Adjusting Strat Pole Pieces

thegummy

I often find that the vintage stagger on my Strat pickups can be annoying - it'll be cases where the G string breaks up the amp but the B string, with the pole piece being so much lower, sounds completely different that it just sounds bizarre going between the two.

I've seen online people saying it's easy to just adjust the pole pieces but then I've read others saying it's very dangerous and can easily destroy the pickup.

If possible I'd like to adjust the pole pieces cause it would save me a lot of money when it's the stagger that's the only thing I don't like.

What do our resident experts think?

ICBM

If they're Fender USA Standard-type pickups then you can easily and safely adjust them just by pushing them down, because they're mounted in tubes in a plastic bobbin.

If they're vintage-style pickups with fibreboard top and bottom pieces then there is a high risk of wrecking the pickup if you try, because there is no bobbin and the coil is wound directly onto the magnets. While adjusting the G is less risky than either of the Es, it's still not a good idea unless you're willing to take a chance of needing the pickup rewinding.

OilCityPickups

As @ICBM says ... if the pickup uses a vintage style flatwork you almost certainly will destroy the pickup by attempting to
 'adjust' the poles. The wire is wound either directly onto the magnets, or with only a fragile layer of tape separating magnets and wire ... moving the magnet more often than not breaks a core winding and means you will need a rewind.

thegummy

It's Fender Fat 50s - either of you know for certain which type they are?

Lebarque

Just don't

OilCityPickups

If they are CS Fat 50s they have fibre top and bottom plates and you will almost certainly destroy them trying to mess with the poles.

thegummy

Thanks for the info but that makes me sad

Looked up some replacements and the ones I fancied from Bare Knuckle were 270 quid or something.

Think I might sell my SE Custom 24 to fund it.

Unless anyone recommends some lower prices non-staggered good vintage output Strat pickups?

Lebarque

IMO the stagger is part of the strat experience. Embrace it or get a Tele. Or cough up for some Lollars!

thegummy

Lebarque said:

IMO the stagger is part of the strat experience. Embrace it or get a Tele. Or cough up for some Lollars!

That's a fair enough comment if strumming chords and just have the louder G changing the timbre of the chord.

But when playing notes it's never good to suddenly go from clean to dirty arbitrarily.

Voxman

Not that I'd muck about with the pole pieces but I was just curious...would the pole pieces on my 69 Strat be adjustable?

ICBM

Lebarque said:

IMO the stagger is part of the strat experience. Embrace it or get a Tele. Or cough up for some Lollars!

The original stagger is massively annoying for me, both because the G is far too loud and clangy with a plain 3rd, and because the pole is high enough to snag my fingernails and break them when I play with fingers.

But I did recently find that a DiMarzio Area '61 - which has a modern stagger with a low G, and heavily-bevelled poles - is fine.

TeleMaster

Personally, I think people worry about this stuff way too much. Myself included!

Funkfingers

ICBM said:

If they're Fender USA Standard-type pickups then you can easily and safely adjust them just by pushing them down, because they're mounted in tubes in a plastic bobbin.

This is also true of Fender Tex-Mex pickups for Stratocaster. (Plastic bobbins and rod magnets held within a plastic tube section by either wax or glue.) I exploited this to "convert" right-handed pickups to left-handed. Later, I used these pickups in a right-handed guitar in an attempt to get a Hendrix-ish string to string balance.

thegummy said:

I've seen online people saying it's easy to just adjust the pole pieces 

On some aftermarket pickups, it is. Some DiMarzio true single coil pickups have adjustable allen screw polepieces. G&L S and ASAT Classic pickups also offer this. Both designs gain polepiece adjustability at the expense of having ceramic bar magnets on the underside of the pickup.



The vintage Fender magnet length "stagger" pattern was created in an age of the 7.25" fingerboard radius and what we now think of as Medium-Heavy gauge string sets with a wound G.

Modern guitars, with shallower fingerboard radii and light gauge strings warrant a shallower polepiece length pattern. Some manufacturers now offer this on their pickups. e.g. Duncan Stacks. The more typical solution is to eliminate the "stagger" altogether. Equal length poles get the magnetic field where it needs to be.

thegummy

Found this video where he specifically says that the Fat 50s can be adjusted:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D31TGgcBPo

I think I'm going to try it, maybe on just one of the pickups at first. If I ruin it I could have lost about 30 quid (judging by the set seeming to go for 90-100 quid) but if it works it will save me much more than that.

thegummy

So I took the risk and did it according to that video - am very happy to report it worked!

Feels so good to have saved so much money!

mrkb

thegummy said:

So I took the risk and did it according to that video - am very happy to report it worked!

Feels so good to have saved so much money!

That’s good to hear, I removed the stagger on my Texas specials for a similar reason 10 years ago, didn’t know there was a risk of damage at the time!

ICBM

OilCityPickups

Tip from a pickup maker: if you have vintage stagger pickups and you catch the poles with your nails playing fingerstyle like @ICBM (but are happy with the sound), take the pickup cover off and put a small spacer in, making the cover sit higher relative to the magnets. 

An interesting point is that us pickup makers wouldn't make vintage stagger pickups if folks didn't constantly ask for them! 
Personally all my 'modern output' Strat pickups come with flush poles as standard... as it suits flatter radius modern fingerboards. Oh, and most of us smaller makers will happily give you whatever stagger you want on Strat (or Tele) sets ... often at no extra charge. 

To clarify, the Fender Strat pickups that can be 'adjusted' have bobbins injection moulded from plastic like this

Vintage Strat style bobbins are internally like this 

CasperCaster

I've heard of a few people getting away with it with pickups which are traditionally made, but it is very risky, so @thegummy you were very lucky with Fat 50's.

However, I've done this plenty of times with the Fender plastic bobbin pickups with individual alnico magnets - Mexican Classic Series pickups, Mexican Tex-Mex pickups, pre-2012 US Standard pickups, Highway One pickups. Another useful trick with these is that you can reverse the magnetic polarity of a pickup easily. As an example, the Mexican Classic Series do not have a RWRP middle pickup. So, with the middle pickup, first remove it from the guitar and mark the top of the magnets with a marker pen. With the pickup cover on (to stop you damaging the coil with your fingers/nails) carefully push out each magnet. Invert each magnet (marker pen now on the bottom) and reinsert into the plastic bobbin. Now solder the pickup back in the guitar, but with black as hot and white as earth and you now have an RWRP pickup. And before anyone says anything, none of the big pickup winders reverse wind anything - their RWRP pickups are wound in the same direction as their equivalent 'normal' pickups but they swap black/white with respect to coil start/finish - the magnet polarity is reversed and black/white are swapped, but that is all.

OilCityPickups

CasperCaster said:

none of the big pickup winders reverse wind anything - their RWRP pickups are wound in the same direction as their equivalent 'normal' pickups but they swap black/white with respect to coil start/finish - the magnet polarity is reversed and black/white are swapped, but that is all.

Very true, but not the best way to wind RWRP pickups at all! 
PS ... on non plastic bobbin pickups most small pickup winders will reverse the polarity of a middle pickup for you for a small charge. 

thegummy

I think maybe the Fat 50s are the plastic one. Didn't have the reference pics at the time and obviously the wire was on it so it's hard to tell.