Frequent Screwing: pickup height & intonation

sethsbase

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PICKUP HEIGHT

There is no hard and fast rule about where to set your pickup height, because everyone plays differently. The perfect height for a player with a soft touch can sound terrible for a player who really digs in or who plays percussively. However, here are some basic truths and rules to go by:

-The closer you get the pickup to the string, the higher the output will be from the pickup. There will be less noise and more tone in the output signal.

BUT: pickups are MAGNETS, and your strings are made of METAL, so

-The closer you get the pickup to the string, the more chance you have that the pickup's magnetic field will literally PULL your strings out of tune. This can and does happen, especially with certain pickups. like the MEC humbucker and the Twin J. I have one of each in each of my basses, and had problems with this early on.

-The lighter the gauge of the strings you use, the less metal they're made of, and the less the magnet will pull on them, which can help with the intonation, but also lowers the overall output of the pickups.

-The way a string vibrates, it always moves the most in the center and the least at the terminals that hold it, so there will be a lot more sound coming from the string over the neck pickup (if you have one) than there will be over the bridge pickup. Ever wonder why the Infinity, Dolphin, and Vampyre, not to mention many other basses, have the Twin J in the bridge position and the single J in the neck position? It's because a Twin J has twice as much output, and helps compensate for the difference I'm describing when the blend knob is set in the middle.

There are four screws holding each MEC pickup in place, and there is a spring coiled underneath it, pushing UP on the pickup. This is so you can change the height and angle of each pickup to suit your individual playing style. If you loosen the screws on the end near the G string and tighten the end near the low E, the pickup will be closer to the high strings and farther away from the low, and there will be a definite volume difference. Depending on how you play, this could be great for you, because some people have a lighter touch on the higher strings, and this balances the output of the instrument. Slappers who tend to blow out their speakers when whacking the low strings too hard can also benefit from adjusting one side of the pickup height. Experiment and see what works best for you.

INTONATION

The bane of many players' existence. I recommend that even if you have a guy in a shop do everything else for you than I've described, PLEASE learn to intonate your bass yourself. Nobody plays exactly like you do, and the touch of the player is vitally important to this step. When I was at the factory, I watched three different techs with three different touches intonate instruments for hours, and I would play each one after they had finished, and they would be out of tune in my hands. I would hand them back to the techs, and then, magically, in the techs' hands the instruments were in perfect tune again. And each tech did it differently; it's not like I kept bending the same string out of tune on every instrument. You can pay a lot of money to have someone set up your bass, but if they don't play anything like you do, you might get it back and feel that they knocked it OUT of tune. It has to do with the pressure you apply when holding down a string, how much you bend the strings when you fret a note (even the greatest players do this occasionally), and how much force you apply with your right hand... everyone is different, so this can get pretty touchy.

So here's the simple theory behind intonating a bass: when you play a harmonic at the 12th fret, it should exactly match the pitch you get if you FRET the same note. Hook your bass up to a good electronic tuner and see how your bass is doing in this department. The best tuners for this are those that display a waving meter that shows you how many cents flat or sharp you are. Anything without a meter is "iffy"... you really want to use something very accurate. Those rackmount tuners by Korg are excellent. Those little fifteen dollar plastic tuners by Korg are NOT.

The screw that holds the saddle for each string will move that saddle up or down along the threads if turned, and this is how you adjust the intonation. The position of the saddle effectively changes the "length" of the string, thusly changing the pitch. If you move the saddle back, the string gets longer, the pitch goes down. If you move the saddle up, the string gets shorter, the pitch goes up. Your goal is to move the saddle to the point where the 12th fret harmonic matches the 12th fret when fingered.
As with most of the adjustments I've mentioned, please note: a small turn of the screwdriver goes a long way in adjusting the pitch of the string, so take your time and go in small incriments, especially if you've never done this before. The way the screws that hold your saddles are set up, if you turn the screw CLOCKWISE, it will pull the string saddle back and make the length of the string LONGER (lowering the pitch), and if you turn it counterclockwise (or "unscrew" it) it will push the saddle towards the neck, making the length shorter, thereby tuning the pitch UP.

If you decide to tune the string slightly higher, you take a phillips head screwdriver and turn the screw on the string a few turns counterclockwise. What may happen is, the saddle will not move, but you will see a bit of the screw jutting out past the bridge. This is not what you want to happen, but it is easily fixed: once you have made a few turns (and again, just a few; two or three will make a difference), if you see the screw sticking out, firmly press the screwdriver into the screw; the whole saddle should pop into place without a problem. Give the string a slight tug to make sure it's still sitting properly, and then continue tuning.

Check your work with the tuner after every adjustment, and note that depending on how often you play your Warwick in the high register, you should check the intonation on the 24th fret, too. In the Warwick factory the basses are set up with attention to both the 12th and 24th frets. Don't drive yourself crazy getting it "perfect"... no straight-fretted instrument can ever be "perfectly" in tune!

I'm leaving for the Music China expo in a few hours, so I won't be back to check the forum for at least a day and a half, but if you have questions, please ask... I'll be checking in again as soon as the folks at Warwick China show me where to plug the laptop in! Oh, and if anyone from the forum will be there, by all means, come say hello! :D
 
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Hehe, looks like this topic hasn`t been touched ever, so I`m "happy" to be the first.

I`m experiencing quite a difference in signal-output from my strings. The B is quite powerfull, but the D & G is very wimpy, so I consider raising the pickups a little bit on those strings. Would you advice me to raise both of them (J- and Twin-J), or just one? Or even maybe lower it on the B-side? I used regular-gauged Elixir`s , by the way. And the bass is tuned a whole step down, so its a bit more loose than regular. And I pick my strings pretty hard ("the masculine, rock`n`roll-way" some mgith call it, hehe).
 

Florin

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The first pickup you should set is the TJ. You take a 2 or 3 mm Allen (if you dig in really hard, it should be the 3 mm), and place it on the pickup where the B string is. You raise the Pup until the string touches the allen. You do the same thing at G side.
After that, you turn the BLEND pot to have the bridge pickup only. You play a little to see if you are happy with it. Play on each string. After this you make little adjustments if necessarily. The idea is that you HEAR the strings equal, with your playing style.
Noe the next thing is to make the Neck pickup to sound equal with the Bridge pickup. A trick is to press the string to the 24'th fret, THEN to set the pickup using THE SAME allen. But this is just for quick setup, you will have to check it the same as the bridge pickup, all the strings to sound equal, and after this you have to check that the two of them sounds equal. You first Blend the neck pickup, and then the bridge pickup, and listen if it they sound equal. Do it on a decent amp!

I hope it helps :)
 
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Thanks, Florin! I`ll get right on it. If I raise the neck-P/U too much, I might slam the strings into it when I play, but I`ll hear how it turns out.
 
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I don't really have any intonation issues with my $$, however, I'm looking for some overall help to try to get string heights more comfortable for me. I'm more of a heavy thumper but also light fingerstyle player. The challenge in my case is finding a happy medium between not having the strings low enough to hit the pickups, yet having a good height for the pickups to pick up sound. Not to mention that I generally like my strings lower for fingerstyle action.

At the moment, my action is a little higher than I desire in the first position, but way too high on the fretboard after 12th fret. I have had an issue trying to adjust string height on this bridge. The problem I've seen is that the right saddle is adjusting the string spacing rather than the height. When I adjust the left & right screws, the height comes, down, but the saddle still moves around moving the spacing because the screws aren't tight enough. Do the saddle screws have to be turned one after the other (ie. turn one screw, turn the other the same amount)?
 
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Fretless intonation issues

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I was checking my tuning after working on some songs and I was trying to establish the right key the song was in. I decided to check my intonation at the 12 th fret and all of the strings were fretting sharp to the harmonic. I was wondering where the true fret point is at the 12th. There are two dots. Do you fret smack between them or the dot closest to the nut? The reason I'm asking is that I had the A string saddle as far back as it would go, and it was still fretting sharp (both by ear and Korg tuner). I wonder if you go by the exact point where your finger mashes the string or is it at the leading edge where the finger touches the fretboard? It's been nearly thirty years since a played another fretless instrument, the cello, and I could use a refresher.

Just about to pull out my hair (which I have a lot of) when I began to speculate about who does the final setup of these guitars. Was mine done at the factory or the distributor?

I tried rocking my finger back ever so slightly and I could get the harmonic and fretted notes to match for the A string at the 12th. I will say this-- it does play sharp when I depress the string like I normally would (dead on the middle of the two dots).

Any one else experienced this?

By the way, how does one perform the 24th fret intonation? If it's the same as the 12th, it's way off.

Ok, I have a cheap tuner. For general tuning I've always used an A tuning fork and harmonics for guitars. I wasn't till I bought this fretless bass, that I bought an electronic tuner (the cheap Korg you warned us about) in order to tune the open strings. Is there a viable intermediate between the 15.00 one and an expensive rack mount one? Another alternative?
 

Florin

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I answered here:
please let's continue the topic there. Don't ask the same question twice mate, otherwise the answers will be spread all over the forum :)
 
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