Bright Les Paul Bridge Pickup

[JBarlow]

Hey guys! I've got a stock Les Paul traditional that's great. I kind of want to experiment with darkening up the bridge pickup without replacing the whole pickup. Ideas?

--Jason

[murkat]

lower the adjustment screws of the pickup just below the cover, adjust to taste :)

[JBarlow]

Not to be a total idiot, but are you talking about the height adjustment screws? Ah, wait, I am a total idiot...

--Jason

[Bob V]

I'm only half an idiot and I don't know what "below the cover" meant. Murkat's right, though, you can adjust the sound of the pickup quite a bit. The six adjustable polepieces can be tweaked to follow the fretboard radius but it's hardly necessary (Seth Lover, in an interview by Seymour Duncan, said he was going to leave them off but the marketing guys wanted them). The big difference is adjusting the height of the whole pickup with the two height adjustment screws - closer to the strings will darken the sound but if you get too close it gets woofy. That's the technical term. Back it off (lower it away from the strings) and it opens up and gets more sparkly.