How do I pull more than 1000 matches from Sphinx?
There are two places where the default limit of at most 1000 matches per query is imposed.
First, on the server side, you have to change max_matches settings in sphinx.conf, and restart the searchd. (With 0.9.9 and above, you can simply reload the config file using SIGHUP.)
Second, there's also a 3rd argument to SetLimits() API call that also defaults to 1000 and must be raised. (With SphinxSE, use "maxmatches" option.)