Pole Piece/String Alignment

[overdrive]

Just curious...how critical is it for the individual string(s) to rest directly over their respective pole pieces?

Reason for asking...I've seen quite a few Stratocasters where this is not necessarily the case. In some instances where the wound strings line-up accordingly, the high E is slightly off & vice versa.

[David King]

From what I can tell it's not very critical or Fender would have tried a bit harder. I'd be curious to know if off-centered poles have any effect on string motion or sustain.

[David Schwab]

If Fender cared, they would try harder with a bunch of things, such as fret work. And Rickenbacker would make a bridge that didn't require you to remove it from the bass to set the intonation, and Gibson wouldn't make wobbly pickup mounts. Sometimes barely adequate wins because of tradition. But eventually pickup makers made "F" spaced humbuckers and pickups with blades and stuff like that.

If you bend the string between the magnets the volume drops. I'd guess being slightly not over the magnet would do the same thing to a lesser degree.

[overdrive]

Thanks David...your replies/responses to this & my other queries have always been straight foreward & directly to the point.

In the case of the misaligned string/pole pieces on various Fender Stratocasters, I too have noticed a slight drop in volume when the string did not rest directly over a pole piece...most noticeably on a high E. Not surprisingly as per your comment, when a misaligned high E string is bent towards the pole piece the volume actually increases a bit.

After studying the nut & bridge placement/alignment on a typical Stratocaster, would this symptom be remedied if someone (i.e. Fender, boutique builders etc.) simply varied the spacing bewteen the pole pieces (an unaesthetic appearing correction) OR made the bobbins slightly shorter in length? Then again this is probably an unlikely occurance as traditional pickup sizing & pickguard pick-up cut-outs appear to be somewhat standardized on anything Fender-related.

[David King]

Just buy undrilled covers like these: Guitar Parts Resource: Strat Covers . You really wouldn't want to tackle the outside form factor for the reason you mentioned but you can make your bobbin spacing anything you'd like provided it still drops into the shell. I do this with the J bass pickups I make. All of this pretends that Fender was able to get the neck on straight and drop the bridge in the right spot. Luckily for me that's not my problem.

[LtKojak]

From what I can tell it's not very critical or Fender would have tried a bit harder. I'd be curious to know if off-centered poles have any effect on string motion or sustain.

I've got a PRS SE EG, a 3-SC guitar. I've changed the crappy stock p'ups and got a Lace Holy Grail set. The first string was so out of whack that it sounded only the 50% of the rest.

SO, I've asked our own Zhangliqun (aka David Plummer) to wind me a Custom set with three different polepieces, 49.2mm, 50mm and 53mm.

The set sounds beautifully in my guitar and no volume drop whatsoever among strings. I'm a happy camper!

Which gets me to this point: why anybody but Kinman and Haussel offers a set like this?

[big_teee]

I had a similar deal here.
I bought a cheap SX Strat left hand Clone guitar.
It had the singles with a bar ceramic magnet under the pole slugs.
The neck string spacing is a lot narrower than the standard fender flatwork that you buy.
I ended up making my own flatware.
I used a 49.2mm bobbin for the neck template, to drill the holes.
I put a 50mm in the middle, and put a standard 50mm humbucker in the bridge.
Like Pepe said, the little E volume came up a lot.
Rock On!
Terry

[David King]

I think most strat players are too obsessed with keeping their instruments looking original to dare buying something as practical as this. Also all the rail pickups solve it for folks who don't care about looks and want to fix noise at the same time.
Still the main issue with any pickup is getting it centered in the guitar, the poor pickup maker has no control over that.
FWIW I make J bass pickups in 6 different pole spacings for 4 string and 7 pole spacings for 5 string. Maybe some day it will catch on. It was a lot of work making all those drilling templates and I doubt I'll ever recoup the investment of time. Any maker with a laser for flatwork can do this on the fly so they have 0 excuses.

[overdrive]

Peculiar how the diagonal bridge pickup on a Stratocaster usually lines-up quite well but the alignment starts to gradually fall-off with the 'straight' middle & neck pickups until on some, the high E is nowhere near the pole piece on the neck pickup. Maybe it's just a conflict of geometry...to align the string & pole pieces towards the neck p/u might make for a compromised appearance in terms of overall visual symetry?

[Sam Lee Guy]

Original Strat design and at least one prototype Strat have three different spacing 2" for neck etc... but for cost, Fender just chose the middle. They think Rock n Roll maybe only last two or three years.

[Spence]

A lot of Korean made Fender Strats had pickups with different pole spacings on the same guitar and it's a lottery as to whether any of them line up.

[David King]

Aero also does strat pickups with 3 different spacings.

[Bruce Johnson]

How about making a rail pickup, and then gluing six thin little metal disks on top, so it looks like it has traditional poles?

[LtKojak]

How about making a rail pickup, and then gluing six thin little metal disks on top, so it looks like it has traditional poles?

Why go to all this trouble in the first place...?

[LtKojak]

Aero also does strat pickups with 3 different spacings.

Never heard of'em... care to share?