How to Adjust Pickups to Get the Best Electric Guitar Tone

You can use the pickups (the bars under your strings) to change the sounds that come out of your guitar. Messing with pickups is part of an overall strategy to create the best sounds you can. Follow these steps to fiddle around until you have a sound you like to hear.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

1. Tighten up your pickups. Often on an older guitar, your pickups may get loose and rattle in their housings. Try adjusting the hardware on older pickups to get a better sound.
2. Dust off your guitar. A lot of dust can interfere with your work and cause wear on pickups and parts.
3. Adjust your pickups in small increments using the screws on the sides. With single coils and humbuckers (double bars), you can change the tone of the guitar by moving pickups either lower or higher. Generally, when you move the pickup higher (closer to the strings), you get more sound and a brassier tone. When you move the pickup lower, you get a bit more of a muted tone.
4. Move the "steel pole" pieces inside the pickup. You can also get tone changes by adjusting these metal bits within the pickup. To do this, you'll have to remove the pickup from its housing. It's good to skip this step unless you really want to do a complete overhaul on the guitar.
5. Use all tone knobs and levers. It's sometimes amazing how much sound change you can get just by adjusting the controls that come with your guitar. Many electric guitars ship with knobs (next to volume) or small levers that control treble and bass. Play around with these options to get the kind of sound you want.
6. Utilize your amp settings. You can change tone and sound through the dials on your amplifier. Don't neglect this part of the equation as you're trying to get the perfect tone on your guitar.