I came to the conclusion a while ago that I was done modding my '04 MIM Std ... which I am still standing by. But there were some posts in a Roadworn thread about filing down pole pieces. Evidently some Roadworn owners were filing down the sharp corners on their pickups' pole pieces -- doing so for more of a relic look to match their guitar. I have the same Tex Mex pups in my '04, and I can see what these owners are talking about regarding the sharp corners.

So ... have you any more experience or knowledge on the subject of filing pole pieces?

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Laughing out loud with fear and hope, I have a desperate plan ...

Well...I've never done something like this before specifically, so please take my comments with a good deal of salt but if I were to do something like this, what I would probably do is remove the pickups from the guitar (to make them easier to work with) remove the covers and then use something like a Dremel tool with a pointed grinding stone and gently take the sharp edges down. A small needle file would work as well, but it would take a lot longer. Obviously you would want to be EXTREMELY careful as your working...Dremel or file, one slip and you could easily destroy a pickup. In fact, you might even want to invest in a set of used pickup covers and slip those over the pups while you're working to protect the pickups a bit. For that matter, I'd probably buy a cheap pickup or two off Ebay to practice on first....as they say, practice makes perfect .

Hopefully someone with some actual experience will come along with a suggestion but just off the top of my head, that's probably how I'd do it.

Good Luck,
Jim

WHY??????????????

01GT

According to Bill Lawrence heat is a issue if you use a grinding wheel. Apparently the heat build up can affect the magnet properties. If its your MIM ceramic pickups your probably safe with the bar magnet running along the bottom of the pickup.


http://www.billlawrence.com/Pages/Pickupology/magnets.htm

Note the bottom paragraph

I think (but am not sure) you may be able to pop the pole pieces out to work on em.

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No no and no

Here's my blunder for the week: I got tired of the gross imbalance in the staggered pole pieces on one of my strats (JV?) and started pushing the pole pieces back into the pickup. Well I pushed too hard on one and pushed it down below the cover... sounds better now but looks like ^%%$$^.

Hey Ninja...that's a very good point and it's something I didn't know about Alnico....I'll be filing that one in the back of the ol' brain case for future reference.

I would point out however that the paragraph does mention things like a "bench grinder" or a "belt sander" and in those cases...yea...those little pole pieces could get quite hot very fast. The nice thing about a Dremel tool is that the speed is adjustable...I would think if the OP ran it gently at a low RPM and perhaps used a slightly damp sponge occasionally to cool the pole pieces, he'd probably be ok. Of course as all of this suggests, doing it by hand would probably be the "safer" method.

Incidentally, I thought of another option this afternoon that might actually work really well. Now bear with me here and don't laugh as this is a bit off the wall but.... Back in the pub crawling days of my youth, I used to play quite a bit of darts. Now at the risk of letting my age slip a little bit, this was back before they had these new fangled "soft tip" electronic boards...the darts actually had steel tips on them. Well, over the course of time, these steel tips would get a bit dull...especially if you drank too much while you were playing and hit the chalk board more than the dart board! LOL!!! They used to have these little "stones" which had I guess you might call an "inverted cone" for sharpening the tips of your darts. I would think that if you found a small enough one, that might actually work perfect for an application such as this. You might have to modify the stone just a bit so that it would fit, but I think it might be an ideal solution.

BTW, one other quick note. Ok...some of you folks like Ninja know me a little now and you've probably surmised that I'm a bit crazy. I generally don't have a lot of fear when it comes to modifying my guitars and clearly I tend to have some rather unorthodox methods (that oddly enough usually work very well for me more often times than not). I've done things as radical as having put my old NJ Kramer on a Bridgeport mill to cut the body for a second pickup. That said, I would NOT remove the pole pieces of a pickup unless I knew exactly what I was doing. Pickups are really the last great mystery for me when it comes to guitars...the "undiscovered country" if you will but I know it's not hard to screw one up beyond any hope of repair. Filing poles pieces, sure...I can see that, but I would not remove them under any circumstance until I had taken a few scrap pickups apart first.

Ok...I'm over tired and babbling like a fool now. Please take my $.02 for what it is.

Peace,
Jim

Just curious....if it's supposed to be a road worn.........under normal circumstances........how would the poles be worn down under normal use?

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"I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them."-John Wayne

Staggered pole pieces are three different lengths in the pickup and if you push them down lower you are pushing them through the flatwork, not good.

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The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Thomas Jefferson

You did this!!!!! you are a wild man. wouldn't happen to have any pictures of the result?

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

Would like to see that too. The wilder the mod the better in my book.

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No no and no

Road Worn pole pieces, hmmmmm.

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The blues ain't nothin but a good man feelin bad.

Yeah, all these responses just confirm what I thought from the beginning... for me, I am just going to leave the pole pieces alone. Lots of good information .... thank you!!!!

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Laughing out loud with fear and hope, I have a desperate plan ...

This is just purely speculative...in other words I'm guessing here, but I would think the reason the folks who do this for the "relic look" would do so because it was something of a mod done on a few older Strats. The logic would be this; someone bought a Strat back in the 60's or 70's and after some time playing it, maybe banged a knuckle or something on one of those sharp pole pieces, so they filed the sharp edges off....hence part of the "vintage look".

It seems to me that at least a few people over the years have perhaps had issues with sharp pole pieces as I noticed the other night that the pole pieces on my Fender Vintage Noiseless pickups are indeed beveled at the top. Personally in all the years I've been playing and even working on guitars, before this thread this is something I've -never- thought about. However I could see where if someone had a really heavy right hand technique...say doing those Pete Townsend "windmills" perhaps, maybe a few people here and there have ripped open a knuckle or two....hence the filing.

In any case, I still don't get the whole relic thing anyways. I've looked at and played a couple now at Guitar Center and to me it's like contemporary art...I just don't get it. I would NEVER go out and buy a brand new car where someone at the factory took a hammer and maybe busted out a tail light, then ripped the drivers seat, keyed the door and painted one of the rims school bus yellow...and I certainly wouldn't pay EXTRA for it. Why the hell would someone do this with a guitar? I've always gone out of my way to keep my instruments as nice looking and in the best condition that I can. I really just don't understand that kind of mentality in the first place.

Anyways, as I said before...it's just a guess. Makes sense though

Peace,
Jim

Speaking strictly of single coil Strat pickups, there are essentially four variations of design:

1. The type where the pole pieces are the magnets and the insulated coil wire is DIRECTLY wrapped around these magnets.

2. Same as above but there exists thin sleeves in the bobbin's construction where the magnets go through them so the coil is not directly wrapped around the magnets.

3. and 4. The type with steel pole pieces mating to usually glued on bar magnets on the bottom or base of the pickup where the rest is same as #1 or #2.

In the case of the above whose construction has the coil directly wrapped around the pole pieces and/or mating with magnets at the base of the pickups, these polepieces should not be touched, agitated, etc. as any manipulation or heat can cause the magnet to break up and break down.

Consequently, ONLY if the pole pieces are the type where they are the magnets themselves and in a sleeved bobbin, can these be manipulated up or down. These pole pieces are pressed into the sleeving and then the pickup is potted. Beyond this, once the pole pieces are manipulated again, even though there aren't any real detriments to speak of, this second manipulation breaks the solidified wax around them and the sleeve stretches ever so slightly to allow the magnet to move. Once the pole piece or pieces are adjusted to suit, it would be a good idea to use a hair dryer on the bottom of the pickup to remelt and thus, firm up the wax again and this same heat will cause the sleeves to tighten up again around the polepiece(s) for all the obvious reasons.

Informational: It is true that a pole piece which WELL protrudes below the base of a pickup will bleed off a bit of that string's treble. However, with single coil poles, this is not an issue. Picture the length of how much a full sized humbucker's pole pieces protrudes from the bottom of the pickup vs. the little bit of an 'adjusted' single coil's.

As stated earlier, heat can peter down/out magnetism. This can also happen with an activated electric motor (such as a Dremel Tool or a soldering gun) in too close proximity to a magnet. Of note is the fact that those manufacturers who contour the edges of the tops of the pole pieces do so before they magnetize them, but I digress. If one deems the existing edges of the top of the pole pieces undesirable, only manual filing should be done. I use a fret crowning file myself as the situation warrants but here too, I feather them very lightly using only a few strokes at a time to avoid any kind of heat build up; as always, less is best. I then use a piece of masking tape to pick up the shards.

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You dig?

To be completely authentic, you may need to impart a chip on one of the pole pieces as well. Wallys workshop! LOL