Bass guitar's pickup setting

[Chalie B. S]

Could anyone direct me to any article about how to setup the pups for bass guitar

Thanks for your advice

[Cthulhu Fhtagn]

What kind of bass? Electric? Electro/Acoustic? Typically, the high end manufacturers have online manuals for setting up your gear (i.e. Fender). Check the manufacturer's website. Or, you can just adjust them to between 6/64ths" to 8/64ths" on the low end and 5/64ths" to 6/64" on the treble end, then tune to fit your particular playing style. (Yeah, Bangkok, I know you use metric. I left my calculator in my other pants.)

[jeremy c]

Adjusting pickup height is an inexact science.

 

The closer the pickups are to the strings, the louder they will be. The further away, the softer.

 

And on top of that, the further away they are, the cleaner they will sound and the closer they are, the more "edgy" or present or distorted or whatever you want to call it they will be.

 

If you get them too close, the magnetic pull of the pickups will affect the sustain of notes. And if you tighten them too much you could conceivably break something. I did this to my $3700 Zon bass and was quite embarrassed. (I fixed it with superglue).

 

Other than the above scenarios, you can't hurt anything. Experiment. See what you like. It's your bass.

[musicfiend]

How did that happen jeremy, and what was broken? I've never heard of this happening.

I'll say, I've got my pickups set pretty low. I think I might raise my pick up height on my bridge pickup a little, to get more burp and volume ou of it. I'll haveto wait till this thurday I suppose, as my amp is with a friend.

Experimentation has always been key in this process for me.

I had a friend that kept his warwick fortresses jazz style pickups swt with the neck pickup raised as far as he could comfortably get it on the treble side and lowered as far as it would go on the treble side. He kept the bridge pickup raised on the treble side and lowered on the bass side. This forced him to play with the pickups blended, and he liked it; i never heard much of an improvement when it was set like this.

[jeremy c]

I tightened the pickup screw too much and the nut that the screw goes into popped off the bottom of the pickup cavity. I glued it back down and things were fine. But it was scary there for a minute.

[davio]

Originally posted by Social Critic:

Typically, the high end manufacturers have online manuals for setting up your gear (i.e. Fender).

Hah.

 

(that's the extent of my "I never met a Fender I didn't...I mean 'did' like" rant)

[Cthulhu Fhtagn]

Originally posted by davio:

Originally posted by Social Critic:

Typically, the high end manufacturers have online manuals for setting up your gear (i.e. Fender).

Hah.

 

(that's the extent of my "I never met a Fender I didn't...I mean 'did' like" rant)

Is that "Hah" regarding a lack of online manuals (and Fender does have them, they have an online set up manual for Squires forchrissake!) or "Hah" because someone mention the "F" word?

 

By high end, I meant those manufactures that are not Galveston, Rogue and Brownsville.

 

I respectfully and politely dismiss your first "Hah" becuase it is there and VERY easy to find. Your second "Hah" I dismiss because if I were to eschew Fenders (and likely Squires, Jackson's and Greschteseseses's) based on your opinion, Evendude's distain for Hartke and Peavey, and I'm sure someone out there has it in for Ibanez, Yamaha and Aria, I would be required to sell a kindey to buy a Mike Lull or a Von, then I couldn't play it because the dialysis machine would be in the way.