Lefty strat sets

[David Schwab]

In the 50s you had a wrapped G string: less magnetic material than the plain B next to it. That problem has shifted a string, so why would anyone want a vintage stagger unless they play with a wrapped G? I think a bit of increase under the D string gives better balance, especially on a neck pickup when you adjust the bass side lower so that it is not too bassy. But it really is not necessary.

Exactly. The point I have been trying to make are that people are mindlessly using a vintage stagger just because it's vintage. As if that's something good. I mean if it's vintage it has to be better, right?

So rather than thinking a minute and wondering why you need it, they just do it because that's the way it was done. Will it make the pickup work better? Not really.

[copperheadroads]

Shit ........................the word "VINTAGE " turns customers into zombies ..even if its not practical its all about the look & vintage correct
from reading this thread alone ,the last couple days i have been comparing flat pole vs staggered ....on a couple of test Alnico4 flat pole strat pickups ..........plus my main strat has flat pole A2 pickups ,,... i have revisited this topic & i do agree flat pole is much more balanced than staggered
& WTH,,,, i spend time on degaussing the certain strings, on staggered sets to achieve a balance is just stupid
Where a flat pole pickup is good to go
most of my Tele bridge pickups i sell are flush flat pole .Id say 10 to 1
my strat pickups are just about all staggered ... id say 100 to 1
all about tradition .....................i do think that should /will change

[big_teee]

Shit ........................the word "VINTAGE " turns customers into zombies ..even if its not practical its all about the look & vintage correct
from reading this thread alone ,the last couple days i have been comparing flat pole vs staggered ....on a couple of test Alnico4 flat pole strat pickups ..........plus my main strat has flat pole A2 pickups ,,... i have revisited this topic & i do agree flat pole is much more balanced than staggered
& WTH,,,, i spend time on degaussing the certain strings, on staggered sets to achieve a balance is just stupid
Where a flat pole pickup is good to go
most of my Tele bridge pickups i sell are flush flat pole .Id say 10 to 1
my strat pickups are just about all staggered ... id say 100 to 1
all about tradition .....................i do think that should /will change

That's why a Mild Modified Stagger is a good Alternative.
It Satisfies Everyone, Well Almost.
B_T

[copperheadroads]

what do you call a Mild Modified STAG ?
.656" LOW & HIGH E
.688" A & b
.722" or .719" for D & G
if this is that G is still ear piercing

[Corona Blue]

It would be interesting to view and compare the overall shape of the magnetic envelope of the two respective pole configurations. Just to really see if there is all that much difference.

I don't actually hear that much of a difference but that may be because as a player, I don't run my pickups super close to the strings.

[Lpone]

what do you call a Mild Modified STAG ?
.656" LOW & HIGH E
.688" A & b
.722" or .719" for D & G
if this is that G is still ear piercing

Also if you don't have small mags for the top e and b on bridge - the hardest pickup to make to sound good IMHO then they are ear piercing. I tried that modified stagger on a previous set with .671 top e and .650 b and it was not too nice with the icepick. The Mid and neck seemed too bright and especially the neck lost the honk and mellow charm.

[David Schwab]

Also if you don't have small mags for the top e and b on bridge - the hardest pickup to make to sound good IMHO then they are ear piercing. I tried that modified stagger on a previous set with .671 top e and .650 b and it was not too nice with the icepick. The Mid and neck seemed too bright and especially the neck lost the honk and mellow charm.

This is supposedly because Leo was loosing his hearing! His guitars got brighter and brighter. The Musicman guitars were super bright, and had treble boosters!

One thing that will improve a Strat bridge pickup is to wire it up to the middle tone control, and use the neck control for the neck and middle pickups. The bridge pickup is extra bright because of this. It needs a tone control.

Also, if I were building a Strat or Tele, I'd angle the bridge pickup the other way around. That would smooth out the tone of the top strings and tighten up the bottom strings. It's too close to the bridge on the upper strings.

Lastly, compared to the way vintage pickups were wound, the bridge could be wound a lot hotter. That would warm it up and make it balance better.

This is the kind of thing I was talking about. The Strat is a wonderfully designed guitar, but there is room for improvement. Just angling the pickup the other way wound solve a handful of problems that people try to fix with band-aids. But then you get people saying it wouldn't look right etc., which must mean they are more concerned with posing in front of a mirror than having a guitar that works right.

[Ward]

This is supposedly because Leo was loosing his hearing! His guitars got brighter and brighter. The Musicman guitars were super bright, and had treble boosters!

One thing that will improve a Strat bridge pickup is to wire it up to the middle tone control, and use the neck control for the neck and middle pickups. The bridge pickup is extra bright because of this. It needs a tone control.

Also, if I were building a Strat or Tele, I'd angle the bridge pickup the other way around. That would smooth out the tone of the top strings and tighten up the bottom strings. It's too close to the bridge on the upper strings.

Lastly, compared to the way vintage pickups were wound, the bridge could be wound a lot hotter. That would warm it up and make it balance better.

This is the kind of thing I was talking about. The Strat is a wonderfully designed guitar, but there is room for improvement. Just angling the pickup the other way wound solve a handful of problems that people try to fix with band-aids. But then you get people saying it wouldn't look right etc., which must mean they are more concerned with posing in front of a mirror than having a guitar that works right.

I have a couple exactly as you said Dave, bottom tone control for the br pickup, it does look a bit weird but for actual playing I love how the wounds strings get a bit more growl with the reversed angle. The main thing though I reckon with the strat bridge pickup is that it will always sound like crap unless you crank up the amp, then it's blissful.

Of course I'm more than happy with the pickup at the normal angle but you need them amps turned UP. OK so I like strats

[David Schwab]

I have a couple exactly as you said Dave, bottom tone control for the br pickup, it does look a bit weird but for actual playing I love how the wounds strings get a bit more growl with the reversed angle. The main thing though I reckon with the strat bridge pickup is that it will always sound like crap unless you crank up the amp, then it's blissful.

Of course I'm more than happy with the pickup at the normal angle but you need them amps turned UP. OK so I like strats

Very nice! Doesn't look weird at all. Looks better to me. Fits in better with the pickguard shape.

You don't even have to angle that pickup. Make it straight like the rest.

Now you have to move that volume pot! I know some people use their pinky on them in that spot, but I always ht them when picking.

I like my volume knobs here:

[Ward]

Very nice! Doesn't look weird at all. Looks better to me. Fits in better with the pickguard shape.

You don't even have to angle that pickup. Make it straight like the rest.

Now you have to move that volume pot! I know some people use their pinky on them in that spot, but I always ht them when picking.

I like my volume knobs here:

Thanks Dave, I like the vol pot where it is, I'm a pinky vol player, if you look again you can see that I decrease the angle of the switch though, this requires a little bit of routing so it will fit but I used to bump the switch all the time, now only some of the time lol.
Just my 2Cs worth on stagger, I use a .710 on the D and .671 on the others, works for me. Most of my boards have the 7 1/4'' radius.
What about this one, now this does look weird, I found the neck and middle being angled didn't render a lot of tonal improvements/changes though.

[David Schwab]

Thanks Dave, I like the vol pot where it is, I'm a pinky vol player, if you look again you can see that I decrease the angle of the switch though, this requires a little bit of routing so it will fit but I used to bump the switch all the time, now only some of the time lol.

I noticed that! I just can't play with them there because of where I place my picking hand.

Here's my Tele-LP hybrid:



Unlike the Charvel, I got the place the control where I wanted them.

Just my 2Cs worth on stagger, I use a .710 on the D and .671 on the others, works for me. Most of my boards have the 7 1/4'' radius.
What about this one, now this does look weird, I found the neck and middle being angled didn't render a lot of tonal improvements/changes though.

I like that look! My buddy (and former partner in SGD) John, that I share a workshop with did a Strat like that. Reminds me of the Mustang, but backwards.

That's a sharp looking guitar. When I see something like that it catches my attention. I harkens back to the 70s when people were starting to trick out their guitars. I think it's exciting to see something familiar but different; something no one else has. Anyone can have a stock Strat, Tele or LP, but custom guitars are way cooler to me.

John built this:



So a familiar shape, but with a korina body, curly oak top, and a poplar neck with EI Rosewood FB. So much for using traditional woods! This guitar sounds wonderful. It has a very vocal quality to it.

When I built the Tele, I wanted a regular blond tele with a maple neck. Then John said "if you are going to do that, you might as well buy the parts because it won't be any different". So then I decided to make a maple top, and set neck. Then I carved the top and made the chambered swamp ash body thick like a Paul. I morphed the body to add some Jazzmaster and Gibson L5 features, and there you have it!

Orignally I wanted a left handed Tele bridge to angle the pickup the other way, but couldn't find one in time to get the guitar done for the '95 ASIA Symposium. But I'm get around to changing that at some point.

[Ward]

Good stuff mate, I think all the best guitar shapes have all been around for ever and I just make my guitars because that's what you have to do if you're a lefty and over here in Oz different woods are not available so I just stick to what looks good and for me that's mainly the strat although right now I am doing an SG, I was able to source the wood here, one piece mahogany body from Fijian plantations from hondurus seeds, supposedly. This was a lot of fun to build, I don't get off on all the sanding that's to come though. It will have a strat style hardtail bridge though because the board is 7 1/4'' radius and I don't really like those horrible tunamatic bridges that cut into your hand and have very little room for intonation adjustment, it's also 25 1/2'' scale. SGs are only 35mm thick which creates it's own problems, I wanted a strat switch but they're too deep and I still want to put the strat jack boat in there but need to do a dummy run to see if it will fit with only 35mm of depth, might be ok.

Here's a reversed pickup Thinline Tele.

I didn't like the Tele that way so this is how it looks now. That'll do me for hijacking right now lol.

[pee-tr]

what a thread !!!

nowadays googling up content about a theme will get you tons of "ten things you want to know" kind of, from bloggers or whatever we call them these days who mainly google up what they want to say...
and after reading one such "post", you'll be left with your belief... cause you'll have to believe that that side's opinion is the one to have

this thread here, however, gives the reader a very intelligent conversation, and to depths the opposing views / practices / approaches...


I am before winding my first pickups...
learning...

and this question about staggered or flat was really something I wanted to examine thoroughly...
cause when I'll be testing the first pickups I'll have made, I'll have to be able to tell myself why I made this decision, for example....
I cannot say, well, I was just following group A, not group B

up to today I thought it was evident that poles have to be staggered
why? cause the market is arranged like that...
staggered means better... this is being reflected in almost any price list or text

I was naturally under this influence...
I was even happy to realize that my squier bullet has staggered pole pickups...

then bumped into a text under a Seymour Duncan pickup, flat poles:

"The Seymour Duncan SSL-2 delivers vintage sound without the usual problems with unbalanced volume of the different strings. When the typical staggering of the individual polepieces was developed, the G string was generally wound and correspondingly quieter. With modern sets of strings, however, this results in an overemphasis of the thick blank G-string - not that tragic, but audible and disturbing under certain circumstances.

Otherwise - as said before: Vintage strat sound; what more do you want?"

Since this sounds totally logical, I right away came here to learn... and not google.com
and searched: "staggered pole flat pole"

and this thread, with everybody's contribution being equally great... (although for one special reason it was especially great to read David Swab)
has been like a dream lecture...

such a precious source of knowledge...
I am so grateful