Time well spent. I wonder how many folks are too hasty with swapping pickups (or even guitars) because of not doing what you did. The effect of raising/lowering the pickup is not subtle. It’s profound. I usually have them flush with the mounting rings. That’s fairly low. Then the sound becomes more ‘acoustic’, meaning the pickup acts more like a microphone that takes the acoustic sound of the guitar and converts it to an electric signal. And that’s all about the instrument’s subtle nuances being picked up. Having the pickup close to the strings makes the sound less about the guitar and more about the strings and the pickup itself; the specific acoustic nuances of the guitar get drowned out. That’s not always bad, I mean if you use a lot of effects and/or a ton of gain with dropped tunings then a strong, clear signal from the guitar is more important. I love going straight into the amp and having the pickups flush with the mounting rings brings out the best of my guitars. Well, to my ears at least.
I couldn't disagree more by recourse on rules of electric fields and magnetism.
Please tell us which magnetically reactive part of wood emits messurable changes in the magnetic field!
And it won't be the trussrod. The neck needs to be stiff: first tuning stability, second supporting sustain. If the neck would move additionally to the strings, interferences would extinguish the liberate, by hitting the string, amplitude of the string(s). Vibratoeffect and loss of sustain.
And the body? Solidbodies behave like frozen fish. The bridges are the only relevant spot for vibrations into the body. But irrelevant to vibrate to influence the pickup. Neither semi-hollow- nor hollowbody bodies influence the electro-magnetic field of their mounted pickups.
An absolute different talk are acoustic guitars, with the body as the elementary part of emitting sound.
Returning to electrics! Fully agreed to your statement: The distance of the pickup to the strings is elemantary. Such as the respective inductivity of the pickup. The closer the distance the higher the density of the magnetic field.
The closer the pickups, the louder they are (up to 30%) - combined with an increasing amount of disharmonic overtones. Additionally the strings vibrate uneven and unround, and the string will sound undifferentiated. Some pickup winders argue that perhaps the octave purity will suffer, too. In terms of singlecoils common knowledge tells this 'Stratitis'.
Humbuckers are by its construction more resistant to 'Stratitis'.
Bringing more distance between strings and pickups changes ONLY the magnetic field, which the vibrating string affects. It's weaker, the whole amplified electric guitar will likely sound less loud. Maybe the string separation is a little bit articulate.
A magnetic pickup is not a microphone for wood. There isn't, by its nature of wood, an electro magnetic impuls and impact which influences the pickup.
Even bridge mounted piezos won't be affected by the sound of the wood. My pure piezo sound of my Parker Fly Deluxe doesn't sound typical basswood, and my Linus Custom Thinline doesn't like maple. Both have Fishman piezo systems. Same string company and gauge, same number of frets, they differ slightly in the scale 25.5 to 25.25".
I absolutely don't contradict, that your guitar sounds best for you with lowered pickups.
You can personally believe what you want, physics aren't part of confession.
But electro-acoustic scientific research came to a different conclusion.
I contradict your justification.