Disabling Individual Pole Pieces

[Aquilo]

Hello,
I am extremely unexperienced when it comes to how pickups work, and so I have a question. Is it possible to make certain pole pieces in a preexisting pickup (in this case a cheap squier single coil) not pick up the strings they are under, while having other pole pieces retain their function?

While reading about pickups, trying to find the answer myself, it seems that there isn't really an accepted way to do this, and I may need to wind a new pickup. This isn't a very common request I'd assume, so it makes sense that there would be little literature on it.

I'm thinking perhaps there is a way I could literally pull those individual pole pieces out, which would leave the coil intact (in theory) and let the others still function. I also thought of maybe pulling the ceramic bar magnet off and grinding away the part that would be under the pole pieces I want disabled (The E A and D strings.) That seems extremely difficult and full of all kinds of things that could go wrong from demagnetization to fracturing.

Another entirely un-mechanical idea I had was to maybe put something overtop of those pole-pieces that would block the electrical signal? I really don't know much about electronics, but I know shielding is a pretty common technique. Maybe some kind of rubber or something?

Sorry for this really strange question, but I'm modifying my guitar pretty extensively right now, and while all the non-pickup aspects are things I can do fairly easily, my lack of knowledge in this area leaves me confused.

Is this even possible?
Thanks,
Aquilo

[RedHouse]

Just pull the poles you dont want out, the Squire single coils are wound on a plastic bobbin, you can pull the poles.
(unlike a forbon bobbin from a american strat)

[Aquilo]

And this would eliminate signal from those strings right? Thanks so much for the reply!
Aquilo

[RedHouse]

Virtually.

It would greatly diminish the output from those strings, perhaps enough for you needs.

[Mark Hammer]

The key thing is that the polepiece not have any direct physical contact with the coil windings themselves, lest the sliding out tug at the wire and tear the coil on the inside.

If your pickup is of the type that we imagine, then the "polepiece" is not an actual magnetic polepiece, but rather a slug that conducts the force of the ceramic bar magnet underneath it. That is, of course, why nobody encouraged you to simply push the polepiece down. If you push it down, it would result in little or no string signal being picked up, but it would push the magnet out of the way so that none of the strings would be sensed.

Decades back, Fender made what they called their "wide range humbucker". Unlike PAF style humbuckers that use magnetically conductive slugs, and an alnico bar magnet underneath, the Fender pickups used actual magnetic threaded polepieces that could be raised and lowered with a screwdriver. Because they screwed into a plastic bobbin and made no direct contact with the coil, it was possible to raise and lower them without risk to the coil. I seem to recall readding somewhere that Jeff Beck had one of these pickups on a guitar, and either lowered, or removed, three of the polepices in each coil so that the whole thing behaved like an angled pickup.