How to Properly Set the Pole Piece Height on Humbuckers

[Lissandavegreen]

Many people don't seem to realize that adjusting the pole piece height in your pickups can dramatically affect your sound, so I've created this guide to shed light on how to best set the pole piece height on humbucking pickups. This simple adjustment can do wonders to improve clarity and balance the string-to-string output of your guitar. Why did I feel compelled to write this? Because...

Everyone Gets it Wrong!
Well not everyone, but I'm amazed at the amount of misinformation out there regarding setting the pole piece height on humbucker equipped guitars, even from respected manufacturers or magazines. Of course we're talking about music and personal preferences, and you may like to set your pole pieces differently than I recommend here. Even so, I hope that you find good, factual information here that can help you to make informed decisions about setting up your humbuckers.

For the thread I'm going to assume that we're working on a Gibson Les Paul, but the information here will hold true for a variety of types of guitars and humbucking pickups, as long as the humbuckers are passive and have adjustable pole pieces.


Your Guitar Should NOT Sound Muddy or Muffled
An extremely common complaint for Les Pauls, especially the neck pickup, is that they sound "muddy" and unclear. This normally leads people to start doing mods such as changing potentiometers, capacitors, and finally the pickups. However, I have NEVER encountered a Les Paul whose "mud" I couldn't clean up by following the advice in this thread. You may want to change pickups for a variety of reasons, but if you're working with a guitar from a reputable company, you should be able to correct this issue.


Wiring and Electronics
I'm not going to discuss various wiring mods or component changes here. However, I recommend using 50s wiring and 500k or 550k potentiometers in your guitars. Here's one thread about 50s wiring: https://www.mylespaul.com/threads/wiring-library.558/


Single Coils vs Humbuckers
1. Single-coil pickups generally pull much harder on the strings than humbucker pickups because of their design and geometry. This guide is NOT applicable to single coil pickups.
2. Humbuckers can be placed much closer to the strings than single coil pickups because their magnets pull the strings less. That doesn't mean that they sound best super close to the strings, though!


Important Info About Electric Guitar Strings
Here is where I think that most of the misinformation comes from. Your guitar strings are NOT created equally! Each string on your guitar is affected by the magnets underneath it much differently, and therefore, some strings naturally have more output than others! This is because only the solid "core" of the string (not the wound portion) is ferro-magnetic. The amount of output of each of your strings is dependent on the thickness of the solid core (how much ferro-magnetic material it has).

It's counter-intuitive, but the G-string is the loudest of your strings by far. This is because it's the string with the thickest core (though it has no windings, so you can consider the entire string the core). It's hard to find information regarding core thickness from all string manufacturers, but generally speaking, string output (core thickness) for most electric guitar strings goes like this:

Most Output to Least Output: G - Low E=B - A - High E ---- D.

In other words, the G-string has the most output, followed by the Low E and B strings (which are approximately tied depending on string set), then the A string, then the High E, and lastly the D string. The D string has the least output of any string by a large amount for most sets.


What NOT to Do
One of the most common recommendations regarding pole piece height is to follow the curvature of the fretboard (in fairness this probably worked well back in the 50s and 60s when most people used wound G strings). This seems to make sense at first; you are trying to get all of the pole pieces the same distance from the strings. Here is one picture of a pickup that does this:
View attachment 507915

However, we should know now that this is incorrect! It's not too far off for the three lower strings, but you will have a hugely pronounced G-string (reminiscent of a Stratocaster, and who wants that?!?) and quieter high E string if you set your pole piece heights this way.


Finally, How to Set the Pole Piece Heights on Your Guitar
Taking into account everything above, I believe that this is the best way to setup your humbuckers:

First, you probably want to lower them significantly if you're having problems with mud. You can always raise them higher up later to get more output, but lower pickups in general have more clarity. The treble side should be higher than the bass side by about 1/32". A good starting point is to set the bridge treble side to about 2/32" and the bass side to about 3/32". Now, use your ears to lower the neck pickup (which will naturally be louder at the same height, because the strings vibrate a larger distance here) so that it is at the volume that you want. If you want an approximately equal neck volume to your bridge volume, assuming that you don't have very unbalanced pickups, then the neck pickup will be significantly lower than the bridge. That's OK!

Now that our pickups have approximately the same volume (or whatever amount of imbalance you want), our goal is to set the string-to-string volume. This is done by adjusting the pole piece height. In order to achieve approximately equal string-to-string volume, you need to lower the pole piece of the louder strings and raise the pole pieces of the quieter strings. You probably want to start with all of the pole pieces flush with the cover (or all the same height if you don't have a covered pickup) and work from there. Or do what I do, which is to skip ahead to what I find is almost always the correct solution:

You most likely want the G-string lowest because it is naturally the loudest, and the D-string highest because it's naturally the most quiet. Therefore, I usually set up my pole pieces to roughly go (read from EADGBE, referenced to the pickup cover):



E: Lower than Flush A: Flush D: Higher than Flush G: Lower than Flush B: Flush E: Higher than Flush.

Use this as a starting point, and make small adjustments from there using your ears. When you are completely finished, you will likely have your pole piece heights set something similar to this:

View attachment 507916
Note that I found this image on Pinterest, and it's the only image I could find that looks close to how I set mine up. However I generally have my first three pole pieces lower than pictured, and my high E is generally a little higher. Of course, YMMV and all of that.

Edit on 3/11:
Raising and Lowering the Pickup vs Pole Pieces, and a Little on How This Works:
Based on some other threads around the forum, I've decided to add a little more info here.

Like many things (gravity, light) that have a source and propagate three dimensionally through space, magnetic fields and the strength of magnetic interaction varies according to the Inverse-Square Law with respect to distance. This means that if you double the distance between two objects, the magnetic force between them becomes 1/4 the original value (weaker by a factor of 4). If you cut the distance to a third (get three times closer), the force becomes nine times stronger! Quadruple the distance and you get a difference in magnetic force of sixteen times the original amount, etc. Clearly the magnetic field varies quite substantially with distance. If you have a pole piece set 4/32" away from a string for instance, and then raise it to 3/32" away, the string experiences a pretty significant increase in strength of the magnetic field.

Anyhow, let's imagine a pickup whose pole pieces are set flush with the slugs. In this case, the slug and pole pieces have essentially the same influence on the strings, as they are the same distance away. If you raise and lower the entire pickup, you increase or decrease the magnetic interaction with the strings in both coils of the humbucker by essentially the same amount. Move the humbucker closer to the strings and you get more output, but often less clarity, and vice versa.

When you raise an individual pole piece, you are increasing the magnetic influence of that pole piece on the string, which makes that string more loud. However the cool thing is, the increase in volume comes primarily from the coil with the adjustable pole piece! This is the coil that surrounds that pole piece, and hence the coil that is affected most strongly by it.

If you raise the pole pieces, the extra output that you get comes mostly from the adjustable coil, and so your humbucker is slightly unbalanced now. Importantly, it is NOT out of phase with the other coil. It's just a little louder, so you don't get any phasing issues. Since you can make one coil interact more strongly with your strings than the other, you can use this to achieve a slight single coil sound. In other words, more clarity and "openness," with less compression. Conversely if you want more output and compression, you can level the pole pieces and raise the entire pickup.

I hope that this guide helps you! Cheers,

ErictheRed.

Yep did mine this afternoon sounds great . Tks

 

[searswashere]

Cleaned up my R9 neck pickup magnificently.

I'm still going to try the pickups I bought as they are closer to custombuckers (A3 unpotted) compared to the BB1/BB2 that came with it.

 

[wildschwein]

This was published in the Donald Brosnac book, Guitar Electronics for Musicians circa 1983:

 

[redcoats1976]

never even thought of adjusting the pole pieces until reading the other thread on it.i set them up to follow the radius of the bridge and thought it sounded better but will try lowering the g and raising the high e and see if i like that better.great thread,probably the most interesting in many months...edit lowered the g,raised high e,will crank it tomorrow when the wife is out shopping.

 

[cooljuk]

A couple Languedocs I had here both wanted the A and D pole pieces significantly low to balance.

Just goes to show how it's really case-by-case and guidelines don't always apply.

Ears are the best tool for sound, by far.

 

[Miki Dord MJ]

Many people don't seem to realize that adjusting the pole piece height in your pickups can dramatically affect your sound, so I've created this guide to shed light on how to best set the pole piece height on humbucking pickups. This simple adjustment can do wonders to improve clarity and balance the string-to-string output of your guitar. Why did I feel compelled to write this? Because...

Everyone Gets it Wrong!
I'm amazed at the amount of misinformation out there regarding setting the pole piece height on humbucker equipped guitars, even from respected manufacturers or magazines. Of course we're talking about music and personal preferences, and you may like to set your pole pieces differently than I recommend here. Even so, I hope that you find good, factual information here that can help you to make informed decisions about setting up your humbuckers.

For the thread I'm going to assume that we're working on a Gibson Les Paul, but the information here will hold true for a variety of types of guitars and humbucking pickups, as long as the humbuckers are passive and have adjustable pole pieces.


Your Guitar Should NOT Sound Muddy or Muffled
An extremely common complaint for Les Pauls, especially the neck pickup, is that they sound "muddy" and unclear. This normally leads people to start doing mods such as changing potentiometers, capacitors, and finally the pickups. However, I have NEVER encountered a Les Paul whose "mud" I couldn't clean up by following the advice in this thread. You may want to change pickups for a variety of reasons, but if you're working with a guitar from a reputable company, you should be able to correct this issue.


Wiring and Electronics
I'm not going to discuss various wiring mods or component changes here. However, I recommend using 50s wiring and 500k or 550k potentiometers in your guitars. Here's one thread about 50s wiring: https://www.mylespaul.com/threads/wiring-library.558/


Single Coils vs Humbuckers
1. Single-coil pickups generally pull much harder on the strings than humbucker pickups because of their design and geometry (the magnets of a Strat pickup poke up very near the strings, for instance). This guide is NOT applicable to single coil pickups.
2. Humbuckers can be placed much closer to the strings than single coil pickups because their magnets pull the strings less (the magnet lays beneath the windings far from the strings).


Important Info About Electric Guitar Strings
Here is where I think that most of the misinformation comes from. Your guitar strings are NOT created equally! Each string on your guitar is affected by the magnets underneath it differently, and therefore, some strings naturally have more output than others! This is because the solid core of the string is much more dense than the windings, and more ferro-magnetic. The output of each of your strings depends mostly on the thickness of the solid core. The windings have much less of an impact on output because their geometry creates very high magnetic resistance. If interested, search up "Hertzian contact stress" for cylinders.

It's counter-intuitive, but the G-string is the loudest of your strings. This is because it's the string with the thickest core (though it has no windings, so you can consider the entire string the core). It's hard to find information regarding core thickness from all string manufacturers, but generally speaking, string output (core thickness) for most electric guitar strings goes like this:

Most Output to Least Output: G - Low E=B - A - High E ---- D.

In other words, the G-string has the most output, followed by the Low E and B strings, then the A string, then the High E, and lastly the D string. The D string has the least output of any string by a large amount for most sets.


What NOT to Do
One of the most common recommendations regarding pole piece height is to follow the curvature of the fretboard (in fairness this probably worked well back in the 50s and 60s when most people used wound G strings). This seems to make sense at first; you are trying to get all of the pole pieces the same distance from the strings. Here is one picture of a pickup that does this:
View attachment 507915

However, we should know now that this is incorrect! It's not too far off for the three lower strings, but you will have a hugely pronounced G-string (reminiscent of a Stratocaster, and who wants that?!?) and quieter high E string if you set your pole piece heights this way.


Finally, How to Set the Pole Piece Heights on Your Guitar
Taking into account everything above, I believe that this is the best way to setup your humbuckers:

First, you probably want to lower them significantly if you're having problems with mud. You can always raise them higher up later to get more output, but lower pickups in general have more clarity. The treble side should be higher than the bass side by about 1/32". A good starting point is to set the bridge treble side to about 2/32" and the bass side to about 3/32". Now, use your ears to lower the neck pickup (which will naturally be louder at the same height, because the strings vibrate a larger distance here) so that it is at the volume that you want. If you want an approximately equal neck volume to your bridge volume, assuming that you don't have very unbalanced pickups, then the neck pickup will be significantly lower than the bridge. That's OK!

Now that our pickups have approximately the same volume (or whatever amount of imbalance you want), our goal is to set the string-to-string volume. This is done by adjusting the pole piece height. In order to achieve approximately equal string-to-string volume, you need to lower the pole piece of the louder strings and raise the pole pieces of the quieter strings. You probably want to start with all of the pole pieces flush with the cover (or all the same height if you don't have a covered pickup) and work from there. Or do what I do, which is to skip ahead to what I find is almost always the correct solution:

You most likely want the G-string lowest because it is naturally the loudest, and the D-string highest because it's naturally the most quiet. Therefore, I usually set up my pole pieces to roughly go (read from EADGBE, referenced to the pickup cover):



E: Lower than Flush A: Flush D: Higher than Flush G: Lower than Flush B: Flush E: Higher than Flush.

Use this as a starting point, and make small adjustments from there using your ears. When you are completely finished, you will likely have your pole piece heights set something similar to this:

View attachment 507916
Note that I found this image on Pinterest, and it's the only image I could find that looks close to how I set mine up. However I generally have my first three pole pieces lower than pictured, and my high E is generally a little higher. Of course, YMMV and all of that.

Edit on 3/11:
Raising and Lowering the Pickup vs Pole Pieces, and a Little on How This Works:
Based on some other threads around the forum, I've decided to add a little more info here.

Like many things (gravity, light) that have a source and propagate three dimensionally through space, magnetic fields and the strength of magnetic interaction varies according to the Inverse-Square Law with respect to distance. This means that if you double the distance between two objects, the magnetic force between them becomes 1/4 the original value (weaker by a factor of 4). If you cut the distance to a third (get three times closer), the force becomes nine times stronger! Quadruple the distance and you get a difference in magnetic force of sixteen times the original amount, etc. Clearly the magnetic field varies quite substantially with distance. If you have a pole piece set 4/32" away from a string for instance, and then raise it to 3/32" away, the string experiences a pretty significant increase in strength of the magnetic field.

Anyhow, let's imagine a pickup whose pole pieces are set flush with the slugs. In this case, the slug and pole pieces have essentially the same influence on the strings, as they are the same distance away. If you raise and lower the entire pickup, you increase or decrease the magnetic interaction with the strings in both coils of the humbucker by essentially the same amount. Move the humbucker closer to the strings and you get more output, but often less clarity, and vice versa.

When you raise an individual pole piece, you are increasing the magnetic influence of that pole piece on the string, which makes that string more loud. However the cool thing is, the increase in volume comes primarily from the coil with the adjustable pole piece! This is the coil that surrounds that pole piece, and hence the coil that is affected most strongly by it.

If you raise the pole pieces, the extra output that you get comes mostly from the adjustable coil, and so your humbucker is slightly unbalanced now. Importantly, it is NOT out of phase with the other coil. It's just a little louder, so you don't get any phasing issues. Since you can make one coil interact more strongly with your strings than the other, you can use this to achieve a slight single coil sound. In other words, more clarity and "openness," with less compression. Conversely if you want more output and compression, you can level the pole pieces and raise the entire pickup.

I hope that this guide helps you! Cheers,

ErictheRed.

I put a like due to that is huge work that is helpful, and i agree with some things, but with some others not. Maybe i'll return to comment and try to give some constructive opinion if that is OK. Maybe i'll share some data.
*** i just wish to say that there is no incorrect nor correct setup of pickups.
That means that players are different, and they need a different things. For example what you call incorrect in one picture that humbucker shouldn't fallow the freeboard radius - IMHO that is actually the good starting point to have hambs set up to fallow radius. And then to go from there by ear.

Just to add * - I can measure everything and set the pickup as the readings on my measuring devices tells me, but the most important thing is the subjective hearing of the guitarist. In another words that is what he wants to hear.
I adore science, and according to definition the hearing is a subjective feeling. So what is great and correct for me can be wrong and incorrect for you, and vice versa.
Of course, that does not include some basics, we all know how to place a pickup, but the setup is IMHO strictly subjective feeling.
It will often change depending on: strings, player, style of playing, amp, type of music, etc.
So the basic setups imho can help us as starting points but it's not must by any means,
because they will not suit everyone.

The windings are magnetic. This is an Elixir coated low E string.

The difference is due the fact of having a steel pole piece in between the string and the magnet. Almost any pickup with steel pole pieces will have a weaker pull than one with magnets as pole pieces. All things being equal (comparing a Stag Mag to Strat pickups, or steel poled Strat pickups to humbuckers), humbuckers actually pull harder because you have twelve pole pieces per pickup instead of six.

Maybe a bit off topic but if I may ask - Are you the same person who wrote some things and did ala measurements in one other place under the same name ''Antiqua''? I'm not sure is it OK to mention that site...

It was fun reading some of your ''critiques'' of some items, while giving the fer opinions and data about some ''cheaper'' pickups, etc....
IMHO it's not important will you get zillion likes or 0 or just 1, due to giving an honest opinion and going ''against'' some myths, hypes etc is always very hard.

 

[ErictheRed]

I put a like due to that is huge work, and i agree with some things, but with some others not. Maybe i'll return to comment and try to give some constructive opinion if that is OK? like to add some data maybe?
*** i just wish to say that there is no incorrect nor correct setup of pickups...

Thanks Miki. I agree that you should ultimately use your ears and that music is personal preference. I've never said otherwise, though maybe my language is a bit hyperbolic.

The other statement that you quoted is demonstrably incorrect and anyone can see that by bringing an iron nail (or other ferromagnetic material) up near a typical humbucker (Gibson-type) or typical single coil (Fender type) and noticing which one interacts more strongly. Clearly it's the single coil pickup. It's not about the relative strength of the magnets necessarily, it's their construction and how close the magnets are placed to the top of the pickups (as magnetic fields weaken in accordance with the inverse square law over distance, as mentioned in my original post).

Incidentally, this much harder string pull of single coil pickups is why Strats are said to lack sustain and Les Pauls are said to have the most sustain of any guitars (at least back in the old days). The harder the strings are pulled by the magnets, the more they are being damped by them (having their oscillations reduced).

 

[spaceace90]

Many people don't seem to realize that adjusting the pole piece height in your pickups can dramatically affect your sound, so I've created this guide to shed light on how to best set the pole piece height on humbucking pickups. This simple adjustment can do wonders to improve clarity and balance the string-to-string output of your guitar. Why did I feel compelled to write this? Because...

Everyone Gets it Wrong!
I'm amazed at the amount of misinformation out there regarding setting the pole piece height on humbucker equipped guitars, even from respected manufacturers or magazines. Of course we're talking about music and personal preferences, and you may like to set your pole pieces differently than I recommend here. Even so, I hope that you find good, factual information here that can help you to make informed decisions about setting up your humbuckers.

For the thread I'm going to assume that we're working on a Gibson Les Paul, but the information here will hold true for a variety of types of guitars and humbucking pickups, as long as the humbuckers are passive and have adjustable pole pieces.


Your Guitar Should NOT Sound Muddy or Muffled
An extremely common complaint for Les Pauls, especially the neck pickup, is that they sound "muddy" and unclear. This normally leads people to start doing mods such as changing potentiometers, capacitors, and finally the pickups. However, I have NEVER encountered a Les Paul whose "mud" I couldn't clean up by following the advice in this thread. You may want to change pickups for a variety of reasons, but if you're working with a guitar from a reputable company, you should be able to correct this issue.


Wiring and Electronics
I'm not going to discuss various wiring mods or component changes here. However, I recommend using 50s wiring and 500k or 550k potentiometers in your guitars. Here's one thread about 50s wiring: https://www.mylespaul.com/threads/wiring-library.558/


Single Coils vs Humbuckers
1. Single-coil pickups generally pull much harder on the strings than humbucker pickups because of their design and geometry (the magnets of a Strat pickup poke up very near the strings, for instance). This guide is NOT applicable to single coil pickups.
2. Humbuckers can be placed much closer to the strings than single coil pickups because their magnets pull the strings less (the magnet lays beneath the windings far from the strings).


Important Info About Electric Guitar Strings
Here is where I think that most of the misinformation comes from. Your guitar strings are NOT created equally! Each string on your guitar is affected by the magnets underneath it differently, and therefore, some strings naturally have more output than others! This is because the solid core of the string is much more dense than the windings, and more ferro-magnetic. The output of each of your strings depends mostly on the thickness of the solid core. The windings have much less of an impact on output because their geometry creates very high magnetic resistance. If interested, search up "Hertzian contact stress" for cylinders.

It's counter-intuitive, but the G-string is the loudest of your strings. This is because it's the string with the thickest core (though it has no windings, so you can consider the entire string the core). It's hard to find information regarding core thickness from all string manufacturers, but generally speaking, string output (core thickness) for most electric guitar strings goes like this:

Most Output to Least Output: G - Low E=B - A - High E ---- D.

In other words, the G-string has the most output, followed by the Low E and B strings, then the A string, then the High E, and lastly the D string. The D string has the least output of any string by a large amount for most sets.


What NOT to Do
One of the most common recommendations regarding pole piece height is to follow the curvature of the fretboard (in fairness this probably worked well back in the 50s and 60s when most people used wound G strings). This seems to make sense at first; you are trying to get all of the pole pieces the same distance from the strings. Here is one picture of a pickup that does this:
View attachment 507915

However, we should know now that this is incorrect! It's not too far off for the three lower strings, but you will have a hugely pronounced G-string (reminiscent of a Stratocaster, and who wants that?!?) and quieter high E string if you set your pole piece heights this way.


Finally, How to Set the Pole Piece Heights on Your Guitar
Taking into account everything above, I believe that this is the best way to setup your humbuckers:

First, you probably want to lower them significantly if you're having problems with mud. You can always raise them higher up later to get more output, but lower pickups in general have more clarity. The treble side should be higher than the bass side by about 1/32". A good starting point is to set the bridge treble side to about 2/32" and the bass side to about 3/32". Now, use your ears to lower the neck pickup (which will naturally be louder at the same height, because the strings vibrate a larger distance here) so that it is at the volume that you want. If you want an approximately equal neck volume to your bridge volume, assuming that you don't have very unbalanced pickups, then the neck pickup will be significantly lower than the bridge. That's OK!

Now that our pickups have approximately the same volume (or whatever amount of imbalance you want), our goal is to set the string-to-string volume. This is done by adjusting the pole piece height. In order to achieve approximately equal string-to-string volume, you need to lower the pole piece of the louder strings and raise the pole pieces of the quieter strings. You probably want to start with all of the pole pieces flush with the cover (or all the same height if you don't have a covered pickup) and work from there. Or do what I do, which is to skip ahead to what I find is almost always the correct solution:

You most likely want the G-string lowest because it is naturally the loudest, and the D-string highest because it's naturally the most quiet. Therefore, I usually set up my pole pieces to roughly go (read from EADGBE, referenced to the pickup cover):



E: Lower than Flush A: Flush D: Higher than Flush G: Lower than Flush B: Flush E: Higher than Flush.

Use this as a starting point, and make small adjustments from there using your ears. When you are completely finished, you will likely have your pole piece heights set something similar to this:

View attachment 507916
Note that I found this image on Pinterest, and it's the only image I could find that looks close to how I set mine up. However I generally have my first three pole pieces lower than pictured, and my high E is generally a little higher. Of course, YMMV and all of that.

Edit on 3/11:
Raising and Lowering the Pickup vs Pole Pieces, and a Little on How This Works:
Based on some other threads around the forum, I've decided to add a little more info here.

Like many things (gravity, light) that have a source and propagate three dimensionally through space, magnetic fields and the strength of magnetic interaction varies according to the Inverse-Square Law with respect to distance. This means that if you double the distance between two objects, the magnetic force between them becomes 1/4 the original value (weaker by a factor of 4). If you cut the distance to a third (get three times closer), the force becomes nine times stronger! Quadruple the distance and you get a difference in magnetic force of sixteen times the original amount, etc. Clearly the magnetic field varies quite substantially with distance. If you have a pole piece set 4/32" away from a string for instance, and then raise it to 3/32" away, the string experiences a pretty significant increase in strength of the magnetic field.

Anyhow, let's imagine a pickup whose pole pieces are set flush with the slugs. In this case, the slug and pole pieces have essentially the same influence on the strings, as they are the same distance away. If you raise and lower the entire pickup, you increase or decrease the magnetic interaction with the strings in both coils of the humbucker by essentially the same amount. Move the humbucker closer to the strings and you get more output, but often less clarity, and vice versa.

When you raise an individual pole piece, you are increasing the magnetic influence of that pole piece on the string, which makes that string more loud. However the cool thing is, the increase in volume comes primarily from the coil with the adjustable pole piece! This is the coil that surrounds that pole piece, and hence the coil that is affected most strongly by it.

If you raise the pole pieces, the extra output that you get comes mostly from the adjustable coil, and so your humbucker is slightly unbalanced now. Importantly, it is NOT out of phase with the other coil. It's just a little louder, so you don't get any phasing issues. Since you can make one coil interact more strongly with your strings than the other, you can use this to achieve a slight single coil sound. In other words, more clarity and "openness," with less compression. Conversely if you want more output and compression, you can level the pole pieces and raise the entire pickup.

I hope that this guide helps you! Cheers,

ErictheRed.

I don't often post on forums, if at all. But I had to login for the first time in forever just to say that this is advice on adjusting the pole piece is legit. I usually do adjust mine, but it's usually a bit of tinkering before finding something I like. Tried this method straight away and made one minor adjustment to it on each pickup and it cleared the mud right out these pickups. Thanks for the post man, one of the most genuinely useful things I've run across on the interwebs.

 

[JHMvP]

I normally start with the neck-pickup;

- top-side of the cover flush with top-side of the ring
- under-side of the polepiece-heads flush with the top-side of the cover
- only minor further tweaks until I'm happy with the neck-pickup

...and only then working on the neck-pickup conform procedure of the first post.

(Only 490R/498T combinations over here).

 

[reedrainey]

Many people don't seem to realize that adjusting the pole piece height in your pickups can dramatically affect your sound, so I've created this guide to shed light on how to best set the pole piece height on humbucking pickups. This simple adjustment can do wonders to improve clarity and balance the string-to-string output of your guitar. Why did I feel compelled to write this? Because...

Everyone Gets it Wrong!
I'm amazed at the amount of misinformation out there regarding setting the pole piece height on humbucker equipped guitars, even from respected manufacturers or magazines. Of course we're talking about music and personal preferences, and you may like to set your pole pieces differently than I recommend here. Even so, I hope that you find good, factual information here that can help you to make informed decisions about setting up your humbuckers.

For the thread I'm going to assume that we're working on a Gibson Les Paul, but the information here will hold true for a variety of types of guitars and humbucking pickups, as long as the humbuckers are passive and have adjustable pole pieces.


Your Guitar Should NOT Sound Muddy or Muffled
An extremely common complaint for Les Pauls, especially the neck pickup, is that they sound "muddy" and unclear. This normally leads people to start doing mods such as changing potentiometers, capacitors, and finally the pickups. However, I have NEVER encountered a Les Paul whose "mud" I couldn't clean up by following the advice in this thread. You may want to change pickups for a variety of reasons, but if you're working with a guitar from a reputable company, you should be able to correct this issue.


Wiring and Electronics
I'm not going to discuss various wiring mods or component changes here. However, I recommend using 50s wiring and 500k or 550k potentiometers in your guitars. Here's one thread about 50s wiring: https://www.mylespaul.com/threads/wiring-library.558/


Single Coils vs Humbuckers
1. Single-coil pickups generally pull much harder on the strings than humbucker pickups because of their design and geometry (the magnets of a Strat pickup poke up very near the strings, for instance). This guide is NOT applicable to single coil pickups.
2. Humbuckers can be placed much closer to the strings than single coil pickups because their magnets pull the strings less (the magnet lays beneath the windings far from the strings).


Important Info About Electric Guitar Strings
Here is where I think that most of the misinformation comes from. Your guitar strings are NOT created equally! Each string on your guitar is affected by the magnets underneath it differently, and therefore, some strings naturally have more output than others! This is because the solid core of the string is much more dense than the windings, and more ferro-magnetic. The output of each of your strings depends mostly on the thickness of the solid core. The windings have much less of an impact on output because their geometry creates very high magnetic resistance. If interested, search up "Hertzian contact stress" for cylinders.

It's counter-intuitive, but the G-string is the loudest of your strings. This is because it's the string with the thickest core (though it has no windings, so you can consider the entire string the core). It's hard to find information regarding core thickness from all string manufacturers, but generally speaking, string output (core thickness) for most electric guitar strings goes like this:

Most Output to Least Output: G - Low E=B - A - High E ---- D.

In other words, the G-string has the most output, followed by the Low E and B strings, then the A string, then the High E, and lastly the D string. The D string has the least output of any string by a large amount for most sets.


What NOT to Do
One of the most common recommendations regarding pole piece height is to follow the curvature of the fretboard (in fairness this probably worked well back in the 50s and 60s when most people used wound G strings). This seems to make sense at first; you are trying to get all of the pole pieces the same distance from the strings. Here is one picture of a pickup that does this:
View attachment 507915

However, we should know now that this is incorrect! It's not too far off for the three lower strings, but you will have a hugely pronounced G-string (reminiscent of a Stratocaster, and who wants that?!?) and quieter high E string if you set your pole piece heights this way.


Finally, How to Set the Pole Piece Heights on Your Guitar
Taking into account everything above, I believe that this is the best way to setup your humbuckers:

First, you probably want to lower them significantly if you're having problems with mud. You can always raise them higher up later to get more output, but lower pickups in general have more clarity. The treble side should be higher than the bass side by about 1/32". A good starting point is to set the bridge treble side to about 2/32" and the bass side to about 3/32". Now, use your ears to lower the neck pickup (which will naturally be louder at the same height, because the strings vibrate a larger distance here) so that it is at the volume that you want. If you want an approximately equal neck volume to your bridge volume, assuming that you don't have very unbalanced pickups, then the neck pickup will be significantly lower than the bridge. That's OK!

Now that our pickups have approximately the same volume (or whatever amount of imbalance you want), our goal is to set the string-to-string volume. This is done by adjusting the pole piece height. In order to achieve approximately equal string-to-string volume, you need to lower the pole piece of the louder strings and raise the pole pieces of the quieter strings. You probably want to start with all of the pole pieces flush with the cover (or all the same height if you don't have a covered pickup) and work from there. Or do what I do, which is to skip ahead to what I find is almost always the correct solution:

You most likely want the G-string lowest because it is naturally the loudest, and the D-string highest because it's naturally the most quiet. Therefore, I usually set up my pole pieces to roughly go (read from EADGBE, referenced to the pickup cover):



E: Lower than Flush A: Flush D: Higher than Flush G: Lower than Flush B: Flush E: Higher than Flush.

Use this as a starting point, and make small adjustments from there using your ears. When you are completely finished, you will likely have your pole piece heights set something similar to this:

View attachment 507916
Note that I found this image on Pinterest, and it's the only image I could find that looks close to how I set mine up. However I generally have my first three pole pieces lower than pictured, and my high E is generally a little higher. Of course, YMMV and all of that.

Edit on 3/11:
Raising and Lowering the Pickup vs Pole Pieces, and a Little on How This Works:
Based on some other threads around the forum, I've decided to add a little more info here.

Like many things (gravity, light) that have a source and propagate three dimensionally through space, magnetic fields and the strength of magnetic interaction varies according to the Inverse-Square Law with respect to distance. This means that if you double the distance between two objects, the magnetic force between them becomes 1/4 the original value (weaker by a factor of 4). If you cut the distance to a third (get three times closer), the force becomes nine times stronger! Quadruple the distance and you get a difference in magnetic force of sixteen times the original amount, etc. Clearly the magnetic field varies quite substantially with distance. If you have a pole piece set 4/32" away from a string for instance, and then raise it to 3/32" away, the string experiences a pretty significant increase in strength of the magnetic field.

Anyhow, let's imagine a pickup whose pole pieces are set flush with the slugs. In this case, the slug and pole pieces have essentially the same influence on the strings, as they are the same distance away. If you raise and lower the entire pickup, you increase or decrease the magnetic interaction with the strings in both coils of the humbucker by essentially the same amount. Move the humbucker closer to the strings and you get more output, but often less clarity, and vice versa.

When you raise an individual pole piece, you are increasing the magnetic influence of that pole piece on the string, which makes that string more loud. However the cool thing is, the increase in volume comes primarily from the coil with the adjustable pole piece! This is the coil that surrounds that pole piece, and hence the coil that is affected most strongly by it.

If you raise the pole pieces, the extra output that you get comes mostly from the adjustable coil, and so your humbucker is slightly unbalanced now. Importantly, it is NOT out of phase with the other coil. It's just a little louder, so you don't get any phasing issues. Since you can make one coil interact more strongly with your strings than the other, you can use this to achieve a slight single coil sound. In other words, more clarity and "openness," with less compression. Conversely if you want more output and compression, you can level the pole pieces and raise the entire pickup.

I hope that this guide helps you! Cheers,

ErictheRed.

Hi,

Many people don't seem to realize that adjusting the pole piece height in your pickups can dramatically affect your sound, so I've created this guide to shed light on how to best set the pole piece height on humbucking pickups. This simple adjustment can do wonders to improve clarity and balance the string-to-string output of your guitar. Why did I feel compelled to write this? Because...

Everyone Gets it Wrong!
I'm amazed at the amount of misinformation out there regarding setting the pole piece height on humbucker equipped guitars, even from respected manufacturers or magazines. Of course we're talking about music and personal preferences, and you may like to set your pole pieces differently than I recommend here. Even so, I hope that you find good, factual information here that can help you to make informed decisions about setting up your humbuckers.

For the thread I'm going to assume that we're working on a Gibson Les Paul, but the information here will hold true for a variety of types of guitars and humbucking pickups, as long as the humbuckers are passive and have adjustable pole pieces.


Your Guitar Should NOT Sound Muddy or Muffled
An extremely common complaint for Les Pauls, especially the neck pickup, is that they sound "muddy" and unclear. This normally leads people to start doing mods such as changing potentiometers, capacitors, and finally the pickups. However, I have NEVER encountered a Les Paul whose "mud" I couldn't clean up by following the advice in this thread. You may want to change pickups for a variety of reasons, but if you're working with a guitar from a reputable company, you should be able to correct this issue.


Wiring and Electronics
I'm not going to discuss various wiring mods or component changes here. However, I recommend using 50s wiring and 500k or 550k potentiometers in your guitars. Here's one thread about 50s wiring: https://www.mylespaul.com/threads/wiring-library.558/


Single Coils vs Humbuckers
1. Single-coil pickups generally pull much harder on the strings than humbucker pickups because of their design and geometry (the magnets of a Strat pickup poke up very near the strings, for instance). This guide is NOT applicable to single coil pickups.
2. Humbuckers can be placed much closer to the strings than single coil pickups because their magnets pull the strings less (the magnet lays beneath the windings far from the strings).


Important Info About Electric Guitar Strings
Here is where I think that most of the misinformation comes from. Your guitar strings are NOT created equally! Each string on your guitar is affected by the magnets underneath it differently, and therefore, some strings naturally have more output than others! This is because the solid core of the string is much more dense than the windings, and more ferro-magnetic. The output of each of your strings depends mostly on the thickness of the solid core. The windings have much less of an impact on output because their geometry creates very high magnetic resistance. If interested, search up "Hertzian contact stress" for cylinders.

It's counter-intuitive, but the G-string is the loudest of your strings. This is because it's the string with the thickest core (though it has no windings, so you can consider the entire string the core). It's hard to find information regarding core thickness from all string manufacturers, but generally speaking, string output (core thickness) for most electric guitar strings goes like this:

Most Output to Least Output: G - Low E=B - A - High E ---- D.

In other words, the G-string has the most output, followed by the Low E and B strings, then the A string, then the High E, and lastly the D string. The D string has the least output of any string by a large amount for most sets.


What NOT to Do
One of the most common recommendations regarding pole piece height is to follow the curvature of the fretboard (in fairness this probably worked well back in the 50s and 60s when most people used wound G strings). This seems to make sense at first; you are trying to get all of the pole pieces the same distance from the strings. Here is one picture of a pickup that does this:
View attachment 507915

However, we should know now that this is incorrect! It's not too far off for the three lower strings, but you will have a hugely pronounced G-string (reminiscent of a Stratocaster, and who wants that?!?) and quieter high E string if you set your pole piece heights this way.


Finally, How to Set the Pole Piece Heights on Your Guitar
Taking into account everything above, I believe that this is the best way to setup your humbuckers:

First, you probably want to lower them significantly if you're having problems with mud. You can always raise them higher up later to get more output, but lower pickups in general have more clarity. The treble side should be higher than the bass side by about 1/32". A good starting point is to set the bridge treble side to about 2/32" and the bass side to about 3/32". Now, use your ears to lower the neck pickup (which will naturally be louder at the same height, because the strings vibrate a larger distance here) so that it is at the volume that you want. If you want an approximately equal neck volume to your bridge volume, assuming that you don't have very unbalanced pickups, then the neck pickup will be significantly lower than the bridge. That's OK!

Now that our pickups have approximately the same volume (or whatever amount of imbalance you want), our goal is to set the string-to-string volume. This is done by adjusting the pole piece height. In order to achieve approximately equal string-to-string volume, you need to lower the pole piece of the louder strings and raise the pole pieces of the quieter strings. You probably want to start with all of the pole pieces flush with the cover (or all the same height if you don't have a covered pickup) and work from there. Or do what I do, which is to skip ahead to what I find is almost always the correct solution:

You most likely want the G-string lowest because it is naturally the loudest, and the D-string highest because it's naturally the most quiet. Therefore, I usually set up my pole pieces to roughly go (read from EADGBE, referenced to the pickup cover):



E: Lower than Flush A: Flush D: Higher than Flush G: Lower than Flush B: Flush E: Higher than Flush.

Use this as a starting point, and make small adjustments from there using your ears. When you are completely finished, you will likely have your pole piece heights set something similar to this:

View attachment 507916
Note that I found this image on Pinterest, and it's the only image I could find that looks close to how I set mine up. However I generally have my first three pole pieces lower than pictured, and my high E is generally a little higher. Of course, YMMV and all of that.

Edit on 3/11:
Raising and Lowering the Pickup vs Pole Pieces, and a Little on How This Works:
Based on some other threads around the forum, I've decided to add a little more info here.

Like many things (gravity, light) that have a source and propagate three dimensionally through space, magnetic fields and the strength of magnetic interaction varies according to the Inverse-Square Law with respect to distance. This means that if you double the distance between two objects, the magnetic force between them becomes 1/4 the original value (weaker by a factor of 4). If you cut the distance to a third (get three times closer), the force becomes nine times stronger! Quadruple the distance and you get a difference in magnetic force of sixteen times the original amount, etc. Clearly the magnetic field varies quite substantially with distance. If you have a pole piece set 4/32" away from a string for instance, and then raise it to 3/32" away, the string experiences a pretty significant increase in strength of the magnetic field.

Anyhow, let's imagine a pickup whose pole pieces are set flush with the slugs. In this case, the slug and pole pieces have essentially the same influence on the strings, as they are the same distance away. If you raise and lower the entire pickup, you increase or decrease the magnetic interaction with the strings in both coils of the humbucker by essentially the same amount. Move the humbucker closer to the strings and you get more output, but often less clarity, and vice versa.

When you raise an individual pole piece, you are increasing the magnetic influence of that pole piece on the string, which makes that string more loud. However the cool thing is, the increase in volume comes primarily from the coil with the adjustable pole piece! This is the coil that surrounds that pole piece, and hence the coil that is affected most strongly by it.

If you raise the pole pieces, the extra output that you get comes mostly from the adjustable coil, and so your humbucker is slightly unbalanced now. Importantly, it is NOT out of phase with the other coil. It's just a little louder, so you don't get any phasing issues. Since you can make one coil interact more strongly with your strings than the other, you can use this to achieve a slight single coil sound. In other words, more clarity and "openness," with less compression. Conversely if you want more output and compression, you can level the pole pieces and raise the entire pickup.

I hope that this guide helps you! Cheers,

ErictheRed.

Hi, Eric,

I just want to thank you for all the time and expertise that you just put into this answer. I'm 79, a player since age 14, and this is the best clear and complete answer I've ever heard on the topic. So much so, that I'm copying it to a file with your sign-on name on my computer that's readily accessible to anyone who asks me this question in my small circle of guitar players. I'm not adding anything to it, or changing one single word. You're like the guitar encyclopedia that has never been made, and thank you for making my day...this brought a smile to my face...and there was no one to see that smile, so it was a genuine smile of respect and thank you. I hope everyone who reads this has it leather-bound for future reference.

 

[ErictheRed]

Hi,

Hi, Eric,

I just want to thank you for all the time and expertise that you just put into this answer. I'm 79, a player since age 14, and this is the best clear and complete answer I've ever heard on the topic. So much so, that I'm copying it to a file with your sign-on name on my computer that's readily accessible to anyone who asks me this question in my small circle of guitar players. I'm not adding anything to it, or changing one single word. You're like the guitar encyclopedia that has never been made, and thank you for making my day...this brought a smile to my face...and there was no one to see that smile, so it was a genuine smile of respect and thank you. I hope everyone who reads this has it leather-bound for future reference.

Wow, thanks for the kind words!

 

[reedrainey]

Wow, thanks for the kind words!

You deserved this, and more. I really hope more people see and read your post. There are so many people that are ego-oriented, trying to sound important, and it would be a shame have players listen to that crap and not your post. Keep 'em comin'. Some of us are really listening.

 

[Miki Dord MJ]

Thanks Miki. I agree that you should ultimately use your ears and that music is personal preference. I've never said otherwise, though maybe my language is a bit hyperbolic.

The other statement that you quoted is demonstrably incorrect and anyone can see that by bringing an iron nail (or other ferromagnetic material) up near a typical humbucker (Gibson-type) or typical single coil (Fender type) and noticing which one interacts more strongly. Clearly it's the single coil pickup. It's not about the relative strength of the magnets necessarily, it's their construction and how close the magnets are placed to the top of the pickups (as magnetic fields weaken in accordance with the inverse square law over distance, as mentioned in my original post).

Incidentally, this much harder string pull of single coil pickups is why Strats are said to lack sustain and Les Pauls are said to have the most sustain of any guitars (at least back in the old days).

All good, IMHO it is nice when people share what they know in order to help others. That is why i liked it and as i told it's a lot of work, and I'm sure that what you wrote will be of practical use for a lot of people.
Especially due to it can save a hard earned money to some working musicians. For years i say to people that before buying a new pickups they should 1st try to set them up the height. Because a lot of people that come into the store to buy a guitar are immediately buying a new set of pickups to "upgrade" it.
It happens that they take out a better set ( a set of pickups that was well balanced for such instrument) and install a new set which is ''worse'' for such guitar. It has nothing to do with the price.

i quoted the post just to ask the member does he use that same name in another place, and was referring to something that he wrote in another place. i didn't comment about the pickup and which one pull the strings more.
I'm avoiding to give exclusionary answers to some hypothetical questions. And when i do, then i go to much into unnecessary details, but in short, as far as I'm concerned, it all depends on the pickup, the size of the magnet, how much it was charged, is it new or old, was it ''abused'' or not etc.
Alnico magnets are very sensitive to some impacts, but that's another topic and not related to guitar set up in general.

In any case, as I said, I think it is very useful for people that they can find what you have shared.
So personally I respect that a lot, and I'm not traying to take anything away from it, on the contrary i gave a compliment for your effort and good will to help out.

 

[Classicplayer]

One good piece of knowledge that Eric included in this essay, is that (like Eric) some may find that raising the 1st and 2nd (e,b string) pole screws higher than in the diagram, allows for a better volume balance from lows to highs. I found myself doing the same because my Les Paul goes through my Orange amp and out of a Celestion V30 speaker. I have a preponderance of lows already, from the speaker and by raising the neck pickup's pole screws on 1st and 2nd. strings it added back needed highs to balance the tone better.

Classicplayer

 

[Blues_Verne]

Erics post is great basic knowledge every guitar player should learn! MAKE IT A STICKY!!!!

Like you can buy any car you want and could afford, but you need a drivers licence, including some basic knowledge in maintenance, isn't it?

Back in 1965 I had my lessons from a true guru when it comes to magnetism: Herrn Willi Lorenz Stich aka Bill Lawrence.
My problem with his pickups in my HOYER ES 335 type (handbuilt, first series) guitar resulted from my beginner's (2yrs practice only) inability to produce even chord sound with a G string ever too loud and prominent. A plain string, most modern ultra scientific shit back in the day, a recommendation from another guitarist. Well, I sure had no clue nor knowledge about the physics of guitars, so luck striked me and he schooled me:
1. Use a wound G string. ...Done.
2. He set up the pickups height and pole pieces ...much better.
3. Then it got scientific: he let me in on how to match different string gauges from E1 to E6, to customize a string set for my playing, the way my fingers differently press the strings down ...to finally reach the desired consistency in playing chords as a singer cum rhythm guitarist.

So this is another way to set up your guitars. Just sayin'...
Here you see the HOYER ES 335 type with its compensated neck pickup.

 

[ErictheRed]

Erics post is great basic knowledge every guitar player should learn! MAKE IT A STICKY!!!!

Like you can buy any car you want and could afford, but you need a drivers licence, including some basic knowledge in maintenance, isn't it?

Back in 1965 I had my lessons from a true guru when it comes to magnetism: Herrn Willi Lorenz Stich aka Bill Lawrence.
My problem with his pickups in my HOYER ES 335 type (handbuilt, first series) guitar resulted from my beginner's (2yrs practice only) inability to produce even chord sound with a G string ever too loud and prominent. A plain string, most modern ultra scientific shit back in the day, a recommendation from another guitarist. Well, I sure had no clue nor knowledge about the physics of guitars, so luck striked me and he schooled me:
1. Use a wound G string. ...Done.
2. He set up the pickups height and pole pieces ...much better.
3. Then it got scientific: he let me in on how to match different string gauges from E1 to E6, to customize a string set for my playing, the way my fingers differently press the strings down ...to finally reach the desired consistency in playing chords as a singer cum rhythm guitarist.

So this is another way to set up your guitars. Just sayin'...
Here you see the HOYER ES 335 type with its compensated neck pickup.

Thanks for sharing! I'm not familiar with the pickup in the picture, but I noticed that in your link the pole pieces are set similarly to how I recommend here:

 

[ecumke]

When yous say you set the pickup deck height to 2 & 3/32" (or whatever)... is that un-fretted or are you pressing down on the highest fret and setting the height?

 

[Classicplayer]

I completed adjusting the pole pieces on my les Pauls' neck pickups roughly following Erik's diagram. I'm glad I decided to try the method because there were a few imbalances with volume and clarity, especially the d-string pole screws. It was important for my rig because I play finger-style on a Les Paul using an Orange amp capable of a lot of gain. The d-string, when played with this picking style, was not reacting to the amp's gain because its pole screw was set a bit too low. Raising it added clarity and produce more grit when combined with other strings when playing chords, triads, and intervals. Most of the poles on my neck pickup needed a minor tweak to get clarity and sensitivity without dominating the sound. One exception I left alone was the b-string pole. It seems to be the “dominating” sound it the chord inversions I use and adds a bit of character to the overall tone.

The bridge pickups needed little attention, but I experimented and (like Erik) found that both bridge pickups benefited from a bit more elevation for the high e-string and the b-string as well; just a skosh more volume helps when playing in the middle position. Keep in mind my adjustmets are amp dependent. My Orange has a bit warmer tone than say a Fender or Marshall amp. One has to really listen closely to the amp and how your guitars react to them when playing with gain.

Classicplayer

 

[ErictheRed]

When yous say you set the pickup deck height to 2 & 3/32" (or whatever)... is that un-fretted or are you pressing down on the highest fret and setting the height?

I missed this post previously. It's with the strings fretted at the last fret, and I edited the original post some to clarify and make a better diagram. Thanks!