EC-1001, Pickup Height
EC-1001, Pickup Height
I just purchased an LTD ec-1001 Tiger Eye with the Fishman Fluence Open Core pickups. So far, so good...however, after playing the guitar for a couple of days, I've noticed that the bridge and bridge pickup seem to be quite high. The action is quite good, no buzz anywhere on the neck (1.5mm low E, 1mm high E, 12th fret). The top of the bridge pickup is 12mm off the body, the neck is 6mm. The strings just clear the back of the bridge (see pictures).
This is the first LTD EC guitar I've owned, so I'm not sure what is 'normal' for this type of guitar. Searched the web quite a bit, but no clear answer.
So my question...is this within 'normal' tolerances, or have I gotten a dud with a neck that is angled downward too much?
Mac
Thank you for the very detailed response (love your handle, btw 
).
String to pickup, fretted at the last fret, the bridge pickup is just over 2mm. These are my first 'active' pickups, so I'll just have to play around with it a bit.
The point of my question though, is the bridge and bridge pickup higher off the body than is usual for this type of guitar, or does that even matter? Comparing to an Axis, Evh, Vigier (all bolt on Floyds), the bridge pickup on the LTD ec is sitting higher off body.
Again...i don't know if this is an important measure or not. just wondering if its out of the ordinary for this type of guitar.
Yeah, I typically start pickups about 4/64" from the strings on the low E side (1.5mm) and 3/64" on the high E (1.1mm). Again, when the string is fretted at the 22/24 fret. Then I'll raise or lower the pickup to flavor to taste.
I think what's throwing you off on how much pickup is showing is the fact that there is no pickup ring.
The neck angle on the guitar, combined with the bridge height is really bringing the pickups out of the cavity.
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I can only really talk about passive pickups as that's all I use. I'm afraid I just can't abide actives, but certainly on passive pickups, adjusting the height of the pickups is normal as it depends what sort of sound you're after. Moving them away from the strings will give you a more defined tone and you'll get more sustain as the magnet isn't restricting the strings as much, but you'll obviously lose a bit of power. Moving the pickup closer to the string tends to have the opposite effect. To a degree you have to simply use your ear, but as a starting point, I always start with the bridge pickup. Fret the string at the highest fret and adjust the bridge pickup so that it is 2mm from the string. After that, I adjust the neck pickup so that there's not a massive volume drop when moving from the bridge. Once you have that done, it's really just a matter of tweaking it until it sounds right to you. Although there have been exceptions, I find that the bridge pickup being 2mm from the string when it's fretted at the highest fret is usually about where it works best. You can always use the screws on the pickup itself to raise or lower the height of individual pole pieces and in this way, fine tune things further. This is why I always get humbuckers with double rows of screws.