Pickup Height DOESN’T change TONE very much! 

Im starting to think your viewers are forgetting that you are mainly about recording and mixing music. Your not just a channel talking about playing a guitar in your room through an amp. So end of day we should all remember glenn is teaching us alot of ins and outs of recording audio, mixed with some reviews and comedy , but the main idea is the studio work. Cheers glenn i figured some people needed a reminder.

I know it's a high gain audience, but cleans would highlight things tremendously. If you had a clean sample to A/B against the overdriven for each sample we can get a better grasp of what's going on, and why the overdriven results are as they are.

This might be one case that the bass players have a leg up on ya Glenn, string to pickup height is a large part of setting up and balancing the instrument so it's even across string gauges that vary wildly.

The biggest difference with the pickup height I noticed when experimenting back in the day was when I did pinch harmonics. That was only on passive pickups though. Personally I found no difference on active ones, but results may vary of course!

The Science of Loud with the loudest mouth on YT? YES! Thank you both for doing this. The differences are minor enough that all the butthurt comments from those who spent thousands on their pickups should be giving y'all a metric crap-ton of bullshit whining. But, hey, if the guitars are loud enough... it drowns them out! 😂

Yes, pickup height adjustability is useless. They should actually be under the wood so they don’t get fingerprints and you can see more of the top.

I removed the pickups and no difference detected (if guitar is not plugged in)

This highlights why myself & other guitarists obsessive tweaking. *It's not about tone, it's about feel*. And when something feels weird you struggle to play, as is what happens here. If Glen & Colin played without playback to the sound & only heard the unplugged guitar the tone shift wouldn't have effected their playing or their perception of difficulty of the thing they just played. The tone shift wouldn't be there while playing & the feel would be consistent. Which is why everything matters even when it doesn't.

You high gain guys are incredible. How can you hear differences when the sound is so compressed? If I would play that kind of music often (I do it only sometimes), I'd always go for the cheapest stuff; it doesn't seem to matter... (I'd save on the guitar and pickups and put a good speaker in my cab, though).

glenn you can make your humbucker sound stratocaster-ish if you lower enough to lower the bottom end and put the pickup poles higher. you can actually change the voicing of the guitar this way

I have a 1986 Vantage Avenger that I hated the sound. It sounded really bad for cleans and it was over fuzzy with high gain. My buddy told me two days ago to lower the height of my humbucker, and problem solved! I was about to put the thing for sale! 😂😂

Nice. I dig in a LOT when I chug so my action is highish and pickups are lowish. Strings have to have full rotation for the best dynamics.

It changed the sound drastically when you palmmute hard. It also alters output level of the pickups. This hits the amp differently.

PU's are all about volume/output signal, not tone. But... different volumes will allow you to hear frequencies, which would be hard to detect at lower settings. Kind of how physics work in other audiosources. One thing that angers me, when I see PU height setup videos, is that people work with rulers/gauges to set the height... It pisses me off completely!!!!@!@@@!!!! THE proper way to do it is by using an osciloscope. Raise the PU untill you get the biggest/highest/loudest signal, which is the most precise and CORRECT height. If you raise the PU further, you will see/hear/measure magnets pulling the strings. ANY other method is pseudoscientific (or just BS) Now... the only tech I have met who used this method, turned the setupscrews back by a quarter (1/4) turn, to be safe. You would even find it hard, using the osciloscope, to notice a difference (with a quarter turn on the screws). $0.02 (which will save you a shitload on buying PU's)

ARTIFICIAL HARMONICS ( Zakk stuff) .. It seems best ones are with higher pickups.. maybe im wrong?? that's where pickups shine or don't IMO! How does height affect that is the real question!!

i wonder why the adjustable pickup position thing on guitar didn't really took off, could it be impracticality on manufacturing standpoint? inconvenience for the end user? trying to sell you more pickups on a guitar? or all of em?

I just prefer my pickups lower, then push more gain. It just sounds better to my ears. Doesn't matter if it's single coils, humbuckers, bass, active, whatever. I just prefer lower.

....................... So here is the issue, there is a difference between an Analog circuit and a Digital one, good on you for proving that pickup height means jack shit on a digital circuit(you should now know the difference between simulated signal algorithms and an analog chain, and Active pickups all sound the same almost no matter what(which most of us knew about since the late 80's early 90's). You are both correct on this. However you are wrong concerning Analog equipment, because its actually fairly basic Physics and Science, Analog Circuits will react differently, there is a reason why we use different rated pots and Capacitors in the guitar for the Analog signal that change the Tone acting as an EQ of sorts, also a quick note Glenn when you distort the signal with Gain the less of any perceived difference you will see(this is a flaw with most of your Scientific videos when you post evidence, a clean sound will have a higher perceived difference versus a distorted one the more gain you apply the more the perceived difference disappears, grant it you are a metal channel so to speak but all guitarists are going to see videos like this and that can be a bit misleading), When you change the difference of Pole pieces and their height you are changing the strength of the signal itself per string, if a guitar pickup sounds muddy in the mids you can change that by profiling the pole pieces, it also does effect tone because of the way Analog circuits work, this is why in a Pedal chain depending on stack the tone is changed depending on the types of pedals and their circuits. It has to do with the way an Analog circuit works versus a Digital one, pedals and amps depending on the configuration of electric components will sound differently the Tone will change because the signal in the chain changes. This actually is a bit of calculus work because you have to calculate the input signal with all values of the receiving circuit and how their values change the signal to the final output. Now Mechanically changing the pickup height will change your tone, because magnets, and steel strings, and you have the magnetic field this is why a copper plated bottom telecaster bridge pickup doesn't sound the same as a strat Bridge pickup, but it goes a bit further than that, because that magnetic field keeps the string more taught reducing vibration and cutting down on the mechanical back and forth of the string when plucked(there is a reason for tilt back pockets for the neck and it slightly goes into this concerning tension of the string) So because of that it will pull you out of intonation more so than you death claw fretting(which you should always be slightly down tuned depending on how bad you are), which means you are pulling yourself out of tune more often thus changing the Tone as you are out of tuning with probably a lot of pitch drift, and it will also change sustain levels, slightly. Food for though as always.

But you didn't try compensating gain when lowering the pickup. would it actually make an audible "tone/articulation/whatever" change?

I think for a truly fair comparison you should have gain matched the high vs low pickup positions when playing, as a lot of these tonal differences seem to be from the problems around gain levels making it harder to play. As you have seen that string DO make a difference to the tone, it potentially follows that hitting strings harder vs weaker can make a difference too. Also we have to think about where on the strings you're hitting, as (admittedly without an A/B test) when I play nearer the bridge I get a toppier tone, whereas playing near the neck gets a more bottom heavy tone.

After repairing and setting up guitars for over a decade, get them too high and they pull on your strings and fuck shit up. Get them too low and signal from strings will be weak and you will lose dynamic range or make the pickup unusable. Get near 2mm from bottom of string while you are pressing string down on last fret and you are good to go.

Too high and palm mutes make a tink or pink sound. That's a tone change for sure. That's the only sound I try to avoid when setting height. Then I forget about it.

Everything matters!! Just to what extent and what price will make a difference? Just learn to play your instrument better! Dr. dan could feel a disturbance in the force at that exact moment.

Jim Lill has a new microphone video.... you would be interested!

Wtf! He plays different things. Why not play the same thing and to a click?

Pickup height usually can help when somebody is looking for more clarity or more gain. Pickup placement (affected by scale length) is what really changes the tone of the guitar signal.

Why rely on our (audiophile) ears when you could use a spectrum analyser? ;)

I did a quick test with my Strat when I bought it about 10 years ago. Recorded the direct signal into my DAW with the PUs as close to the strings as I could get without the strings actually hitting them. Then wound the PUs down as far as they would go and recorded that. When I level-matched the two recordings, the only difference was that the lowered PUs had barely any 'Stratitis wobble, and the raised PUs had a lot.

GLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNN! I have learned so much watching your videos! It actually improved my recordings by an order of magnitude at least. I am so happy to see when you have a new video because I know I am going to learn something that will help me and save me money in the long run. Please, can you do something about extension cabs and how to record multiple cabs at once (mixing and balancing them please) as I am struggling with how to balance a 5150 iconic and it's 18" extension cab.... too much mud!!!!

Ppl are mistaking output for tone jus cause you have more output doesn’t mean the tone of the guitar has changed

First you should find a guitar player that can play the same riff twice

I have several different guitars all with different pickups, and in the room they sound different and I can pick them apart easily when played back to back. But on a recording, the differences are still noticeable but actually not that big. And in a mix it's not that big of a deal at all. What I do notice is that different pickups are more noticeable when playing through a real amp instead of an amp sim, but that's just what I (= complete amateur) noticed.

The closer i put the pick ups to my strings, the crappier it sounds.

But enough to make a difference with lower setting...

Nice to hear this explained and proven in real time. Keep this sort of thing up, please!

Isn’t pickup height a matter of attack and sustain more in direction adjusting the natural compression (can’t think of a better word to describe the effect) of the pickups that sit in a given guitar? In general I prefer passiv humbuckers with loads of output and 12 adjustable polepieces, total pickup hight gets adjusted to have a balance between clarity and pinch harmonics, pole pieces for even string definition when taking full chords, pole piece height between strings is pretty simular to saddle intonation if that makes sense, should seem logical too. Low E and G furthest down, A and B/H in between, D and high E furthest out, heigth difference shouldn’t be a lot though, 1mm from lowest to highest should be more than enough.

Higher pickup height = more articulation, higher output, and a proximity effect. This effect almost liked a loudness boost on a stereo. Boosting highs and lows. Cheers! 🥃🥃🥃 🤘🏻😎🤘🏻 Well done.

Henning "I ain't paying for AC with all these people coming and going out of the house, you crazy"

Okay, I know that Yamaha was a sponsor but seriously I think you should do a Revstar fearless gear review because it is such an underrated guitar especially for metal. It's an absolute weapon for not a lot of money!

It might not change much in the context of a mix, but it's a big change in the context of playing and using a noise gate. I typically don't use that high of a gain, I go as low gain as I can. If the pick ups are too low, sometimes, my noise gate struggles to pick up all my notes, if I accidentally pick them too low volume. With low pick ups, it's a bit more of a struggle to get every note out, particularly on hammer ons and pull offs. But then again, my pick ups themselves are also pretty low output

Seems like you basically need to do a/b comparisons on every guitar to balance out pickup heights for it. Could explain why people perceive a massive difference when getting new pickups. Course, I'm a bass player, mostly playing clean and emg fan boy. 😉

"Of course you are not hearing any difference, you are playing shitty made in china guitars over an amp sim instead of a tube amp" XD XD

Rock on with these demos 🤘🏼 the more you know the faster you can get to where you’re going for less. Even if you’re not going for distorted tones still helps to understand how crazy close pickups sound distorted even if they sound that much different clean. For everyone not having to go through $$ and time to get to the good part, all this used to be so much harder to access and understand without spending both. With this much more time for rocking, hopefully it leads to a lot more music time and quality! Thanks again!!

Tubes and bias matter for headroom Pickup distance to strings matters for gain and brightness That why Steve Morse has so many of them in his bread and butter guitars as he like to call them and why they are setup that way Tone itself is super objective and subject to a great many things Volume bs heardroom, the space the speakers are in The size of the room It’s interesting if you do this same test outside in like a park somewhere etc I’m bummed I never got my pedal Glenn but I still think your awesome A plethora of free knowledge and experience you share is worthy of a shout out You are a huge help to anyone that actually takes the time to listen and then actually try doing the stuff shared on this channel Shalom

Hello Glenn, I am a new subscriber. ❤

When it is low there is less grain and juce.

You need to keep in mind that humans hear best at around 8Khz, so increasing the output makes the fringe frequencies stand out more.

I love these science approach to tone videos Glenn! I would be interested to see the difference in EQ read out on the reaper eq. Maybe do three identical sustained notes repeating this same experiment. Also 7:26 "This guitar is a lot hotter!" DAMN IT GLENN! You forgot to turn the input gain back down between guitars!

I bought a Harley Benton Strat copy with a hot rail in the bridge. And I noticed there was a big difference in volume between the single coils and the hot rail. I brought up the height of the single coils and that gave me steady volume over all 3 pickups. And actually the treble on the hot rail was always a little too harsh me. After watching this video I tried bringing down the height of the pickup underneath the high strings just a hair and that did the trick. It seems like adjusting pickup height is a good way of tweaking the sound of your guitar just a little.

Those are galloped 16ths. Not Triplets!

It changes amplitude though

that ibanez is fucking georgeous

And thats why people have been screaming at you Glenn that pickups do make a difference. Apart from different combinations of components use in the making and they're difference to its frequency response, there's also the gain of the pickup (which depending on magnet type can influence gain as well). While the end result when you record a pickup may not sound that much different to another (especially if they're of similar materials and construction), the amount of gain one puts out because of the materials used will influence the overall feel of the guitar to the player - as you found out with these tests. Lower output you might need to strum harder, higher pickup you might play lighter. If you have a pickup with a strong ceramic magnet, backing it off to reduce the amount of gain and articulation is near impossible because of the magnetic field it produces. Ceramic magnets are what you tend to find in cheaper pickups (not to say all ceramic magnet pickups sound terrible). If you're using lower power magnets (like Alnico II), the effect will be more pronounced. Its all about finding a happy medium to enough gain while not loosing articulation of each string. Doesn't mean the pickup will sound bad, it's just personal taste. That is why when manufacturers give you recommended distances of pickups, its a starting point and shouldn't be taken as gospel. Not many people play the same way or even have the same gear - Thats why pickups matter. Although the moral to the story, change your pickup heights before you change your pickups and see if that solves your problem first.

I fucking loved the Ibanez Hollow Body with the high pickups for a thrash metal sound!!!

Tone is in the wallet.

Higher pickups have better clarity. Though the difference isn't that much in the first couple of guitars in my opinion. So I suppose it's best to back off just enough that you have plenty clarity without the sludge. My theory is that some people don't know what part of the overall sound is the actual tone so call everything tone, hence them being adamant that any difference in sound = different tone, even with high gain metal.

It does not change tone, but I've noticed that it changes the volume. I lowered the bass side of my neck pickup and it helped roll off some of the boominess when using it. Or I could be totally wrong and it's all placebo effect!

Pickup height (in my bench experience and as a player) has mostly non-audible effects. It's not a "it has to be deadass on this spot" thing. It's "if you're too close, you start having intonation trouble on low pitches (like bass guitars and djenty register ERGs), and if you're too far away, you take away responsiveness and signal" thing. Using a strobe tuner, if the pickup poles are too close to large strings, overtones prevent getting the intonation right when setting up the guitar itself. Gearheads are always going to try to export responsibility for good technique to manufacturer settings instead of practice. Toan remains in the fingers.

Hey Glen, you can calculate the fast fourier transform of those signals to check out the frequency content, that would be easier to judge the differences, from time domain signals like the ones you showed in the video is almost impossible to tell, if you want you can send me a copy of those time domain signals you recorded and I'll send you the plots back, cheers!

Big fan of CSGuitars, glad to see you two pop up in my sub feed today! This video surprised me tbh. There was much less of a tonal difference which shocked me, but also there was a VAST volumetric difference, which ALSO shocked me! I guess 1-2 centimeters does make a difference, huh ;)

Good work as very helpful information to have when recording appreciate it. Your hard work pays off in the long run Glen.

It helps with clarity imo

It can be interesting to see how successful Glenn would be if he tried to match the different sounds with EQ. In the end, in the mix, the difference would be much smaller. On the other hand, as Collin mentioned, the playing itself is affected. Thus, the sound would be unnoticeably different in the mix, but the performance could be the reason for dealing with pickup height.

The main thing with pickup height it to try and get the maximum output without loosing too much sustain (if the pickups are too close to the strings the magnetic field can drastically reduce sustain) while also trying to achieve a similar output volume from each pickup.

Very interesting hearing this. I have always raised the pickup over the bass strings and left it at default on the treble strings. I did chuckle how RU-vid ads kicked in frequently between the a/b comparison

on a P90 it helps a TONE i dropped my P90 flush and it dropped the bass case this P90 was super bassy now its way less lol

Why didn't you normalize the DI's from different takes before hitting the amp? It's hard to say how much of the effect is due to different gain. You changed the gain twice I think, but that was a very arbitrary change. It's an ok video, but not up to your usual standards of scrutiny.

Are you doing high gain because this is a high gain audience or is it because with high gain the results prove you right? Try a less gainy amp sound like a mildly overdriven old school Marshall Plexi and let us hear how the pickups and tonewood effect the EQ before its compressed and saturated

It is important to get the heights right for how you play and what your guitar does. Some guitars get really flubbly when the PU is too high. Personally I like the bridge as high as it will go and still sound good, and the neck all the way down for maximum quack.

--- 🤔 Maybe We're The #1 #Spiritist* Pop-Metal Or #Rock #Band In This World... But Don't Pay Much Attention To Our Neanderthal English, Ha Ha Ha ❤ *NOTE: Spiritist is who professes #Spiritism, the #Gospel continuation It has began with the books by #AllanKardec and continued in the books by Francisco C. Xavier #ChicoXavier, the greatest and more important #medium/#prophet of #spirits of the last centuries. -

I like both of your channels and watch them often. I learned that the tone doesn't change with Pick up height, but only the volume changes with the distance of the Pick up from the strings , AKA closer is louder. that's about it... I learned that with a cheap Sears Silvertone/Danelectro with 2 'Lipstick' Pick ups. through a very high power Kenwood 6420 custom modified Receiver amplifier (2850 Watts total output) through all 10 channels/5stereo pairs.. with may more built in featured to many to list here ... easy to tell the difference with that much power available to crank it up only when I adjusted the amp settings to high, mid and Bass were there any differences in tones anyway. pick up height had no effect on tone, only on volume or signal strength from the pick ups them selves... Basic Physics or hydrodynamics/audio dynamics. LOL and that was when i was about 12 yrs old or about 53 years ago as I'm now 65 and have just recently completed my very first guitar upgrade/mod/ build you may have read about in my other comments on some of your videos before this.

Holy crap, the super close single coil sounded great for high gain

Glen, why fudging the scientific measurements? Riffs should have been decided and repeated not improvised. Hitting amp/sim with different input volume will always sound different and only first guitar got (allegedly) "normalised" input. Please, make a properly executed experiment! Maybe bypassing volume/tone would be correct way, since that eliminates high-end drain. Personally I don't give a crap about proximity tone. I want the most sensitivity/output, so I rise pickups as high as possible without getting in a way. Never had complains about DI quality (passive/active), because I always record them at the same input volume.

try a real amp at reasonable gain. you can play a plastic kazoo into a modeler and get the same tone (i kid, i kid but not completely)

GLEEEEEEN! Would you mind to share the raw wave file of those takes (without the amp applied)? Thank you!

I don't know which of my 2 comments will appear first here so here i will describe my "Stellarcaster" and all its features . I started with a "Starcaster"-"Strat electric guitar" By: Fender (said that right on the head stock) I stripped it totally paint electronics and all down to bare wood and empty of anything at all then extended the control cavity for more controls and bigger Pick ups... the paint is a stars and Planets, Space theme custom paint job on the body and headstock. with a 2K semi gloss clear coat finish. then I made a custom extended Brushed Stainless Steel Pick guard that I loaded with the added electronics. Including 3 quad rail/coil humbuckers wired in coil pairs with 5 wires. one braded ground and also the start and finish of each pair of adjacent coils. each with their own P/P vol. for coil splitting and reg. Tone pots all are 500K audio taper type the bridge tone pot also a P/P to activate the bridge and neck P/Ups together regardless of any other controls. It's wired like a 50's Les Paul with coil splits and I used .047 orange drop tone caps for a brighter sound and the way i did the coil split for which coils are closest to the bridge when in circuit maks it brighter as well so the guitasr sounds like the Strat it started as but with nore power and the ability to use all 3 Pick ups all together. even though I installed a Fender 5-way blade style selector switch which functions as it should but through my unique wiring and the use of that P/P tone pot get added functionality and added tonal options as well. and yes the wiring was a challenge with all the solder connections and the wire routing...since the normal/traditional wire used for most electric guitars is really to big for the minute electrical current produced by the P/Ups to begin with. usually in mere millivolts. I stripped out a salvaged Computer VGA cable for all the smaller stranded wired within it that have their own insulation and are adequate for the minute voltage they will carry. saving space in the control cavity and easing wire routing as well manipulating wire that small takes some skill and the use of tools to place it exactly where you need it to be and hold it to solder it in place. .. takes time but the end result works as designed after working the bugs out of the wiring diagram.. but now it all works as intended. and sounds great. I found that when the pots and switches are mounted to the Stainless Steel Pick guard that they are essentially grounded to it through their cases, eliminating the need for any ground wiring but to the Bridge itself to any grounded component in the entire circuit. and the Pick guard acts as the shielding as well.. so none is needed inside the control cavity either.. It all works well for such an extreme and unique guitar wiring scheme. a black and dark blue background for the stars and planets paint scheme, the Brushed Stainless Steel Pick Guard, loaded with those bug powerful quad rail Pick ups and the Tele style Chrome knobe adorning the 6 pots and a chrome tip on the 5-way selector switch and I added a Kill Button too, just for more fun....remember the paint is on both the body and the head stock envision it for yourself... cool looking spacy guitar that looks feels and sounds great. My "Stellarcaster" really rocks the Cosmos.... LOL ... Wanna Play??? yes I am very [proud of myy very first ever guitar project that is thr beginning of the collection I will actually build with my own 2 hands , one at a time as I please and the way i want them to be.

I play 5-6 string basses with thicker strings and run my action as close to the neck as possible without fret buzz, and usually have to lower the hight of my pickups. Never noticed a difference other than the strings werent slamming against them anymore lol

Lefty Lowers pickup Righty Raises pickup That's my way of remembering

i mostly use a HSS equipped guitar, and set the middle single coil further down than the neck pickup, because otherwise i might hit it with the pick while playing, which is disturbing. so at least with the single coils i definitively can tell you lose some volume due to different heights, quite significantly too. with the bridge humbucker i don't really notice amything much when i set it further down, except that at one point when it's too far down, i get feedback problems at rehearsalroom volume levels, which i didn't got with it higher up.

Thanks Glenn, this was a great video. Although I'm just a bedroom guitarist, I this video has saved me money. From what it appears, pick-up height is really a gain boost with a slight eq. Knowing this helps me understand what to do with a guitar that has a hot pickup output(passive). I have a Charvel circa 1990 and an Ibanez RG Series. Growing up in the 80s/90s listening to metal, the conventional wisdom is that you always want your pick-ups as high as possible. However; now that I'm older and playing different kinds of music, I find that the outputs of my Charvel pickups are way hotter than what's on my Ibanez (INF1 and INF2 pickups). I don't know what pickups are in my Charvel, but they are quite hot - enough that I'm either adjusting gain or level when I switch between guitars. Believe it or not, I like the sound of the Ibanez INF1 and INF2 pickups. Clean or dirt, they are consistent. However; I was wondering what to do with the pickups in my Charvel. This video made me realize that I can dial in some sort of unity-gain on each guitar by adjusting the pick-up heights. All I need to do is lower the pickup height in my Charvel so the output level matches the level of my Ibanez, I don't need to spend money on replacing the pick-ups on each guitar so that the output is consistent. This video just saved me at least $600! Thanks guys. P.S. Thanks for having Colin on, I love his stuff as well!

But remember this before and tells you pick ups don’t mean anything

Wouldn't it be necessary to adjust the input gain so that the input signal always has the same level? This should have a strong influence on the “amp” and the compression. And the changed final volume also has an effect on what you hear (Fletcher Munson).

EMG 81 and 85 (active), EMG HZ (passive), Dimarzio Air Norton Bridge and Paf 36th annyversary ( both passive). HZ and Dimarzio ones are medium output, 81/85 high. All with LITTLE difference. Except for the 81/85 maybe, they were on same height (i used a caliper). Most notable difference was -The gain, but that is to be expected. -HZ vs Dimarzio was the highs (HZ were darker) -Dimarzio and 81/85 was low mids, seems like 81/85 got a boost around 400hz and dimarzio were around 500hz or more, I dont know exactly. -Hz vs 81/85 went similar to the case before, but again the HZ are darker that Dimarzio. All on the same rig, and the diference could be (and was) compensated with ... guess what? THE F**KING TONE STACK ON THE AMP!!! one number up or down on Prescence and Gain knob!! The low mids on 81/85 vs the passive is the hard part, thats were an EQ pedal on the loop enters! BUT the 81/85 sound nice as they are and they' are not " too compressed" as the internet makes you believe they are. Heck, they sound really good clean too!! And in comparison here on YT the 81/85 sound really close to the Fishman Fluence voice 1, BUT I DONT SEE ANYONE SAYING OOOHH THIS ARE COMPRESED 🤌🤌🤌 Btw, haven't hear anyone say "oh in this record, he is using the pickups to low/high, like 2mm" either. Not even for clean. There is difference, but is little. And must people can't tell without a reference, surely I don't. I noticed the difference because I used the same amp and pedals on the same settings and take pictures on my phone, so yeah... 1 number on the knobs up and down.

There's something I've been wondering for years and that's whether or not there are simply also different shapes in the magnetic fields, considering there are not only different magnets but also poles and blades and so on.

Hi Glenn! Have you seen any of Jim Lill's insane guitar tone tests? I would love to know your opinion on them. I think his videos offer a lot of insight into what does and doesn't matter for guitar tone and they're also really entertaining. Keep up the good work! :)

Because of the Inverse Square Law, magnetic pickups have an ASYMMETRIC transfer curve: the string excursion TOWARDS the pickup is louder than the string excursion AWAY from the pickup. This distortion of the string's WAVEFORM diminishes with lower pickup height. This is only DISTORTION in the same sense that the transfer curve of a clean valve preamp is not a truthful reproduction of the input signal (Unlike distortion due to CLIPPING, which is the usual meaning of the term in the guitar world). This effect cannot be heard very well when far more severe amp or pedal CLIPPING distortion is subsequently applied to the signal from the pickup.

Wish there was someone like you who played non-metal. Metal music sounds all the same to me - And that's including amps and guitars and effects. I mean there's some differences but it doesn't seem to be significant that is whether something is a little more distorted or not or brighter or darker It's always that same overly distorted terrible buzz saw kind of music. I don't know why people like it.

My own 'research' I've found subtle differences with pickup height, but not enough to "fret over" . This falls under the same wine cork sniffers discussion over TONE WOODS MATTER. I'm not trying to start a shit-storm, but if materials used in construction does not affect the way it sounds, why doesn't that cigar box guitar you're thumping on sound like a Les Paul? Yeah, comparing apples and hubcaps. Theres always going to be a rabbit hole to dive into. Those knobs and switches on the gear can occupy enough time just learning to use them. I'm digging your content.

....... just last week my '11 iMac died and so did use of Saffire 24. I switched to a Scarlett 2i2 and guitar tone suffered immensely. Took a few hours trying adjust/correct/rework amp(s) tone back to what it was using everything available while not just using digital tech to "make" the tone...results were very bland....you know what eventually...lastly... caused a surprisingly large/positive change in tone? The slightest fractions of pickup height changes....bwhaaaaaaaaa....

Another attempt trying to point out that the distance between the bridge and the PU is what dictates the voicing of a guitar. But no one hears the message... Really some fornicating excremental evacuators not LISSUNING... It all comes down to stringvibration and harmonics. The closer the PU is located to the bridge, the brighter it will sound. THAT is why different guitars sound different. Compare an effing Les Paul and an SG. Its not the wood or the PU's that make the difference. It is the (even by eye) small difference in distance... And that is also why a slanted PU will sound different... Sheesh... WAKE UP folks...

The more powerful the magnets in the pickups, you get more output at the RECOMMENDED pickup height. To many players jacking pickups way to high.

I’m wondering. High output ceramic, set low as possible. Low output PAF style, set high as possible. Would they sound similar? 🤔

I get a little more sustain out of my pickups if I set them high and plug straight into my interface

With my jazzmaster I sometimes don't even hear that I'm not changing between neck, middle and bridge when I'm actually on the rythm circuit the whole time (pickup switch disabled and only the neck pickup). I automatically and without noticing compensate for brightness by picking closer to the bridge. For reference, the jazzmaster normally goes from muffled bass noises to earshattering icepick shrilness. I actually played a 3 hour gig this way, wondering all the while why I couldn't cut through the mix lol

Hey Glenn! I wanted to throw this your way and hear your thoughts. I’ve been chasing a fretless bass guitar tone (growl/mwah sound) similar to Jaco Pastorious or Beyond Creation. I’m bashing my head against the wall hearing local guitar techs or keyboard warriors telling me to “buy a different bass” “it’s all in the feeling” or “change the pick ups…” Yet when I point out that a black metal bass player and a jazz fusion bassist playing COMPLETELY different basses are getting similar tones they can’t back up their argument. Watching your videos and grabbing some of Scott Elliot’s lessons taught me exactly where guitar tone comes from. But dialing in different bass tones seems to be a struggle for me. I would love to hear an engineers perspective on this rather than a drooling crayon ingesting TalkBass forum imbecile. Cheers!

I'm a "dad rock, edge of breakup" kind of player, so I use pickup height more as a means to adjust how hard the guitar pushes the front of the amp. Not really any more than that...definitely doesn't change the tone in any real way for me. But I do like to back off a bit so I can ride that edge of breakup a little easier by how hard or soft I play. But for high gain applications? Yeah...not much difference there. I will say that the pickups that Ibanez puts in their Artcore guitars are REALLY good, though. Probably my favorite humbuckers in any inexpensive guitar.

OK, so basically, if you aren't touching your pick-up height, your speaker's gonna be the big factor, not which pick-ups you have. However, your pick-up of choice has everything to do with pick-up height which has everything to do with whether you get that nice metal-ish chunkiness in there (as we're geared towards metalheads here). I suppose it's a big difference in the 'bite' of the sound. That's what my ears tell me based on everything I've seen on your channel. What's of course funny here is that, what I call 'bite' and 'chunk' probably means something different to someone else. :D Okay, but as technical as it gets, pickup height makes all the difference in the signal strength and can to an extent compensate for the hotness or lack thereof of your pickup. Not exactly news, I guess, but it's great that someone actually takes a close look at this from time to time. By the way, lovely sound on that single-coil on the Ibanez Stra-- S... whatever. That thing. EDIT: Also, at least in my case, you tend to compensate the lack of apparent gain by palm-muting differently. It sort of happens automatically.

If Pickup Height DOESN’T change TONE very much Could it change sustain length from the magnet?

It seems like it affects compression the most

Actually, pickup height change tone very much, but I'm not sure it works for every pickup. If we talk about some Bare Knuckles (which are very sensetive), the raised pickups can ruin the sound cuz of crazy low and low mid frequencies. Of course you can fix it with eq, but you should remember: every mixing instrument is used because your source is a shit. Better just set your pickups height right or change the pickups.