Humbucker bridge pickup for Les Paul Standard copy

Hello everybody I am new to this group and hope this is on topic. If not I would appreciate help in redirection my question.

I have a Tanglewood LP copy and am considering changing the bridge pickup it came with as it sounds awful. I have tried adjusting its height, which affected the volume but not the tone, so it's probably time to get the old cheque book out.

However, and the reason for this post, is that I would like to know what should be the distance between the top of the pickup (mine is a fully enclosed unit) and the strings - at least as a starting point. Is this is pickup manufacturer dependant?

Additionally any tips on replacement pick-up's would be appreciated. I have heard good things about the Seymour Duncan 'custom' and 'custom custom' pick-ups. I am interested in rock, blues and a little jazz and want to be able to get a good clean sound as well (and get it to make the tea). My valve amplifier is a home made custom job so I can alter it's gain to accommodate the output of the pickup.

Thanks for any help/pointers.

The JB or 59 would be my recommendations, probably a JB for the bridge pup.

You're a natural for this ng.

Rev. Andy

Kent Armstrong PAFs sound good and are half the price of the Duncan's.

Or you could do a lot worse than a set of Stewmac Golden Age humbuckers (see http://www.stewmac.com/)

I generally do this by ear. Fret the top and bottom strings at the last fret and wind the pickups up as far as they'll go until weird 'wolf tones' appear.

However as a rough starting point I'd try 1/16th of an inch on both bass and treble sides fretted at the last fret.

Before doing this, adjust all of the poles pieces to be level with the top of the pickup. Once you've got the pickup height reasonably right as above you may need to drop the 3rd string polepiece a fair amount and the second a little bit. Similarly you may need the raise the 5th string polepice a bit and the 4th string a bit more. Then start again with the general height. It's far easier to do than it is to describe!

Not much for humbuckers IME. More so for single coils. It's the narrow magnetic field of single coils that pulls the strings so hard that it creates a node above them (like a harmonic). The wider field of humbuckers doesn't create such problems.

Thanks to you all for your assistance. I will let you know what replacement I get and how it turns out. I always find it a little scary changing something new for the first time.

Robert