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Hi, I thought it was about time that I sent you some thanks instead of endless dumb questions, and report success with my ongoing quest to get my Gretsch Electromatic to actually rock.

I am stuck at home at the moment with a broken foot so I’ve been re-reading all of your back issues and Mr Burrluck’s modifications to his cheapo Gretsch caught my attention. Then I recalled your issue with the hotrod on the cover, which had a fascinating sidebar about the internal bracing of the famed hollowbody. My Electromatic has nothing but a small block below its bridge, so maybe if I were to apply my feeble woodworking skills…? In the midst of this and inspired once again by your excellent articles, I measured the DC resistance of my jerry-rigged Filter’Tron pickups in their humbucker-sized cutouts… and got 4k. What? That can’t be right. These are humbuckers, aren’t they? My Strat reads 5.5k. That’s when the light finally came on. Maybe if I lifted the pickups much closer to the strings instead of just winding up the polepieces? Eureka! I’ve joined the top braces to the back of the guitar with bits of square, um, wood and left a raised overhang inside the pickup cavity for the Filter’Tron to screw into and, by God, it works! So there’s big, dumb secret of Filter’Trons, boys and girls: get them really close to the strings. Finally my big orange guitar rocks. Thank you, Guitarist! Lloyd from Oz, via email

Thanks, Lloyd – it’s funny how seldom guitarists play with pickup heights. In most cases it’s one of the easiest and least invasive tone tweaks anyone can make to their guitar. It’s also a good way to EQ your instrument. Take a guitar you’ve never played before and strum a few chords through your normal rig. Does the bass or the treble dominate so as to make the guitar sound a bit tonally lopsided? If so, just lower the ‘hot’ side of the pickup a touch – or raise the quiet one. Sounds obvious, but you can genuinely go from a tone you aren’t too wild about to something really well balanced and useful – without touching the amp.