ginchysurfer wrote:what is a good height at 22 fret from top of fret to bottom of high and low e strings? how close do you get the pups to the strings.
The reply from dubtrub is 100% correct.
My own personal preferences are getting the action as low as physically possible without audible buzzing - I don't think that the tiny Mosrite frets are a good match for tall action. The idea is to get the most physically effortless setup possible and the lightest set of strings you can get away with playing cleanly. I think that Fenders work very well with the big strings/tall action setup, but Mosrites are a different animal entirely. I use 10s with barely any relief in the neck (literally a paper-thin gap). Typically action is measured at the 12th fret, not the 22d (from top of fret to bottom of string, not from the fretboard). My string height is approx. 3/32" at the low E and 1/16" at the high E - in other words very low.
As for pickup height - once again this is a personal preference - I like the Mosrite for its ridiculously high output and the way its exaggerated (compared to Fender) treble and upper mids pummel my brownface Super and blackface Showman. If you're used to Strats with their "sweet spots" and magnetic pull, the Mosrite does not play by those rules. I have the bridge pickup on mine adjusted as high as it can be raised without any of the strings hitting it when they are fretted at the 22d fret, and then I adjust the neck pickup until the best "middle setting" tone is achieved. To me this is more important than having a "balanced" perceived output level between neck and bridge pickups, because the neck pickup will always seem more powerful no matter what you do. It can be raised quite high without pulling the intonation out of whack the way Strat pickups do. On my guitar it ends up being pretty much flush with the surface of the fingerboard, tilted ever so slightly to be higher on the treble side. I find that the higher you raise the pickups the more sensitive they seem to be to picking dynamics, and they react better to the volume pot as well. As I said, they behave in a completely different manner from Strat pickups, so disregard all the common rules of Strat pickup height adjustment that take into account their magnetic pull and harshness when raised too close to the strings.
If you are going for the more aggressive sound Nokie Edwards has on the Ventures Live In Japan recordings, I suggest you try a similar setup. If you're after the more subdued tones of the Ventures studio recordings, experiment with moderately lower pickup heights.