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Post subject: Why do they stagger pole pieces
Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 5:48 pm
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Aspiring Musician
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I have a 1996 Fender Fat Strat and I have a simple question. Why are the pole pieces on the single coils staggered in height, yet the fixed pole pieces on the humbucker are the same in height, and the adjustable ones are never staggered from the factory? Does it have to do with magnet strength or magnetic field?? Are humbuckers less sensitive to individual string output??

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Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 7:26 pm
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There are two issues involved. One is getting a relative balance from string to string. In general, wound strings will not be as loud as plain strings. So the stagger can compensate for that. Then the effect is further affected by the radius or curve of the fingerboard. Early Gibson humbuckers did mostly have adjustable screw-type poles that could be adjusted individually by the player. But Gibson fingerboards (and bridges) were also flatter than Fender fingerboards, so any pole adjustment was less necessary in those cases. Vintage Fender fingerboards were much more curved and so the stagger was of some value. And as you get closer to the bridge, a strat is often set-up with the bridge saddles slightly flatter than the neck radius, so the bridge pickup can have flatter poles without any issues.

But even still, most modern guitars playing modern music don't really benefit much from a pole stagger. While Fender Vintage Reissue Strats still use the curved vintage fingerboard, the American Standards and Deluxes and almost any other Strat now use a flatter fingerboard. And if I do say so myself, the Fender vintage stagger on most of the Custom Shop pickups is just wrong for most of the guitars they get installed into. But that's probably a discussion for another time...

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Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 1:06 pm
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I know I've got the staggered poles on my Texas Specials. It's really dramatic how each pole piece is so different than the others. Yet, there's no overly prominent g string on these as they have been set up. The guitar guy at Wild West Guitars got the pickups well away from the strings for a lot of definition, clarity, beauty and amazing sustain with good vintage output. The oem Highway Ones as set up were hotter than the semi-vintage Texas Specials, and also had more of a pronounced g string.

If you like the tone, don't worry about staggered pole pieces. Fact is, I've never even imagined pickups as good as these Custom Shop Texas Specials as set up. They are brilliant. Each pickup has a different, excellent voice. The neck, SRV's favorite, is exceptional. The midmix positions are really great. The bridge has got a really unique vintage tone all its own. At first I thought it was too low but really it's just got a very different tone. All of them are good. With summer coming, I've got some surf tab to use that bridge on, and it can do blues well, too.


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