Thinking hard about pickup pole pieces

NBW

New Member
Joined
Mar 25, 2019
Messages
464
If I could measure the voltage directly from the jack I could get everything setup without worrying about the settings.
 
So I was messing with my sound pressure meter. Turns out my homemade cab has a big ass resonance at A440. That seems like a bad design.

the guitar seems to sound better with the pole piece adjustment.
 
I’m sure many of you will find this unbelievable but as I was waiting for this link to load I was genuinely wondering to myself who Myles Paul was :rolleyes:
 
This is a great article. But then... what am I supposed to do about the other six fixed polepieces? Is that other fixed-height slug coil just counteracting the screw-height adjustments? Or are the screw-height adjustments shown in the article also compensating for that slug coil not being properly balanced?

There's still so many questions. (Or did Suhr get it "more right" with his DS humbucker line?)
 
Well I made the changes to a couple of guitars, definitely *think* it improved my Paul's TCI! But tomorrow, I may think differently :D

Of course this is all what you hear, and that changes all the time. I guess I can't help but think if this was a great thing, PRS would already have them set this way from the factory, no?
 
Well I made the changes to a couple of guitars, definitely *think* it improved my Paul's TCI! But tomorrow, I may think differently :D

Of course this is all what you hear, and that changes all the time.

I'm extremely guilty of this myself. It usually takes me multiple dial ins spaced out over a little time to get them just right. Once I decide they are there I do my best to to resist the curse of a tweaker.
 
I'm extremely guilty of this myself. It usually takes me multiple dial ins spaced out over a little time to get them just right. Once I decide they are there I do my best to to resist the curse of a tweaker.
A curse indeed sir and although I think I'm better at resisting than I used to be - it's a constant battle.
 
Well I made the changes to a couple of guitars, definitely *think* it improved my Paul's TCI! But tomorrow, I may think differently :D

Of course this is all what you hear, and that changes all the time. I guess I can't help but think if this was a great thing, PRS would already have them set this way from the factory, no?
My SE Paul's and SE HB II have the pickup pole screws slots all perpendicular to the strings, set from the factory.

Maybe they are trying to do...something!!
 
This is pretty much how I've done it, as I always adjust the polepieces by ear for equal string volume playing both single notes and slowly arpeggiated chords.

The reason vintage-style pickups with staggered polepieces have the G pole as the highest is because that was originally done when everyone played string sets with a wound G, which had the thinnest core and so was magnetically the weakest. That protocol outlived the way strings sets are done these days (except for flatwound Jazz sets which still have a wound G).

One thing the article doesn't touch on is the different tone that comes from raising/lowering polepieces vs. raising/lowering the whole pickup body.
 
Being a scientist and all I might go to my buddy’s house and use a direct input rig to look at the signals from each string and try to get them close.
 
Being a scientist and all I might go to my buddy’s house and use a direct input rig to look at the signals from each string and try to get them close.
That would be a great way to do it, but some guitars might need some additional tweakage!
 
So I just bought a Donner interface and used Audigy to look at the VU levels of the strings on my hollowbody. The low E is hugely louder than the other strings, it will take some work to even it out.

The relative loudness of the low E combined with the resonance of the speaker cabinet was meant that sixth string root A chords sounded really off. But it is nice to know I can trust my ears.
 
Back
Top