Alignment Of The Strings Over The Pole Pieces

[spud1950]

I post on another forum where a lot of people seem to be obsessed with the notion that the strings must be directly centered over pole pieces or else the pickups performance will be somehow diminished. Common sense has always told me that it really doesn't matter, electronically,because the magnetic field is extended enough beyond the pole pieces themselves that close is close enough,so to speak.Maybe cosmetically it looks better to some to have the strings and poles perfectly aligned, but I can't really see any harm if they're not.What say ye?

[dazzlindino]

Ye say what?....
get your favorite strat.....plug in and play your amp , with the guitar on the neck pickup...as a strat player or two has been known to do.......now bend your favorite string / note....notice how absolutely in between the poles the string becomes...and yet it sounds....... still amazing.........
cosmetic bs all around....................

[spud1950]

now bend your favorite string / note....notice how absolutely in between the poles the string becomes...and yet it sounds....... still amazing.........

Thanks for the conformation.That's exactly the example I use.

[Possum]

...

Dont forget on humbuckers there are TWO sets of pole pieces, you can't see the slugs because they are covered up. So your strings may be riht over the screw pole pieces but because the slug poles are further up or further down the scale they may be misaligned, yet you can't see it. Or your screw poles may not be perfectly aligned but the slugs poles will be. Its not super important but I have seen some junky guitars where it was way off. As long as some part of the pole is under the string its ok..

[salvarsan]

I post on another forum where a lot of people seem to be obsessed with the notion that the strings must be directly centered over pole pieces or else the pickups performance will be somehow diminished.

It a relatively harmless delusion but it could be much worse --
they could be into high-end audio.

Common sense has always told me that it really doesn't matter,...

There ya go.

-drh

[Mark Hammer]

In the days when typical strings were much heavier gauge, pickups were more often single coil, and bending was less common, alignment of poles and strings made good sense. If your B was right above the polepiece, but your E was off, there was every reason to suspect that the B might be louder than the E when you strummed a chord, and unless you had individually adjustable polepiece height you were kind of screwed.

Certainly for things like bridge pickups, where there is always much less lateral movement of strings, polepiece/string alignment CAN help to achieve better string-to-string volume balance. Indeed, that's one of the very reasons for the existence of blade-type pickups, and I suspect one of the reasons why people like Dave Schecter started producing pickups with much fatter polepieces.

One of my guitars is a 63 or 64 Epi Coronet. This was a "student" model with a single P90 by the bridge, and a narrower than average fingerboard. I wanted a neck pickup to add to the P90, but there was very little on the market to suit that scale. So, I made myself a coilform, scored some Alnico polepieces and wound something that is a smaller/narrower scale than a Strat, and possibly a Tele neck pickup, with the strings sitting right above the polepieces. It actually works better than the P90.

Do keep in mind that most folks, when they bend strings, bend upwards (i.e., towards the low E). If the overall output of the pickup is a function of how much the vibrating strings disturb the magnetic field, then logic says that if a double stop bend puts the strings in the vicinity of maybe only 4 of the 6 polepieces, that you're probably losing signal.

Now, the couple of millimeters difference in spread between a PU where the strings are precisely over top vs maybe a couple of mm in from the outside edge of the polepiece is not what you'd call huge. But IMHO, every little bit helps. Don't drive yourself crazy over it, because there are som many other factors at play, but if you CAN align polepieces with minimal effort and cost, try to do so.

[David Schwab]

You do hear a slight decrease when you bend away from a pole, but it's not a big deal and doesn't bother most people.

I have one customer who will use nothing but blade pickups in his Strats though, because that slight change in output bugs him.

[bbsailor]

You do hear a slight decrease when you bend away from a pole, but it's not a big deal and doesn't bother most people.

I have one customer who will use nothing but blade pickups in his Strats though, because that slight change in output bugs him.

David,

Malcolm Moore did a very complete analysis of the magnetic field's effect of pickup output. He shows that the two outside guitar strings have less magnetic field than the inside four strings that have magnets on both sides of them. http://www.moore.org.au/pick/06/06_gobd.htm

Maybe this suggests that we use 7-pole pickups with the strings positioned between the magnets so each string has the same magnetic field with poles on each side of the string. Maybe even gluing small booster magnets to the ends of the pickup could help compensate for the end strings being in a slightly weaker magnetic field?

To further complicate matters, string core diameter tends to dominate the individual string output with the thicker plain strings being louder. In the days of wound G strings in the 1950s and 1960s, the B string tended to be the dominate string. The other variable is that the ear may be not sensitive enough to detect small volume differences, espicially when we tend to compensate for perceived string volume by how hard we strike the individual strings. I believe that players tend to unconsciously play different strings to obtain a perceived even output as string dynamics is one variable that the player can control to add subtle characteristics to their individual style. The feedback loop includes the mind - finger - string mass - string tension - pickup (including magnetic field) -amplifier- speaker- ear and back to the mind with compensations occuring to achieve the desired result.

Stretch the Extech LCR meter leads out to measure the individual string resistance readings and you will find that the resistance measurements are in direct relationship to the diameter of the string core with the low-E and G strings having the lowest resistance readings for a set of .011" strings with a plain G string.

Here is the classic case where we have the tradition of pickup design, the variable of human perception and the science of attempting to intelligently discuss pickup characteristics all interacting.

Joseph Rogowski

[Mike Sulzer]

He shows that the two outside guitar strings have less magnetic field than the inside four strings that have magnets on both sides of them.

Joseph,

When I measure the B field of a either single coil or humbucker pickup, the result is that the outer poles have a stronger vertical field than the inner. (One can think of it this way: field lines tend to repel each other, pushing to the outside.) Moores's analyis is confusing, but I think his color/lines plot shows this also. It is the vertical field that counts, not both the vertical and the horizontal as he discusses. The changes in the vertical component of the flux passing through a horizontal loop induce voltage around the loop. It is all very well to talk about disturbing the field and altering the reluctance and therefore changing the flux, but one must be careful to take only the right component.

[dazzlindino]

List one single Legend guitarist that hears a drop in volume with note bending........well..............
not even Eric Johnson or Allan Holdworth has stated something so......

[David Schwab]

List one single Legend guitarist that hears a drop in volume with note bending........well..............
not even Eric Johnson or Allan Holdworth has stated something so......

I can hear it. Wiggle the string back and forth and you will hear the amplitude vary. Try it on the neck pickup. It's very slight, but it's there, and this is why they make blade pickups after all. You can also hear it on Fender bass pickups, both the Precisions and Jazzes.

Allan Holdsworth uses Carvin pickups which get around that problem by having 22 poles, which pretty much mimics a blade. So apparently he did care about it. He went though the bother to have them do a signature line of pickups, and still used the 22 poles.

A lot of other players have used blade type pickups over the years because you get a more even string to string response. Just look at some popular pickups with blades, EMG, Duncan, Lawrence, et al. If it made no difference why would pickup makers make them? Blades also exhibit less string pull than poles, which seems to matter to some people.

Also why would they bother to make F spaced humbuckers if it didn't matter.

Saying that a "legend" guitarist doesn't hear it (and you don't know that since you haven't spoken to the two you mentioned), and therefore it's not a real problem is not a valid argument. The guitarist I mentioned is a touring guitarist with Kool and the Gang. So whereas they might not be some fusion outfit with a lot of shredding going on, he is a fine guitar player and has played all over the world.

Also I'm a guitarist myself, and I prefer blade pickups because they sound smoother in bends.

What you should have said was you don't hear a difference.

[Zhangliqun]

Depending on the guitar and pickup, I do hear a bit of a drop if the strings aren't reasonably (not perfectly) aligned. This seems to be more of an issue with neck pu's with warmth, particularly on the high E, because there's no warmth or bass for the bridge pu to pick up.

[dazzlindino]

David..you dont know who I have and havent talked to..... or practiced with in the same rehersal space for years...in Austin...
and F spacing is soley for cosmetic concerns.......
Holdsworth always absolutely used carvin 22 polers.......ya right...........
so how much volume drop is there when you use the tremolo...
and the strings get further away from the pickups.......
You guys....all these inside jokes...I get it now.........

[David Schwab]

David..you dont know who I have and havent talked to..... or practiced with in the same rehersal space for years...in Austin...

I could care less actually. I've been playing about 40 years, so I know how the damn things work. You also don't know who I have met.

and F spacing is soley for cosmetic concerns.......

You want to back that up with something? If you stick a Gibson width humbucker on a Strat the outside two strings are pretty weak.

Holdsworth always absolutely used carvin 22 polers.......ya right...........
so how much volume drop is there when you use the tremolo...
and the strings get further away from the pickups.......

Yeah, slightly higher, but still over the poles and not as far as bending up a step and a half. Plus the pitch gets lower, so it sounds a bit louder. But who said you don't hear a change with a tremolo?

But Duncan did come out with the Parallel Axis Trembucker that reason.

You guys....all these inside jokes...I get it now.........

I have no idea what you are talking about. I just think you are making a lot of assumptions and baseless claims.

[dazzlindino]

You could care less.....hmmm...but when you mention who you know it should matter........and I cant or wont ever know who you have and have not met...just like you dont know whom I have either......
Back it up with what........guitars were sold and played for years with floyd roses before somebody decided on another marketing scheme to get people to buy pickups for their " faulty" guitars........$ rules in all markets, and if someone will buy'em someone will sell them.......
You have not seen just far away the strings get when using a tremolo have you?
Duncan came out with the parallel axis to add to his "growing " product line...
and guess what in the years to come he will be selling more " new and improved" pickups....
Your right Mr 40 yrs player.....I have only been playing for 39 1/2, so excuse me for my beginner player reactions to your posts