Schecter C-1 Silver Mountain

TSJMajesty said:
I have never bothered with adjusting PU heights unless they were too high, and my pick would hit them. Iow, only for an ergonomic reason. I figure if there was some amount of tone to be gained (or lost), that issue would be SO FAR down the list of things to work on, a list that starts with being a better player. Other than the reason I mentioned, I've just always left them where they were.
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Same
 
TSJMajesty said:
I have never bothered with adjusting PU heights unless they were too high, and my pick would hit them. Iow, only for an ergonomic reason. I figure if there was some amount of tone to be gained (or lost), that issue would be SO FAR down the list of things to work on, a list that starts with being a better player. Other than the reason I mentioned, I've just always left them where they were.
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I am the opposite.

I do all my own work on my guitars. I will do a full setup and see how a guitar sounds. If it has too much bite in the high end I will try to lower the pickup on the high end a few turns.
If it doesn't have an even sound between all the strings I will adjust the pole pieces until all open strings sound "even" and nothing sticks out. If I can't get it to sound how I expect, I will change pickups to a pickup I know sounds good and compliments the wood in the guitar (darker basswood with a classic PAF or Duncan Jb, for instance).

Pickups are the very first piece of EQ you can use to help you get where you want with less fuss later down in the signal chain. Sometimes they can even help a dark guitar brighten up or a brite guitar tame the high end some. I find this helps even more if you like using your volume and tone knobs or not.

I took my Epi Les Paul from sounding Muddy and have too much bite with the stock Probucker pickups to sounding even, smooth and just sing with most any amp. Just by adjusting the pole pieces and adjusting the height and angle of the pickup. No pickup switch out needed.

James
 
Its a beauty. I've had great experiences with Schecters, and especially the hipshot bridge versions. Can't go wrong with this one.
 
Schecter makes some nice guitars. I was sad the one I got back in 2008 or so was subtly damaged (probably dropped or bumped hard, hidden crack at headstock, and truss rod cranked down super tight to try to hide the instability it caused) and had to be returned to the Tucson GC, as it was a great guitar, and they didn't have a replacement, so I had to take a refund....
 
Joe Bfstplk said:
Neck humbucker position on 24 fretters and SGs sounds better to me.

P90ish-hot-single, right at the end of the fretboard, sounds good on either 24 or 21/22 to me. I imagine the PRS NarrowField pickups would fit this either/or, but cannot verify, as I haven't got one handy to try on a 24 fretter.

Cooler singles and vintage output mini humbuckers sound better to me on 21/22 fret guitars right at the end of the fretboard.

The big exception is my Tele with the SD Jazz at the neck, but that HB is defaulted to parallel, which really sounds a lot like a wide single coil, so I guess that is really the key to it working there. The hotter the neck pickup, the more likely it needs to be a smidge closer to the bridge, like a 24 fretter's neck pickup, to pick up (heh heh) a bit more high end....
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I just switched humbuckers last night, and I think I was wrong assuming single coils are always better at the 22 fret position. The new pickups are way hotter, and the neck pickup is so much rounder, in a good way, that now when I split to the South coil (which I have closest to the neck) I get the fullest, grapiest beautiful hot-ass Strat neck tone.

So maybe it’s the output level, working with a bright guitar to make it sound warm. It’s like an approximation of Strat tone, but with high output, and at the 24 fret position. I don’t know, but it’s showing me 22 frets aren’t necessarily the answer, maybe just pickups better suited to 24 frets, i.e., rounder!
 
State of Epicicity said:
I just switched humbuckers last night, and I think I was wrong assuming single coils are always better at the 22 fret position. The new pickups are way hotter, and the neck pickup is so much rounder, in a good way, that now when I split to the South coil (which I have closest to the neck) I get the fullest, grapiest beautiful hot-ass Strat neck tone.
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Single coil when split is likely at the same place (4th harmonic of open string), and hotter HBs tend to sound less weak when split, so makes sense.

State of Epicicity said:
So maybe it’s the output level, working with a bright guitar to make it sound warm. It’s like an approximation of Strat tone, but with high output, and at the 24 fret position. I don’t know, but it’s showing me 22 frets aren’t necessarily the answer, maybe just pickups better suited to 24 frets, i.e., rounder!
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Likely the case, and why the SD Jazz in my one Tele's neck spot sounds good alone in parallel. They are already bright, but in parallel, you get full high end response. Sounds like a wide Tele neck pickup, IMHO. Same slightly weak output, just with the second coil in parallel stretching the sensing area out a bit.

Really beginning to like low-output HBs for some things....
 
Joe Bfstplk said:
Single coil when split is likely at the same place (4th harmonic of open string), and hotter HBs tend to sound less weak when split, so makes sense.
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My neck South coil is still maybe ¾" closer to the bridge than that. I had read about hot humbuckers having better splits, but I had balanced that with the fact that true vintage single coils have such low output, and I thought maybe it would be better to go lower overall. I think I'm just realizing how hot I actually like it (that's what she said). I'm never completely clean. I guess for single-coil tone I'm always kind of Texas hot.

Joe Bfstplk said:
Likely the case, and why the SD Jazz in my one Tele's neck spot sounds good alone in parallel. They are already bright, but in parallel, you get full high end response. Sounds like a wide Tele neck pickup, IMHO. Same slightly weak output, just with the second coil in parallel stretching the sensing area out a bit.
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Parallel is tougher for me. I often lose attack, and it just comes off as the weakest humbucker, with the tones I dial in. But you're in a different world of tone, so I can see the rules just being different for what you're doing. That clip you posted recently sounded glorious, but I'm always dialing in stuff that's much higher gain, then I dial it back and live somewhere in the middle. Also, I've never played a Duncan Jazz, and I know they're ironically supposed to be pretty bright, so that starting place can help a bunch, but Saturday Night Special necks are also bright, and I just felt that mud for my tones in parallel.
 
Cave Man said:
The guitar has arrived. I'm going to wait 24 hours to open the box. It might not matter, but then again it might. It has been very cold lately.
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No!!!

Open the box and put it on a stand for at least 48 hours. You want it to get acclimated properly. Opening the box will help this.
 
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