Axis Ss/hh Pickup Height

[NOTEWORTHY]

I'd like to lower my bridge pickup. I would welcome any tips or suggestions on the best, or right way to do it. It sounds a little to harsh and "in your face" as it is now.
Thanks, Bryce

 

[Jimi D]

Since the pickup is directly mounted to the body, with no springs or spacers, there are only two ways to lower the pickup.

The first way - which is how I did it - is to shim the neck slightly with a .5 to 1 mm thick shim at the butt end of the neck pocket. This gives you a very slight increase in the neck's back-angle, which in turn lets you raise the bridge slightly and still keep your action nice and low. Raising the bridge brings the strings up a little higher over the pickups. In my case, I use a .5 - .75 mm plastic shim (a narrow piece of an old video store rental card), and got a 1.5 - 2 mm difference in the string height over the pickups - plenty of room to adjust to taste...

The second method is to reroute the pickup cavities to make them deeper by 1 or 2 mm so you can get the pickups down lower under the current string height. This is what Ratter did with one of his Axi' but it is pretty radical surgery, and would require excellent wood working skills, or a very skilled luthier. I was inspired by his success to consider alternatives for adjusting the pickup height in my own Axis, and I've been very pleased with the results... Whatever you decide, good luck

 

[Estin]

yeah thats a hard topic, i wouldn't ever mess with routing a EBMM or dismounting my neck. *eeek* lol but thats just me. i sorta lucked out and really liked the height of my pickups. maybe role back the volume knob a tad and the treble on the amp.

 

[NOTEWORTHY]

ROLLING THE VOLUME HELPS, BUT I STILL THINK THE OVERALL TONE IS KINDA HARSH. WHATTA YOU THINK DEREK?

 

[ratter]

IMO, the "right" way to go is Jimi D's #2 method that I tried on a transition-model EVH. If done right, neither you nor anybody else will ever know that it was done - aside from the fact that the guitar will sound 100% better. I definitely wouldn't trust just any old tech to do it. They could royally screw up your guitar if they don't know what they're doing, or if you miscommunicate your wants/needs to them. I'm sure EB/MM would frown on this practice as well, so it's definitely an "at-your-own-risk" kind of thing.

Jimi - the pickup height works wonders, doesn't it??

I don't necessarily agree with the neck shim method as a permanent solution - I would prefer to keep the pocket shim-less if at all possible. However, having said that, I believe that both of my EVH's are shimmed from the factory, and they sound awesome!!! So what the hay!! The bonus of the shim is that it's totally reversible, of course.

"Dismounting" the neck shouldn't be scary. There's really no harm to be done there if you're careful. Heck, one of the first things I do with any new guitar is basically dismantle it - but then, nobody's ever accused me of being normal.

 

[Jimi D]

ratter, I agree with you - all things being equal, the "best" way to go about the process of lowering the pickups is to get the routes slightly deepened. There are a couple reasons for this, one of which is that to keep the bridge perfectly perpendicular to the body so the bridge plate rests on it properly, there's a limit to how much you can raise it - I got around this limitation by adding a thin leather pad to the bottom of the bridge plate (like the felt pads EB puts on the bottom of the vintage trems). My way does have a couple of advantages, however, the primary one being that it's cheap and, of course, fully reversable. My Axis neck was factory shimmed too, so I didn't feel too guilty about increasing the existing shim height ever so slightly... Glad to know I'm not the only weirdo out there pulling apart perfectly good guitars to see how they're put together

 

[NOTEWORTHY]

MY AXISS SS HAS THE TWO POINT / VINTAGE TREM. THE TREM SITS FLAT ON THE BODY FRONT AND BACK. ALL MY BOOKS ON SETTING UP 2 POINT TREMS. RECOMMENDS THAT THE FRONT EDGE SHOULD BE 1/16' UP FROM THE BODY. ANY THOUGHTS ON THIS? THANKS FOR ALL OF YOUR SUGGESTIONS.
BRYCE

 

[Estin]

dismounting necks has always made me uneasy. thats not to say i haven't done it, but i don't like to.