FAQ on setting up MFD's?

[TMO]

I'm a G&L noob and have been setting up my new trib ASAT classic. I have the string height and intonation where I want it now. Is there a reference for setting the pole heights on the PUPs by string somewhere, and any other little tidbits about how Leo would have done it. I'm using 10's, and my string height is ~5/64ths from bottom of string to top of 17th fret across the fretboard. I believe the radius is 9.5. What is a "factory" setting for distance from top of pole to bottom of string?

TIA, and sorry if this is not the right forum.

-Tim

[Craig]

I'm a G&L noob and have been setting up my new trib ASAT classic. I have the string height and intonation where I want it now. Is there a reference for setting the pole heights on the PUPs by string somewhere, and any other little tidbits about how Leo would have done it. I'm using 10's, and my string height is ~5/64ths from bottom of string to top of 17th fret across the fretboard. I believe the radius is 9.5. What is a "factory" setting for distance from top of pole to bottom of string?

TIA, and sorry if this is not the right forum.

-Tim

Welcome, Tim!

Check out the G&L Knowledgebase.
For example, in the G&L Tech Tips sub-forum, you will find several posts to help you with setup, here are a couple:
Current Factory setup for G&L guitars with hardtail bridges
What should the pickup height setting be?

Hope this helps.

[KenC]

Tim,

FWIW, I wouldn't adjust the pole pieces unless one string seems way out of balance. I adjust the whole pickup on all of mine. I rely on my ears, especially with MFDs. Since they are hand-wound, no two will have the exact same signal.

Ken

[TMO]

Thanks for the helpful links! I'll take a look around before I do anything crazy. And KenC, I know what you mean, but my G is howling like a wolf and I have to take the saddle higher than the D saddle to get it to shut up and play nice. Maybe I'll just back that one off a little on bridge pu (where it's really howling relative to D and B), and then just adjust the coils to get everything "about right" once I get that one balanced.

Thanks for the lookin' out guys.

-Tim

[KenC]

Thanks for the lookin' out guys.

Any time. Let me know how it turns out!

Ken

[NickHorne]

My guess is you'll be raising everything but the G and the bottom E; the A and B up a little, and the D and high E a bit more.
I suffer from overloud G's too. Some folk don't seem to.
Hendrix wore .015 G's, to get them to behave, and Clarence White .014 (and then of course figured how to bend it all sorts of nice ways)....
All in the fun of a relationship with a guitar!

[TMO]

OK, I think I got it.
Last night I plugged into my friend's VOX AC15 and we sorted it out.

Starting with string height- I went up a little to 5/64 on high E and to 8/64 on low E (measured at fret 17- I'm a little high on that string because my 14th fret is a little high), and re-radiused the saddles. I don't mind the slightly higher action, as I'm primarily rhythm, and I have a heavy pick hand anyway. The higher action helps with hammer on/offs too. And open position chords seem to ring out a little better. Intonation didn't change.

Here is where I noticed how much my bridge coil was damping my e and b. My G was clear of the field and singing away. That bridge PUP has a helluva pull (me not used to MFDs).

Solution: I went down a bit on the bridge PUP. I set it for 1 Nickel (~2mm) over high e pole to the string, unfretted, and a Nickel and a dime (~3.5mm) over low E pole. (How? I physically placed a nickel over the pup with the front screw turned several screws in, and then raised the whole pickup while hitting 12th fret harmonic, until the nickle stops the string from vibrating. Then I did the bass side separately, by lowering the bass side height adjustment screw, and doing the same thing I did with high e.

Boom- my harmonics and sustain are back on b and e, g decided to act nice, and the whole thing strums out much nicer. Still balanced nicely to the neck pup for volume, so nothing to do there.

My buddy and I ripped out "highway to hell" in celebration. Him on his G&L ASAT bass and me on the Trib ASAT Classic.

Anyway, posted for the benefit of future noobs. As I discovered, sometimes just a little turn of that front screw (the main height adjust) is enough to free your e and b from the mag field. I think when I initially posted, I was conceiving of it wrong- it's not how to shut up the g as much as it is letting b and e come through.

FWIW, and thanks to those to who posted with advice.

Oh, another thing- I switched from the 09's I had on, to 10's (Elixir). To my ear, regardless of style, this guitar prefers at least a 10. I don't know if I can bend 11's to where I need to be on some tunes, so it looks like 10-46 is where I'm at. But anyway, it's worth mentioning that all my advice above applies to a 10-46 string set.

Rock on,

Tim

[KenC]

Glad to hear it worked out and that you're loving the ASAT Classic!

Oh, another thing- I switched from the 09's I had on, to 10's (Elixir). To my ear, regardless of style, this guitar prefers at least a 10.

I've found that my G&Ls have very definite preferences. Most of them do best with 10s, but I think a couple are running 9s nicely. I try to match them for the most part with what the original string gauges would have been - mine cover an 18-year span that included a change in the factory specs. I run roundwounds on all of the guitars, but the latest one (a 1980/81 F-100 in mahogany) is probably going to switch over to half rounds at the next string change. I haven't heard a big difference in tone between string brands on the guitars, but my G&L basses respond very differently when I switch out the strings.

Ken

[NickHorne]

Following what Tim said about magnetic pull and pole / string separation, I just measured the magnetic fields of the Z-coils in my WR, and also the Fralins in my SRV strat.
I measured with a 2mm plastic spacer between the pole and the Hall effect probe, and also measured at the open-string heights as set up in the guitars.
I was interested to see whether MFDs really did "pull" more, or whether it was more a matter of separation. Tim's final E1 setting of 2mm "unfretted" seemed very sensible and normal, so perhaps "pull" hadn't been the issue, just pup height? Both my WR and strat have, quite independently, ended up with very similar pup height setups, and I had been sure there was no perceptible difference between them for magnet-pull effects on the strings.
I was prepared for anything as I took my measurements and notes. And so I was actually quite surprised to find that the readings for these very different pups were virtually identical. So close, in fact, that all my readings matched within 3% from one guitar to the other.
Maybe Leo had found what field values were optimum, all that time ago when the Tele & Strat began, so well that he never saw any reason to change subsequently?