POLE POSITION
There’s another aspect of the Strat pickup that annoys some players and that’s its one-size-fits-all polepiece spacing
Q“Dear Guitarist, I wonder if you could share some thoughts on pickup polepieces? I was seriously tempted to drop some cash on a secondhand guitar in immaculate condition, but I was put off when I noticed some of the strings were pretty far off their respective pickup polepieces. The online forums suggested this is ‘a thing’ with this model and that it shipped from the factory with a bridge that was the wrong size for the pickups, and they suggested some possible replacement bridges to remedy the problem.
Is this worth getting worried about? The strings look wrong when they don’t line up with the polepieces and it seems wrong to have to immediately replace the bridge on a new or secondhand guitar. The full-page photo of the Vintera Strat in Guitarist 451 is a perfect illustration of the problem.
As an aside, I assume all three Strat pickups have identically spaced polepieces because they were designed with Leo’s careful attention to cost, simplicity and ‘replaceability’. Does any manufacturer make pickups with closer-spaced polepieces for the neck pickup, where the strings are already a couple of millimetres closer together than at the middle pickup (before getting into the effect on polepiece spacing of the angled bridge pickup)? Simon, Edinburgh
ARather like the polepiece stagger, polepiece spacing is only a problem if it bothers you. Yes, original Stratocasters have the same polepiece spacing on each pickup, which, as you say, was probably down to cost. It means on a vintage or vintage-spec guitar the bridge pickup’s outer poles sit slightly inside the outer E strings, the middle is pretty much spot on, and the neck poles are almost outside of those outer E strings. Some people are bothered that it looks wrong; others believe their sound is compromised.
Many modern-spec and import guitars have a narrower string spacing at the bridge, too: for example, 52.5mm (from the centre of the two outer saddles) as opposed to the 55 or 56mm spacing of the vintage-spec bridge. This will make a standard-spaced Strat bridge pickup line up more accurately, but the ‘problem’ is increased with the middle and, to a lesser extent, the neck.
Ironically, it’s on many import guitars that the polepieces on the middle and neck are compensated. Wilkinson, for instance, uses 52mm for the bridge and 50mm spacing for the middle and neck. Some retrofit pickup makers also offer compensated spacing. Chris Kinman has probably refined the Strat pickup more than most and offers Narrow (49.5mm), usually for neck position; Intermediate (51mm), usually for middle; and Standard (52.5mm), usually for bridge position. IronGear in the UK is another offering compensated polepiece spreads: 52mm for the bridge and middle; 50mm for the neck. Fender’s Noiseless pickups also have a narrower spread on the neck and middle pickups.
While the uneven outputs of the vintage height stagger can be heard through a clean amp, the ‘wrong’ polepiece spacing is harder to determine, some might say impossible. Tim Shaw elaborates: “From a technical point of view, an Alnico rod magnet throws a lot of field and there’s no practical difference between ‘right over the middle’, ‘a bit outside perfect’ and ‘a bit inside perfect’. It all worked well enough with one spacing – and it meant one bobbin and cover, and one assembly tool. Almost any decent manufacturing engineer would probably have done the same thing – I would have.”
That said, some players believe a note drops out as you bend it across and away from its polepiece, which has led some pickup makers to offer multi-pole single coils (Carvin being one) and more commonly blade polepieces on both single-coil and humbucking designs.
But visually, yes, it can be annoying to some players and guitar makers. One thing to check is that the scratchplate is properly aligned and not slightly off centre. If that’s the case, sometimes there’s enough of a gap at the base of the neck and around the bridge to move it (which may involve filling the screw holes and redrilling them) to achieve a more centred placement.
“A few years ago, [the Custom Shop’s] Mike Lewis and I discussed this,” continues Tim Shaw, “because the Custom Shop does get comments and requests from players about exactly this point. So I made some tooling and 3D printed covers to justify the spacing for each location and built some samples. The neck and middle pickups didn’t sound much different, but the bridge pickup was another matter. If you keep the original form factor of the cover intact and only move the magnets outboard, there’s almost no room for the wire any more. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the bridge pickup in that group to sound good at all, so Mike and I killed the experiment then and there. It appears Leo was right!”
Use your ears through your own rig: if you can’t hear a problem, you haven’t got one!
Rather like the polepiece stagger, polepiece spacing is only a problem if it bothers you That should give you something to think about till our next issue. In the meantime, if you have any modding questions, or suggestions, drop us a line - The Mod Squad.