strat PUs - distortions

[txstrat]

On my last gig I discovered a weird thing with my mexican classic strat pickups.
I've recently set them higher as recommended in the Fender setup guide (quite close to the strings).
While I was playing very hard I could hear some disharmonic distortions through the amp that went away when I turned up the amps volume and played less hard.
I'm not quite sure if the higher setup could cause this.
Any opinions or recommendations?

[Possum]

...

You're getting "stratitis" which is when the magnets pull on the strings and cause a warble tone thing because the magnets are trying to stop the strings from vibrating. Lower the pickups back down. This worst on the bass strings usually. I always degauss my magnets to reduce this problem.....

[txstrat]

Yeah, thats what I thought.
I've read about "stratitis" but wasn't sure if it only has impact on intonation rather than distortion.
Thanks.

[greenfingers]

The bridge pickup can be set quite high, it's the middle & neck coils you have to be careful with. Like Possum said the bass strings need to be further away from the pickup... This is how eric johnson has his pickups set.... measured with the string depressed at the last fret, and the distance from the top of the pole piece and the botton of the E string.

.....................BASS........................TREBLE


neck..............2.0mm.......................1.2mm

middle............3.6............................2.8

bridge............2.0............................1.4


the neck and middle coils on his strat at the time these measurements were taken were alnico 3 with alnico 5 in the bridge. so they did not exert as much pull...I found i want the neck a bit lower still but i had A5's in at the time, but that setup did sound very EJ like.

[txstrat]

I set the PUs even lower than before the change. It comes close to what greenfingers proposed, except the neck PU is lower than the middle. Great sound now.

[greenfingers]

I set the PUs even lower than before the change. It comes close to what greenfingers proposed, except the neck PU is lower than the middle. Great sound now.

That is how i usually have it set as well, but it gave some really nice in-between sounds having the middle set that low.

[David Schwab]

Precision Bass pickups get a nice grunt when you pluck the strings hard, even when you have them far enough under the strings as to not get the warble.

I bet Strat pickups would do the same thing mounted on a bass. So you can get them to distort... somehow.

[txstrat]

It might be because I use rather heavy strings. Usually .011s or .012s. Not quite like bass strings, though.

[LtKojak]

That's how I do it...

... I put the neck p'up as close as I can to the 6th string so "stratitis" is clear, so I lower it until it just disappears, then I set the treble side a little bit higher. Now I set the middle and the bridge p'ups to the same height, so I've got my starting point.

From now on I only fine-tune the in-between positions moving only the middle and/or the bridge p'ups.

HTH,