I know nothing about pickups and my PRS stock aint cutting it

Thats good to know. I'm going to be messing with the pickups in the next few weeks might give this a try just to see if that might be the way to go!
 
I had an old Custom 24 (bought in 94?) and thought they were the worst pickups I’ve played. Loved the wide fat neck, eventually got tired of the weight and (Dare I say it?, the aesthetics…) and sold it for a good profit, with the original pups reinstalled.

There's a huge difference between the old HFS or Treble and Bass sets like you'd have had in your custom 24 and the modern prs pickups though.

it’s funny, because it seems like I’m always lowering pickups from how they get shipped, but yes, height makes a huge difference. You can also play with keeping the pickup body low and raising the screws, which can have less magnetic damping effect on sustain.

I usually find I want to lower single coils from stock factory settings but PAF style humbucker usually need raised up a bit from stock in my experience.
 
There's a huge difference between the old HFS or Treble and Bass sets like you'd have had in your custom 24 and the modern prs pickups though.



I usually find I want to lower single coils from stock factory settings but PAF style humbucker usually need raised up a bit from stock in my experience.
Given that at this point I only have one HB guitar, an Eastman with just a neck pup that I wanted more mellow sounding, (so I lowered it too), I will concede that you are undoubtably right.

Yeah, they were the old PUs, it was a “just pre factory” guitar, and I loved everything about it except those pups—just dead sounding to me. I don’t remember what I replaced them with. With the proceeds from the sale, I got a Collings 290, which to me was about 10x the guitar….
 
About the only guitar I’m really wanting now is an Eastside LC, or the CityLimits. I just have to get my head around the $$.
Buy it, play it, don't look back. That's the only way to justify the price of a Collings heh.
(Once you play a Collings you "get" why they can charge what they do:)
 
And if you think height adjustments make a huge difference on PAF style HBs try adjusting Filter'trons. Incredibly sensitive to adjustment.

I would suggest that you only need to adjust the individual polepiece screws if one string sounds louder than another. That's why they are adjustable. Sometimes the plain G string is louder magnetically than the wound D, for example, so you can raise the D pole a little to compensate. Then you probably want to raise the A a little too. A little goes a long way. If you can't hear a difference then leave 'em alone. Most HBs sound best with the body of the pickup close to the strings.

Fender single coil style pickups are a little different from HBs, because the magnet is the polepiece. If you raise Fender pickups too close to the string - especially the bass strings - you can get Fenderitis, a sort of wobbly weird sounding string from the magnet in the pickup pulling on the string as it vibrates. So most guys have the bass end of Strat and Tele pickups a fair further from the strings than you would have with a HB pickup.
 
Ok im convinced this is a brand new guitar just did about 2 turns on the neck and already the output sounds just a tad cleaner. Crazy what a difference this makes.
I know PRS 85/15 pickups don't get a lot of hype, but tweaking height adjustment made an appreciable difference with my SE Custom 22 semi-hollow as well. I play mostly clean with the neck pickup and it will sound muddy if the pickup height is not set "correctly".
 
I know PRS 85/15 pickups don't get a lot of hype, but tweaking height adjustment made an appreciable difference with my SE Custom 22 semi-hollow as well. I play mostly clean with the neck pickup and it will sound muddy if the pickup height is not set "correctly".
Dude what a difference like i said im convinced this is a new guitar. Right now i have them set pretty close to the strings. I need to play with it more and continue fine tuning it to get it perfect. I know it'll get there.
 
I didn't notice quite the dramatic effect with my solid body SE Standard 24. With the more resonant semi-hollow, definitely, especially on the neck pickup. Yes, quite the difference.
 
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