s more string movement there.

Also this is for humbuckers. Single coils with rod magnets have more pull, so you can’t set them too close or you’ll get what’s commonly called “Stratitus.”

The output of a pickup drops off with the square of the distance. I never liked how they sound if they are too far from the strings.


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Thanks for the replies.
Alan

Think about pole proximity and coil proximity as 2 independent but interactive things.
A P90 can position the coil very close for an in your face/close miked sound, or move the coil away but raise the poles for more jangle.

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How long is that in luthyears?

Interesting observation, Brett.
Thanks.