Hello,

It is nice to meet you all. I am hoping that I am not covering a topic that has already been beat to death.

I just bought and installed the EMG DG20 pickguard/pup set into an American Standard.

Installing it was as easy as changing a set of strings. However, one question. It mentions in the directions to have the pups as close to the strings as possible.

Does anyone in the community have these pups, and what in your opinion was the best placement?

Thanks a lot!

I thought Vier/fier came next???

My experience with 81/89's is that they still need to be lowered for tonal requirements. Its not quite the same as humbuckers though. The 81's/85's tend to gain attack when moved further away and not lose too much power, if that makes any sense to you.

Sorry i cant be of more help.

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No no and no

I stole it from Roger Waters;)

Thanks for your response, and nice to meet you.
I was never one to read directions, but since it was for my strat, it was important...lol.
EMG said to bring them as close to the strings as possible. So I did, but I thought I would run it by the masses here as there are probably others that have these pups. I am really happy with them, and they sound great.

Should the measurement be the same on both sides of the pup?

Thanks again!

That all depends on how you want each pickup to sound. Like i said with strats i only really know about how i like my regular SCN's set. I have no experience with Emg's on a strat. I do like to have my bridge and neck giving the same level of output. That in my case requires the neck to be set lower than the bridge pickup (which i find can go quite near the strings before it starts to pull them). I also like the inbetween positions to favour either the neck or bridge tone which means a good bit of balancing when setting the middle pickup height.

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No no and no

They are low output active pickups and have a weaker magnetic field than standard pickups, so they should be set fairly close to the strings.
I have mine set around 5mm, and pretty close to flat.

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'95 Custom Warmoth Soloist Solid Flame Koa Body/Neck, Duncan Classic Livewire SSH, Sperzel locking tuners, Wilkinson VS100 bridge, all black chrome.
2008 MIM Lonestar Strat Black/White Pearl
2008 Taylor 114 CE

I have these on my MIM and I set them at 5mM on the treble side and about 1.5mM lower on the bass side. I use the Gilmour sig strings and they are light on the treble side and a little heavier on the bass. I also have the bridge pickup a little higher maybe half a mM. That balanced out the response for me on my guitar. Listen for string balance in a bunch of open and fretted chords using different shapes to find if one side or the other is too loud.

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2009 American Deluxe V Neck Strat Montego Black Enhanced Callaham Block and Saddles
2008 American Deluxe Ash Telecaster
2008 Standard Strat Wine Red David Gilmour EMG Pickups Callaham Bridge