Adjusted pickup height. Life changed.

[jamro217]

I had to lower the pickups on my 4003 because they are too hot. I back the tone all the way off on the neck pickup and almost (80%) all the way off on the bridge pickup. By using just the volume controls it has so many useful in between tones, it's unbelievable. Had a horrible time trying to balance the pickups on a fretless jazz, though. No matter what I did it seemed to get worse. I guess it depends on what you're trying to achieve. The higher the pickup, the louder and more bass frequencies will be produced, lower the pickup, and it gets softer in volume and brighter in tone. This may help if you want to accentuate the heavy bass with a raised bass pickup matched to a lower bridge pickup to add some sparkle to the top, or the other way around to get a bright, punchy sound from a high bridge, and a bit of grunt from the front.

 

[Stoom]

I raised the pickups on my new squier affinity and its made a suprisingly big difference to the tone. It's not just louder theres a lot more punch and defintion to the notes too.

 

[KickingBass]

Would adjusting pickup height help with the often uneven output in PJ basses or is that caused by the placement of the pickups?

 

[MVE]

Would adjusting pickup height help with the often uneven output in PJ basses or is that caused by the placement of the pickups?

Yes, absolutely.

 

[KickingBass]

Yes, absolutely.

Sounds like I've got experimenting to do!

 

[Baird6869]

I shake my head every time someone sells a bass because of a weak G or C string or a boomy B string.

Amazing to me that many people don't know that you can lower or raise one side of a pickup!

 

[MattZilla]

So far I just lower the pickups so that I don't hit them with the strings when digging in. It works out well to give even output across the strings so far. The only toann complaint I've got is that it doesn't sound exactly like a p. It's an active j and gets close enough.

 

[line6man]

I shake my head every time someone sells a bass because of a weak G or C string or a boomy B string.

Amazing to me that many people don't know that you can lower or raise one side of a pickup!

I don't get it, either. It's baffling that so many people don't know to adjust the pole pieces. If you had an action problem, you wouldn't hesitate to adjust a saddle. If you had a neck relief problem, you wouldn't hesitate to adjust the truss rod. Why shouldn't balance and tone problems naturally provoke the thought/desire to adjust the pickups?

 

[duracos]

Hello ... I see, nobody mentions the angle of the pickups relative to the strings.
How many of my relatively neophyte experience more severe variations in the sound I had when changing angle than the height of the magnets themselves. These are the jazz bass magnets SCN concretely.
I would like to comment on someone of the members of their experience with these,although there were comments about it and in this post...
Jazz bass pickup height & angle | TalkBass.com
Thanks!

 

[N. Kentucky Bass]

Wow, thanks for all these suggestions and insights! I just spent 10 minutes adjusting the Fralins on my P-bass and what an amazing difference! Embarrassed to admit that after all these years, pickup height has been the one area I haven't paid attention to. Now I'm a believer! A few of you mentioned following the fretboard curvature, which for a pair of split-P pickups means the centers will be higher than the outer edges. But I also noticed the outer side of the G string pickup will be higher than the corresponding outer side of the E string. The variance is caused by the comparatively narrower diameter of the G string. Now I know why I wasn't getting the punch and volume out of the G string. Relative volume is now the same across all strings, presence and purity stronger, and tone more true. Can't wait to hear this at my gig on Thursday!

 

[static0verdrive]

Wow, thanks for all these suggestions and insights! I just spent 10 minutes adjusting the Fralins on my P-bass and what an amazing difference! Embarrassed to admit that after all these years, pickup height has been the one area I haven't paid attention to. Now I'm a believer! A few of you mentioned following the fretboard curvature, which for a pair of split-P pickups means the centers will be higher than the outer edges. But I also noticed the outer side of the G string pickup will be higher than the corresponding outer side of the E string. The variance is caused by the comparatively narrower diameter of the G string. Now I know why I wasn't getting the punch and volume out of the G string. Relative volume is now the same across all strings, presence and purity stronger, and tone more true. Can't wait to hear this at my gig on Thursday!

Awesome. Good job! Beware if you had any pedals that are sensitive to dynamics like many overdrives, you may need to tweak them to match your new hotter output in order to keep the sound you like.

 

[static0verdrive]

Just a funny story... when I first first started bass many years ago, I took the beat-up ol' passive P bass that was given to me and figured I should "fix it up". Oddly, the pickup screws weren't very tight! Maybe vibrations loosened them... tightened them down and felt happy. Bought an amp a couple of years later and realized the bass was probably given to me because it "barely worked"!