Stupid question I suppose; but always wondered why

Leo and his people designed it that way to get the most treble out of the strings,remember in those days and still on some Strats, bridge pups didn't have tone controls....he wanted pure treble tone from it.
At least that's what I've read.

It's angled on the theory that moving the end of the pickup for the low E string away from the bridge would allow the lower strings to retain more of their bass tonal qualities.

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That's not a stupid question...

Remember the Telecaster has an angled bridge pickup also. The Tele design predates the Stratocaster by a few years. The decision for the Strat to have the same angle was a holdover from the Tele simply to accentuate the highs and lows near the bridge where the strings vibrations has low energy. I don't think the Strat's particular bridge pickup or no tone control on it played a part in the decision to keep the angle like the Tele.

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Because it looks cool.

I thought Leo did it to minimize physical intereference. If the pup was straight down, guitar players were tending to strum into the pup ... so he angled it a bit out of the way. Of course ... that is only what I remember which could be totally wrong.

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I've always read that it was purely for tonal purposes.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

So much that Leo and his crew did was experimental in many ways.
I read that on the pickup windings it was trial and error,wind some and listen,etc.,until Leo was satisfied.
Whatever the reason,to me seeing a Strat with any other bridge pup configuration looks strange,I'm only a year older than the original Stratocaster,but the same age as the prototypes I think,weird huh.
We grew up together.

Not really, Leo work by the rule "Form follows function" Looks were secondary. It needed to work right first.

This is just my $.02 worth but I think Rebelsoul pretty much hit it there. Back when Leo was designing the Strats and Teles (Broadcasters), I think there was simply a lot of experimentation going on back then...trying to see what worked and what didn't. I remember reading once about how when the first Strat came off the assembly line, they had to hold up production because there was some kind of problem with the new "synchronized tremolo". Something about George Fullerton having taken that first guitar in to Leo's office and saying "Listen to this..."...played it for a bit and it sounded completely dead and they ended up redesigning the bridge...and the shop tooling...before they could actually start production. I've also read about how back in those days, Leo would go to clubs and such and actually talk to guitar players about the instruments he was making...and listen to their suggestions. It's certainly possible that the reason for all of this may have been nothing more than a guitar player trying one of Leo's early prototypes and saying something like "hey...have you tried putting the bridge pickup at an angle? I've always wondered how that would sound...".

Now I will say that observation clearly shows that on Strats at least, this seems to be limited to just the single coils...humbucker equipped Strats (either dual or SSH) typically have the bridge pickup straight across. Of course there have been other brands such as Kramer that do have angled humbuckers at the bridge so logic would seem to dictate that whatever the reason for this, it doesn't really seem to make that much of a difference now a days. With today's Strats I'd venture to guess that it's more about "style" than something like tone or playability or things like that.

So with that, my guess would be that the reason for the angled bridge pickups on the original Teles and Strats weren't really due to only one thing specifically...with those very early prototypes it was probably something of an evolution based on experimentation to get the best sound and the suggestions of guitars players. I'm sure there have been some other things written in the "history books" but, in my somewhat cynical view, it seems with each new history book, history tends to get re-written and even a bit muddled so who's really to say what was going on in the minds of our founding fathers back then.

Just my $.02 worth as always,
Jim

Evidently Bill Carson had a lot of input on the Strat.It's really strange how Leo did what he did and wasn't a musician,but listened to what they wanted.
I've read lately that Leo didn't like the "in between" sound when people messed with their p/u switches...funny how that is so accepted now,but way back when we had to tinker around to get those tones before 5 position switches came available.
Typical of "Hey,listen to this" ...."How did you do that?"

I think the person who said they did it to maintain the bass tones while getting the most trebles makes the most sense.

I think they sound so much better angled the other way.

He didn't always stick to this though. The sole reason he switched all the guitars to a rosewood fretboard was because he didn't like how the maple fretboards looked "dirty' as they wore in.

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