How to Set Pickup Height on Your Guitar 

Many players seem to think or at least hope that there is this perfect pickup height, like focusing a camera lens. It is much more akin to dialing in the suspension on a race car. Of course there are extremes to avoid but the subjectively optimal performance is dependent on so many things. The drivers style, horsepower, tires, track involved. Letting players know what to expect in tone variation with more or less distance should have been the subject. Experimentation is the only real way and it’s totally subjective. IMO.

I play pretty exclusively super low tuned metal, and don't care about volume discrepancy (in fact I would love it if one pickup is way lower than a different one so that I can switch to a clean sound on the quiet pickup) but I've found that as close to the strings without ringing on heavy palm mutes works for me. However I also never use single coils for anything but that alternate clean sound I mentioned, so no adjustable or even uneven pole pieces, so obviously the way he's mentioning to set up pickups height is not particularly applicable to the type of playing that I subscribe to.

Excellent video and gave me a great place to start. My guitar sounds way better after this. Thank you!

I have found to set them lower. The way the guy in the video sets them is a good starting point but then you can lower them and balance them out by how loud they sound through the amp. I’ve found there is a sweet spot for each pickup in each position. There really isn’t a measurement like he said. Gauge,steel, and fretboard height plays a huge part in the settings also. There’s definitely a magic to it as you play with all those things. Good topic for a video though

This serie is a bible, thank you!

Thanks for this!

How about distances for bass guitar pickups?

Yes this can work, but in my experience just keep them low, then raise up until it sounds good, don't go past the sweet spot or the sound gets weird, and keep volume between pickups even. I've tried a ton of technics, but for real there is just nothing better than trusting your ears, tryinbg new setups, there is just no "perfect" way to set up a guitar and the "standards" are arbitrary.

For the love of god, guys, use a LUT on your LOG footage.

The Correct answer is there is NO set height for a pick up. Every pickup has its own sweet spot where you get good clean sound, can get pinch harmonics anywhere on the neck and many more natural harmonic then most people even know exist on a neck. Volume balance between pick ups is a non starter in electric guitars. That is what amplifiers are for. Far too many people are under the impression as you have shown that close = good and you set balance of pickup volume by height. Which is why so many guitars sound like complete ass. Specially when this practice gets used to set active pickups. Some pickups that are non active may take a few turns up or down to find that sweet spot where others may have big changes in as little as half a turn. The answer is you need to play around a bit and know what to listen for if you want the best performance from any pick up. Personal preference to what a pick up should sound like is where most set them and not to optimum. Example some people like their clean tone to be a touch gritty so they set pickups higher then optimum some like them super clean and go too low where the "power" loss correlates to loss of harmonics and sustain. This is all fine but optimum can never be correlated to a set height or height range.

Do you measure from the pickup cover or the pole piece?

Please stop saying “like”!

With actives like emg it doesnt matter how high you set them. But passives like my duncan jb I set the pickup a lot lower but I raise the bobbins an 8th of an inch or so. Lowering the pickup and raising the bobbins was a game changer for me