About polepieces height...

[sadmoodyfrazier]

As usually no one talks about humbucker polepieces height. Even PRS who is so accurate about ideal standard setup measures doesn't tell anything about how I should tune the polepieces. I've just placed my SE polepieces in a slight arc as I do with any of humbucker equipped guitar I have. I've never found good the "strat like" kind of setup so I alway just go for a slight arc. The problem is that I feel thick strings a little weak. My guitar came just with flat polepieces setup. Do you have an idea about this topic? How do you setup yours? Do you have some documentation from PRS? Honestly I'm very confident about what PRS says because I learned that he is some kind of psyco just like me about these things. So I would like to know his opinion about polepieces but I can't find anywhere.

 

[AP515]

I can't answer for Paul of course, but for me, changes to pole pieces affect the sound about like the EQ on the amp. Just a tweak of a knob and I'm in territory I prefer. I haven't seen a reason to adjust them since I'm changing the EQ all the time to evoke one tone over another anyway.

 

[garrett]

It's common to have them flat. The PRS pickups with the squabbin design have a radiused top, so the poles all follow the arc. Either is fine; there are no real rules there.

Personally, I set overall height and then adjust the screw poles to correct any imbalances I hear. For example, on a bridge pickup I tend to lower the screw poles for the high E and B. On the neck pickup I might lower the low E and A if it sounds too boomy. It just takes experimentation to meet the needs of your rig and personal taste.

I agree, it's like adjusting the EQ of the pickup.

 

[Rhythmisking]

Basically what garrett said. It's really important to me that the strings balance each other for volume so that the individual notes in chords ring the 'right way'.

I should say that I mostly play clean and mostly jazz-type stuff. So it's not just that each string has identical volume. It's so that each string has the right volume in the chords I play so that the chords sound right.

For lead playing I really just want the level/response to be similar across all the strings so that there's not some weird volume jump or drop going string to string, so it's mostly for clean chordal work that I want the overall balance to be just right. We're talking tiny little tweaks here.

But yeah, I can spend an hour EASY tweaking pole piece height on a new guitar.