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hi guys,

I have 2 Alnico 2's in My Les Paul, and was wondering what effect changing the height of the pickups would have on the over all tone, in the bridge and the neck. The bridge i'm happy with, but in the neck i want a smoother Slash-like tone, any suggestions for height in mm would be appreciated.

Thanks

One of my favorite topics: And if you just want the specs - 5/16th of an inch. Be sure to arc the pole pieces so they match the radius of the fingerboard first. E strings should be lowest, D/G should be highest. A lot of people tweek the bass side down just a tad extra if it's a little boomy, especially for the neck pup.

Bottom line though- where ever it sounds best to you! That said there are a couple of schools of thought here:
1) The quot;As close as possible!quot; crowd: Motive here is maximum output based on maximum input.
2)Then there are the quot;Factory Specsquot;: Motive there is that Gibson/Fender/etc. knows best.
3) Then there are the quot;Back it off'squot;: These are usually quot;As close as possible'squot; who have decided to quot;back offquot; and ended up actually close to factory specs.

The closer the pup to the strings, the hotter the signal, but it will suck tone and kill sustain. Get too far away, you lose volume and sustain. I recommend going factory at first, and then adjusting to taste. It just takes a screw driver to change in a couple of seconds. Overall, though, between the general quot;hotness' of todays pups and the massive gain possible from amps, I generally say keep it back a bit. I think most who have had them too close will agree that it really improves the tone and sustain. With the gain on my amp dimed or using a fuzz box, the extrsa millimeter isn't worth it. In fact, a lot of your favorite searing metal tones of the past decade or so have been from medium gain pups (see slash....) through a raging stack. If you just can't get to where you want - you probably need a different amp. Slash doesn't have any problems with the AP2's...

Hey ace, I was thinking about this myself - good post! I'm gonna mess around with this too, and shall feedback on how the sounds change...