so i have in one strat the fat 50's pups, and i love 'em but i find that the B sting isn't as loud as the others. i've set the hights up per fender's specs but i dunno. seems to be more apparent in position 4 (neck/middle).

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"coretta" '71 tele thinline
"domino" '97 lonestar strat
"marie" squire strat
"lexy" jag-stang
"owa" martin 000

tone=fingers; fingers=tone

So...

The original polepiece stagger of the 50s and 60s was predicated on heavier gauge strings which included a wound G string. Due to the lighter gauge strings of the day being closer one to another gauge wise, coupled by the fact that most likely your G string is a plain (non-wound) one, your finding is not uncommon.

You are limited to what can really be done about it as your polepieces are not adjustable. You can either craft three small pieces of nickel and set one each on top of your pickups' B string polepieces which in effect will heighten the polepieces and increase the B string's audibility or you can disregard Fender's specs and adjust the pickups to where you feel the best string to string response is. With the latter though, you will probably resolve your B string problem but it will result in creating a G string problem in the sense that the G string will most likely then be too loud in comparison to the rest. Consequently, you're going to have to prioritize on this one as solving one problem creates another. Unless of course, you change your pickup set or go to a heavy gauge string set which has a wound G in conformance with the original design of your current polepieces' stagger.

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Great reply Martian and it makes perfect sense to me. You would figure the Guys at Fender would of took these factors into consideration when they were working on the reissues, and would of came up with a solution to compensate the low output problem on the B string.

Thank you!

In the Fender Guys' defense though, it's not that simple. See, if they manipulate the polepiece heights, even just one, the magnetic field of the pickup changes. This, "window" will then sense the strings differently as a whole and that in turn, affects the tonality and response of the pickup. Even with my suggestion of the nickel pellets, that too of course, would affect the window which throws us back to the whole OEM pedigree here where to the purist, the original pickup design would then be history and surely not what it is being touted as. To the 'modernist' on the other hand, the pickup is unacceptable due to this same original design. Keep in mind too that Fender has several pedigree models with this design.

Obviously, it's one of those, "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of things where if I were the suits, I'd leave it at the OEM design because of the pedigree and as we all continually see, the chips fall where they may.

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I learned a very long time ago that Strats have imperfections and things that need to be accepted as other than perfect.
That being said,Leo's design is as close as possible to imperfection being perfection.
It's like having a beautiful woman with a streak of mean that shows from time to time,makes you weigh the advantages against the disadvantages.

A most profound analogy!

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Wow I really didn't think I'd get that much of a response. This is funny cuz I switch from a wound G string about a month before I bough the pickups as I was hard to bend a whole tone. Althought it's been about 5 months and I'm still gettin used to the sound of an un-wound G string. My gauge is 11-49. Thanks for the responses tho. I figured it was one those "you kinda have to deal with it issues".

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"coretta" '71 tele thinline
"domino" '97 lonestar strat
"marie" squire strat
"lexy" jag-stang
"owa" martin 000

tone=fingers; fingers=tone

The thinnest wound gauge string is a .018. As another alternative, you might want to try one as your G string.

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