P bass pickup height and angles

[Greggo]

This may have been covered before, but is it is best on p bass pickups to have the "inner" side of the pickup angled downwards? They always seem to come setup this way when I see basses in guitar shops.

Does it make a massive difference to string balance if both pickups of the p bass style configuration are level on both sides?

From a playability point of view I like the p pup on my BB414 to be high enough so it acts like a ramp and I've levelled both pups.

Edited September 1, 2013 by Greggo

[Horizontalste]

I normally fret the string at the last fret and aim for 3mm from string to pickup. So they are angled inline with the fretboard radius. Keeps the volume even across all the strings.

Edit+ same process on the hotrail too but normally a bit lower than the P

Edited September 1, 2013 by Horizontalste

[Greggo]

Cheers for that, had a little play and using that method have a good balance between getting the pickups as high as possible but balancing strings. I plugged in before when having both pups level and it sounded a little odd - prior to me levelling them they were angled downwards but e side was very low.

[Lozz196]

As I`m a fairly heavy hitter I do roughly what horizontalste does, but then lower the side under the E a fair bit more so it doesn`t boom too much.

[hamfist]

It's one of the absolute beauties of the Precision pickup, that you can adjust to get each string volume balanced, as each string has it's own "end" of one of the two pickup pieces.
Mine generally end up with the low E up as high as it can go without the string actually hitting the pickup when I really dig in hard (and I do dig in very hard indeed). The pickups under the A and D seem to need to be much closer to the strings to get the same volume as the low E. The part of the pickup under the G then generally slopes a bit further away from the pickup than it's "other end" under the D.
So for me, and my playing style, that is what gives me best volume balance string to string and decent pickup output.

[Greggo]

I've had to lower the e a fair bit to avoid too much boom when hitting it hard -it was quite low when I got bass and when I raised it it does clip in a higher position.

The ironic thing is, I'm starting to think the way the pickups were when I got it had probably been carefully set by previous owner (maybe be even setup by a pro) and I've just gone and undone it so I could have a bit more height on e side pickup for more of a thumb anchor and to act as a ramp.

It's a good learning curve though as I've never adjusted a p style pickup before!

Edited September 1, 2013 by Greggo