Alignment Of The Strings Over The Pole Pieces

[David Schwab]

Well you keep coming out with asinine statements. Why would an F spaced humbucker be for "cosmetic" reasons, and not because they work better with Fender spaced bridges? That's pretty damn obvious.

I suppose Van Halen angled his PAF for cosmetic reasons, and not to try and get the end poles to line up over the strings huh?

Gibson wasn't going to make pickups like that, since they use a narrower string spacing, and they sure as hell aren't going to make pickups for Fender guitars, so it had to be introduced later on by people like Duncan. But that's all about money? That makes no sense. People buy aftermarket pickups because there's a need to be filled.

Do you have stock pickups in your guitar?

Whatever you say.

I hardly ever use vibrato tailpieces. Only my Charvel-mutt has one. I had another guitar with a Floyd but I converted that to a hard tail. I'm not an Eddie wannabe and it ruined the tone of the guitar.

But still whether or not the strings raise if you press the bar down has nothing to do with the strings being aligned over the poles. You can move the string up or down, and they are still over the poles. And on my Charvel with an ESP flicker bridge they raise only about .125".

[dazzlindino]

Man, already....u r delusional......
Dude, just one example would be for years Ibanez sold guitars with floyds, that did not have F spacing......guess Vai and Satriani are morons and couldnt tell their pickups were incorrect...........
Seymour is one smart business man, he sells product, nothing less nothing more.................
I dont have pickups in my guitars, I play acousticaly , because I couldnt stand my amp "dropping volume" when I bent my strings................
cause even the f spaced ones dont cover it when you bend up a minor third...
Eddie wanna be ........wtf is that in here for......
and it does not matter if "you" use a tremolo or not......
and so the the magnetic field beams directly out of the pole pieces only eh?
shows you have never looked at a magnetic field.......
A humbucker still works with no pole pieces...........try it sometime.......
if you dare get out of your comfort zone of anal retentness.............

[Mark Hammer]

No call for name-calling here.

Let's insert some important context, though. At issue is whether the spacing of polepieces has an impact on relative volume of strings when fretted without or with bending. The most critical aspect of this is that the issue revolves around essentially unprocessed sound.

Lower the treble side of the pickup, hike the bass side, use a .008 for your high E and a .056 for your low E, and even THOSE would appear to have identical volume when you crank the gain up far enough, simply because of the naturally occurring compression produced by eliminating headroom, and the way in which that tends to even out relative volume. So, while there are no doubt a great many "name" players who see no reason to concern themselves with polepiece spacing, I would imagine that many of them play with higher gain situations. If one were to take a sampling of country or jazz players who try to play as pristinely clean as possible through amps that are designed to introduce NO headroom limitations, often with strings that are heavy enough gauge that no string really ever leaves its resting position very much, I would imagine that the issue of polepiece spacing starts to emerge as worth paying attention to.

So, to my mind, it's not whether it does or doesn't matter, but rather in which contexts it matters. It would seem that in many rock contexts, there are enough other things at play that it doesn't matter all that much, but that will not be true of ALL musical contexts..

[Zhangliqun]

A humbucker still works with no pole pieces...........try it sometime.......
if you dare get out of your comfort zone of anal retentness.............

Have tried it, and technically it does work (in large part due to the slugs in the other coil) but it sure doesn't sound the same. It's weaker and duller. The point of the polepieces is to extend the magnetic field up from the bar magnet to the strings.

Even without poles or slugs the pickup will still technically work because there is still a magnetic field in the vicinity of steel strings that cause the field to vibrate when the strings vibrate, but it would be a lot weaker.

Polepieces actually do have a purpose, and alignment with strings does matter, but margin for error (degree of strings being off-center) is wider than most tend to think, especially on the bridge pu.

[Mike Sulzer]

No call for name-calling here.

Let's insert some important context, though. At issue is whether the spacing of polepieces has an impact on relative volume of strings when fretted without or with bending....

...and a good job of supplying context you did.

[SteikBacon]

I actually demonstrated this today. And like Mark Hammer said I had to use both gain and no gain. With gain the difference is hidden in the distortion/compression of the gainstages in the amp. But with clean it´s easy to hear.

[David Schwab]

Man, already....u r delusional......
Dude, just one example would be for years Ibanez sold guitars with floyds, that did not have F spacing......guess Vai and Satriani are morons and couldnt tell their pickups were incorrect...........

Blah blah blah... a lot of your post is self contradictory.

Here's the thing, you have to use a (non) reference of "legend" guitarist to back you up, even though they aren't. That's a strawman argument. You don't have a single reference that says Eric Johnson (or whomever) doesn't hear a difference when bending between poles. Just you saying they don't.

That's like a kid saying my dad can beat your dad.

My point was that many people here know as much and even more than these "legend" players, who often don't know much about guitars. I've been playing as long as some of these "legend" players, I hear a difference, and as I stated, it hardly matters. That's just the way it is. Strats hum and get Stratitus, but that doesn't stop people from using them.

One reason is when you bend a string, you commonly bend up a step. At that point you have bent the string over to the next pole. This doesn't bother some people just because that's the way it's always been. And at high gain you have a lot of compression to fix the level mismatch.

People didn't start making blade or F spaced pickups just to have something to do. People complained about the alignment when using a humbucker with a Fender vibrato bridge. They aren't making more money because they make an F spaced pickup. They had to do all the tooling and stuff, and now people are buying that instead of a narrow spaced pickup.

Since those two parts were never made to work together, it took someone to introduce that to the market. Do you notice that Fender uses F spaced humbuckers on their guitars? If it didn't matter, why would they bother? It does matter and it can easily be demonstrated by moving the narrow spaced humbucker under the wider spaces strings. You have very little room before the one of the outside strings loses volume.

If you think Fender and Gibson parts are the "end all" when it comes to guitars, than you are delusional. This is why an aftermarket for pickups and hardware got started. Some people want something different or better.

I've been repairing and building guitars for a long time, and remember when there wasn't things like F spaced pickups. But they work better in the context of a wider bridge string spacing. I happen to like the tone of blades better, and this is from hands on experience, not from buying into some kind of marketing.

And even if I don't like them, I've installed a lot of Floyds, especially when I worked at American Showster. And some for "legend" players. At the moment I have one in my shop for installation. They work great, but I associate them with a clichéd style of metal playing. That was the Eddie wannabe comment. You know, all that "dive bombing" noise.

That's my personal opinion, and I also don't care for most two hand tapping. It's just regurgitation the same thing over and over. Holdsworth is one of my favorite players, and he doesn't need to tap.

Sure, remove the poles from a humbucker. Now put a fresh set of strings on the guitar. Now what happened? You can also remove the magnet from a humbucker and as long as the same set of strings was on the guitar you will get a little output from the pickup because the strings retain some magnetism. But either way you wont have very much output.

I messed with all this stuff years ago when I first started taking guitars and pickups apart. You name it, I tried it. I hacked up some patent label Gibson pickups in the process. Oh well, can't cry over spilled milk.

The bottom line is many people hear a slight drop when you bend away from a pole, especially on single coil pickups. And especially with a clean amp with not much gain. You saying that because you think that "legend" players don't hear a problem, then we are all delusional, right? That's insulting to myself and others on this forum who disagree with you.

You want to show me those Ibanez guitars with mismatched pickups? I'd bet you anything that Vai and Satriani have F spaced pickups on their guitars. Can you prove they don't?

And do us all a favor and use proper punctuation.

[dazzlindino]

again...just to add fuel to the fire, now that its cheaper.....
Seymour rewound pafs to make his jazz and jazz / blues pickups....
then put them in a Telecaster...why didnt he F space them......
it took a while, but he did once your main buddy Floyd showed up.....
Fender should be making 3 different spacing pickups...since the strings are not the same dim. at the neck, mid or angled bridge positions of the pickups....
Gibson should be making 2.....
David Gilmour, and Frank Zappa both used humbuckers in fenders long before your divebomb buddy Edward showed up and made it popular......
Imagine the better tone you can get all the different pickup color combos...that is very important....
Oh and that Holdsworth guy does a whole lot of tapping, only he dosent use his right hand when he does it.....
Oh and another legend player that might count would be Les Paul.....
why oh why did he not get the poles lined up ever so perfectly on both the neck and bridge...guess his mesa tirple rectafier was compressing his signal back in the mid 50s....
and then how about a guy that had a very neat and novel idea....
Design a guitar that looks like the rear fender of a 57 Chevy....surely it was not for how it looks....but because of the tone baby...all about tone....
and on the tremolo, hook up a red light that goes on when they divebomb
as to notify the player that he has reached the dont do that zone......
Luv ya mang............
I need to go to school on proper english for you old folk..............my bad

[David Schwab]

again...just to add fuel to the fire, now that its cheaper.....
Seymour rewound pafs to make his jazz and jazz / blues pickups....
then put them in a Telecaster...why didnt he F space them......

Stop for a second and realize how asinine that question is. He rewound existing pickups. How was he supposed to change the pole spacing?

He used what he had to work with. later when he had a business and the funds he had the proper parts made.

it took a while, but he did once your main buddy Floyd showed up.....
Fender should be making 3 different spacing pickups...since the strings are not the same dim. at the neck, mid or angled bridge positions of the pickups....

Right because by the time of the "super strat" more people where sticking humbuckers on Strats.

Fender barely makes anything adequate.

Gibson should be making 2.....

Gibson DID make a narrow spaced PDF for the neck position at one point. it was also just recently that they started putting a different pickup in each position.

David Gilmour, and Frank Zappa both used humbuckers in fenders long before your divebomb buddy Edward showed up and made it popular......

And Gilmore switched to EMG's which have blades and this was one of Franks guitars, with blades:



People used what was available, since there was nothing else. When better stuff comes along many people use that.

Oh and that Holdsworth guy does a whole lot of tapping, only he dosent use his right hand when he does it.....

That's not tapping, that's hammer-ons. I do that as well for legato playing. Eddie started tapping to imitate Holdsworth. Harry DeArmond invented two hand tapping to demonstrate how sensitive his pickups were. He would play two guitars at once.

Oh and another legend player that might count would be Les Paul.....
why oh why did he not get the poles lined up ever so perfectly on both the neck and bridge...guess his mesa tirple rectafier was compressing his signal back in the mid 50s....

Les' guitars have those low-Z pickups that use bar magnets, no poles.

He has started on many occasions how Gibson screwed up his designs. First they put the strings UNDER the trapeze tailpiece and not over, so he couldn't palm mute, then they put the maple top on the gold top and not the Custom, which is not what he asked for.

and then how about a guy that had a very neat and novel idea....
Design a guitar that looks like the rear fender of a 57 Chevy....surely it was not for how it looks....but because of the tone baby...all about tone....
and on the tremolo, hook up a red light that goes on when they divebomb
as to notify the player that he has reached the dont do that zone......
Luv ya mang............
I need to go to school on proper english for you old folk..............my bad

Yeah, yeah, I used to build those guitars. The real idea came from Tico Torres. But Rick Excellente likes to steal people's ideas. The shape of the guitar, along with having aluminum bolted to it, had a side effect of making the treble strings sound thicker and the bass strings sound thinner. Rick got a patent on that idea.

As skeptical as I was about the metal making a difference, it did. I know this because I played the guitars with and without the aluminum parts.

I designed the later Kramer made Stealth series which was an effort to make guitars based on the patent more cheaply, since the tailfins were very labor intensive. I also added the pickup hight adjustment from the rear, and a micro switch for the tail light.

Like on this one for Robbin Crosby:





Yep, the pickup is not F spaced as we normally used EMG-81 or 58 pickups. Later we started getting custom pickup from Seymour.

[LtKojak]

FWIW, I DO hear the volume drop in the first string of the single coil neck p'up when misaligned.

It DOES bother me, specially when playing CLEAN. Happened to me in both strat and P-94 p'ups.

[dazzlindino]

Guy...Mann...Dude.....Old dude.....
This pickup spacing thing is useless......
It works like dis .......
women wear bras and panties, but they dont need to..........
but they sure do buyem......................different colors too.......
think youve been listenin to the White album on vinyl........#9#9 #9 #9 #9
way too many times......while watching Peter Fonda movies and a smokin the Hash.......................
you have certainly schooled me or fooled me, all this time I thought Jeff Beck was using the volume control on his prebend releases........now you tell me he had a crappy pickup........
pure genius I tell you, pure genius..............
Huggs and Kisses all around.......
Group Hugg......
Tell the family hi.....
Gotsta dig up a pic or 2 for ju...................

[David Schwab]

all this time I thought Jeff Beck was using the volume control on his prebend releases........now you tell me he had a crappy pickup........

You are an imbecile. I'm not calling names, I'm stating a fact. Do you need to look the wood up? You sure like that period key don't you? Just a tip, an ellipsis is written with three (3) dots and is for the omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues. So maybe it's apropos that you use so many.

A humbucker mounted at the bridge position is fairly immune to volume drop outs from bends, as the displacement of the string over the pole is fairly small.

Just to put this to rest, for once and for all, here is an audio recording done with the guitar straight into a Roland digital mixer. No compression or other effects were used. It was captured via S/PDIF to my Mac and recorded into TC Works Spark XL. It was saved as a 192K mp3 file.

This is the neck humbucker on my modified FirstAct Garagemaster. I replaced both pickups in the guitar. The pickup is pretty much a slightly over-wound PAF with an Alnico V magnet. The pickup matches the string spacing perfectly at the neck position.

Here's the guitar when it had a Duncan Jazz at the neck:

http://sgd-lutherie.com/images/garagemaster.jpg

I'm picking on the high E string at the 6th fret. You can CLEARLY hear the volume drop as I bend.

http://www.sgd-lutherie.com/media/bendtest.mp3

So that proves that you do hear a drop in volume bending away from a pole piece, even on a humbucker. Since you have supplied nothing in the way of factual evidence, except reciting the names of guitarist that are not backing you up on this, I'm finished. Sorry, but you lost.

So the answer to the original question is, yes, you do hear a slight volume drop, and most people just live with it, since that's the way it's always been, or you opt for pickups with blades.

If pictures are better, here is the waveform of the recording with the peaks and dips of the bend where I am constantly picking highlighted with red arrows. You can see how much the level drops on the waveform display.

[LtKojak]

David...

... don't feed the Trolls.

[David Schwab]

... don't feed the Trolls.

Good advice. I'm finished.

I did want the original poster to see that it does happen though.

[kevinT]

Makes pickups but doesn't play electric guitars?

Isn't this the guy who uses the metal bobbins? Ask him some questions about them and he talks a bunch of smack.

Yeah right, they made f-spaced pickups for cosmetics.

David, don't waste your good energy. Sounds like this dude has been hittin' the hash pretty hard.