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Ok... we've been over this in a few threads here recently so I decided to see if I could record some examples of Roy's method of adjusting pickups. I use this method now to adjust my guitars and it works so fine. I hope this will of some benefit to some of you... YMMV. You might have your own preferred method of setting up pickups and that's great, this is just another way to do it that I've found works very well.
Disclaimer: This method of adjusting pickups is per Roy of RS Guitarworks. In a previous thread here's Roy's quote on what this is all about:
"My best suggestion is to dial them in with the following steps on an amp set with medium gain (or a good clean Tube amp).
start with the pickups very slightly below each ring and starting with the bridge pickup hit the high E open and raise the pickup slowly listening to the note decay. As you come up you will hear a point where the end of the note starts to bloom (or the end of the note starts to get louder as ) keep raising the pickup till you hear that bloom stop then back it back down till it starts again. At that point go to the low E and do the same thing. When the bridge is done move on to the neck listening to the same bloom then you are done. I have never believed there was a magic measurement for pickups, but I'm a firm believer that every pickup has a magic sweet spot."
I used two different guitars for this, a Historic LP and a 1962 ES-335 with PAF's. The "medium" gain amp is a '58 5E3 Deluxe. The amp's turned down low, volume's just before 3, the tone's on 10. At this volume, with this amp, the overtones are pretty apparent and there's little additional overtones being added by the amp from using more volume.
Any good small tube amp will work for this, it needs to be set kinda bright to hear the "bloom/overtone" thing Roy's talking about.
Listen for the end of the note decay. When the strings are too far away, you won't here any change to the sound... it'll just die off in a linear fashion.
As the pickup gets closer to being in the right spot, as per "factory settings" you'll begin to here the tone "bloom" and a harmonic will appear as the note decays.
When the pickup is in the "sweet spot", you'll hear the note changing from the pure tone to the overtone, it's rather subtle but you should be able to hear it clearly... hopefully!
Disclaimer #2! This "bloom" thing happens toward the end of the note's decay... it's subtle and you probably won't hear it with regular computer speakers. Try using headphones or maybe you'll have a set of monitors, for recording, hooked up to your computer.
If you don't hear anything, download the clips and burn 'em to a CD for home audio listening... that'll definitely work.
Ok, there's two clips for each guitar, one clip per pickup. I'll put the times in for:
"Pickup too low"... this is the sound of the pickup even with the rings on both sides of the pickup. For the 335, the "low" setting is 3/32+" away from the strings.
"Factory"... this setting is the 1/16" away from the depressed E strings. You'll hear some "bloom" and the overtone here. It's not a bad way to go for starters and will usually always get you in the ballpark
"Sweet Spot"... this is the sound from finding the most "bloom" and harmonics that I found in each guitar.
After the three separate tone samples for each setting, I play a little with the pickup in the "sweet spot"...just noodling around the fretboard to show how the guitar sounds with the pickups setup right.
A Deluxe sounds pretty bright/thin and not so good at this setting, so get ready for that. You'll also hear the filaments in the tubes rattling, they do that.
Here's the samples:
LP Bridge:
Low: 0 - 1:02
Factory: 1:07 - 2:10
Sweet: 2:12 - Playing starts at 3:08
http://h1.ripway.com/GJB58/LP bridge sweet spot.mp3
LP Neck:
Low: 0 - :41
Factory: 0:42 - 1:29
Sweet: 1:30 - Playing starts at 2:12
http://h1.ripway.com/GJB58/LP neck sweet spot.mp3
335 Bridge:
Low: 0 - 0:42
Factory: 0:43 -1:30
Sweet: 1:31 - Playing at 2:22
http://h1.ripway.com/GJB58/335 Bridge sweet.mp3
335 Neck:
Low: 0 - 0:47
Factory: 0:48 - 1:28
Sweet: 1:29 - Playing at 2:14
http://h1.ripway.com/GJB58/335 neck sweet spot.mp3
On the neck pickup clips of each guitar I play there for awhile and then start moving the selector switch around to give you all three tones... remember I'm just noodling around, so I apologize for the playing!
Here's what the amp sounds like turned up to some sort of "standard" recording level... volume's around 7, tone's all the way up. Two mics on the speaker instead of one (Royer 121 on the left and a AEA R92 on the right) and a room mic as well... sorry the guitar's a bit:wah out of tune here:lol .
http://h1.ripway.com/GJB58/Jr Deluxe jam 2.mp3
Here's the tools used for this little demo:
http://images.lilypix.com/albums/userpics/10208/335_Deluxe_LP.jpg
Sorry for the long post, hope it's worth reading and I hope this helps some of you when setting up your guitar.
Disclaimer: This method of adjusting pickups is per Roy of RS Guitarworks. In a previous thread here's Roy's quote on what this is all about:
"My best suggestion is to dial them in with the following steps on an amp set with medium gain (or a good clean Tube amp).
start with the pickups very slightly below each ring and starting with the bridge pickup hit the high E open and raise the pickup slowly listening to the note decay. As you come up you will hear a point where the end of the note starts to bloom (or the end of the note starts to get louder as ) keep raising the pickup till you hear that bloom stop then back it back down till it starts again. At that point go to the low E and do the same thing. When the bridge is done move on to the neck listening to the same bloom then you are done. I have never believed there was a magic measurement for pickups, but I'm a firm believer that every pickup has a magic sweet spot."
I used two different guitars for this, a Historic LP and a 1962 ES-335 with PAF's. The "medium" gain amp is a '58 5E3 Deluxe. The amp's turned down low, volume's just before 3, the tone's on 10. At this volume, with this amp, the overtones are pretty apparent and there's little additional overtones being added by the amp from using more volume.
Any good small tube amp will work for this, it needs to be set kinda bright to hear the "bloom/overtone" thing Roy's talking about.
Listen for the end of the note decay. When the strings are too far away, you won't here any change to the sound... it'll just die off in a linear fashion.
As the pickup gets closer to being in the right spot, as per "factory settings" you'll begin to here the tone "bloom" and a harmonic will appear as the note decays.
When the pickup is in the "sweet spot", you'll hear the note changing from the pure tone to the overtone, it's rather subtle but you should be able to hear it clearly... hopefully!
Disclaimer #2! This "bloom" thing happens toward the end of the note's decay... it's subtle and you probably won't hear it with regular computer speakers. Try using headphones or maybe you'll have a set of monitors, for recording, hooked up to your computer.
If you don't hear anything, download the clips and burn 'em to a CD for home audio listening... that'll definitely work.
Ok, there's two clips for each guitar, one clip per pickup. I'll put the times in for:
"Pickup too low"... this is the sound of the pickup even with the rings on both sides of the pickup. For the 335, the "low" setting is 3/32+" away from the strings.
"Factory"... this setting is the 1/16" away from the depressed E strings. You'll hear some "bloom" and the overtone here. It's not a bad way to go for starters and will usually always get you in the ballpark
"Sweet Spot"... this is the sound from finding the most "bloom" and harmonics that I found in each guitar.
After the three separate tone samples for each setting, I play a little with the pickup in the "sweet spot"...just noodling around the fretboard to show how the guitar sounds with the pickups setup right.
A Deluxe sounds pretty bright/thin and not so good at this setting, so get ready for that. You'll also hear the filaments in the tubes rattling, they do that.
Here's the samples:
LP Bridge:
Low: 0 - 1:02
Factory: 1:07 - 2:10
Sweet: 2:12 - Playing starts at 3:08
http://h1.ripway.com/GJB58/LP bridge sweet spot.mp3
LP Neck:
Low: 0 - :41
Factory: 0:42 - 1:29
Sweet: 1:30 - Playing starts at 2:12
http://h1.ripway.com/GJB58/LP neck sweet spot.mp3
335 Bridge:
Low: 0 - 0:42
Factory: 0:43 -1:30
Sweet: 1:31 - Playing at 2:22
http://h1.ripway.com/GJB58/335 Bridge sweet.mp3
335 Neck:
Low: 0 - 0:47
Factory: 0:48 - 1:28
Sweet: 1:29 - Playing at 2:14
http://h1.ripway.com/GJB58/335 neck sweet spot.mp3
On the neck pickup clips of each guitar I play there for awhile and then start moving the selector switch around to give you all three tones... remember I'm just noodling around, so I apologize for the playing!
Here's what the amp sounds like turned up to some sort of "standard" recording level... volume's around 7, tone's all the way up. Two mics on the speaker instead of one (Royer 121 on the left and a AEA R92 on the right) and a room mic as well... sorry the guitar's a bit:wah out of tune here:lol .
http://h1.ripway.com/GJB58/Jr Deluxe jam 2.mp3
Here's the tools used for this little demo:
http://images.lilypix.com/albums/userpics/10208/335_Deluxe_LP.jpg
Sorry for the long post, hope it's worth reading and I hope this helps some of you when setting up your guitar.
