Question regarding tone on upper frets, neck pick up

[ghochan]

Sorry if this is a very basic question, but I'm still learning. I have noticed that when I play around the 12th fret on the lower strings with the neck pick up, the sound quality degrades significantly. Is this something that could be remedied by raising the height of the pick up on that end? The higher strings sound fine but things get really muddy around the 4th, 5th and 6th strings. This is on a CU22 with Starla pickups.

Thanks!

Gordon

 

[rubalup]

i experienced this in all my guitars... i guess is the combined action of the string gauge and the shorter space for the string to vibrate. I never play the 6th and 5th string past the 12-14 fret... not to mention the difficulty of playing licks there, no matter where the neck joints the body.

 

[Michael_DK]

It might be that the pickup should be lowered instead.

If you remember/write down how many turns you give it with the screw driver, there shouldn't be any problem if you want to return it to the current height. Or use a ruler and look at the factory setup specs.

Just be careful when lowerering the pickup so the screw isn't screwed all the way out of pickup, because then you're screwed ;-) (not really, but you have to take off the strings and pickup ring and then try to re-mount the whole thing. Can be a bit of a pain).

 

[maxtuna26]

To echo what Michael said, I think the thing to do is to lower the pup and raise the polepieces. Or if you're experienced in soldering, you can try bypassing the neck pickup from the tone control. That, you'll have to decide whether you will miss the tone control on the neck pickup or not. Or you could try to change your EQ. Turn down the bass and gain, turn up the treble and volume, it'll produce significantly less mud. If it's still not working for you, you need a singlecoil sound in the neck. Something along the lines of SD Phat Cat or Dimarzio Humbucker From Hell/Bluesbucker will probably brighten the neck position greatly.

If all else fails, play using only the bridge pickup, you'll sound bright and twangy no matter what! :laugh:

 

[ghochan]

Thanks for the suggestions. I had to laugh at the notion of taking a soldering iron to my guitar, given how I stressed out about installing strap locks! :rofl: The pickup is already quite low, almost flush with the ring, so I don't have very far to go in adjusting it downward. I guess the solution is just to stay out of that neighborhood, at least when using the neck pickup. I ended up there while learning Santana's solo on Oye Como Va. The transcription I was referring to ( which isn't great) called for playing around the 12th fret on the lowest strings, which is when I noticed the muddy sound, much more pronounced on the PRS than on my Ibanez hollow body (nature of the beast, I guess). The problem doesn't exist when using the bridge pickup, which retains a crisp, defined tone anywhere on the neck.

 

[vchizzle]

Pretty tough to diagnose without seeing/hearing what's going on. Is it possible the string is fretting out on a fret above? Or does the string ring freely(amplified and unamplified). Picture or video? If it's purely a plugged in thing, I agree that lowering the pickup height(sounds like it's low already) and raising the pole pieces could bring a little clarity to those strings.