Fingerboard radius and its relevance to pickup polepiece stagger

jaymenon

With some radius gauges, I made a hand-drawn diagram...

[Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/vCfWNVP.jpg)

Black: 7.25”

Green: 9.5”

Red: 12”

Black: 16”

Towards the edges of the fingerboard:
There is some difference between the 7.25 and 9.5 radii.

Less difference between 9.5” and 12”
Even less difference between 12 and 16”

7.25” compared with 9.5”
The 1st and 6th strings are 1mm lower

Same difference between 9.5mm and 16mm

No significant difference between 12 and 16mm radii

This minimises the effect of fingerboard radius on polepiece stagger - particularly if one is placing Strat pickups far away from the strings (say 5mm away)

It would therefore appear that the louder unwound (plain) modern 3rd string is more relevant (than fingerboard radii) to polepiece stagger and relative string volumes...

What do you think...?

Sassafras

I prefer not to think about it.

jaymenon

I have a Stratocaster with a 16 inch radius neck. Recently acquired a lovely set of single coil pickups with very slightly staggered polepieces.  Given the time and effort  involved in installing the pickups, I like to think about it beforehand. If I know full well  beforehand, that there will be inter-string volume imbalance, I’d rather not put in the effort...

Funkfingers

It baffles me why people who choose Fender guitars with a modern shallow or compound fingerboard radius insist on pickups with a polepiece length “stagger” pattern associated with the vintage 7.25” radius and medium gauge strings with a wound G. (Listen with your eyes, perhaps?)

FWIIW, the polepiece length radius pattern employed on Seymour Duncan Stack pickups for Stratocaster goes perfectly with old MIJ Charvel Model series shred sticks. IMO, they should offer it on their single coil pickups.

jaymenon

Personally, I am not at all insisting on a staggered set of polepieces.

The set of pickups I already have just so happens to be staggered with a significantly elevated 4th pole and a mildly elevated 3rd.  Ideally, I would want to drop the 3rd pole very slightly -  apparently that’s safer than the first and sixth poles, but I’m not going to risk damaging the pickup.

Alegree

In my opinion the stagger imparts a tonal quality irrespective of radius. Even with a flat board, it'll sound more vintage accurate using pickups with the vintage stagger. They're not staggered in an arch because there was some tonal compensation going on in the design of it too.

Henrytwang

Alegree said:

In my opinion the stagger imparts a tonal quality irrespective of radius. Even with a flat board, it'll sound more vintage accurate using pickups with the vintage stagger. They're not staggered in an arch because there was some tonal compensation going on in the design of it too.

Makes sense to me.

ICBM

jaymenon said:

What do you think...?

That stagger is irrelevant and unnecessary - flat-pole pickups sound fine, even with a 7.25" radius. The only compensation needed at all is possibly a little for the wound strings, so the A and D might benefit from being a touch higher, but that's all.

In fact, with a plain G you actively *don't* want a stagger, with the G highest. The G is always clangy on a vintage Strat because of this.

But I would listen for any problems before assuming they need adjusting, anyway - especially with any kind of overdriven sound it's unlikely to be noticeable.

FelineGuitars

On my own personal use guitars I do prefer a flat magnet profile with the magnets not sticking out far from the top of the covers as i'm prone to catching my pick or fingers on ones with very raised poles.

I favour flat profile boards of either 12" or flatter if a compound radius like on a Charvel so the flat magnet profile is well matched

ICBM

FelineGuitars said:

On my own personal use guitars I do prefer a flat magnet profile with the magnets not sticking out far from the top of the covers as i'm prone to catching my pick or fingers on ones with very raised poles.

Me too - I always found I broke my fingernails on raised poles, sometimes even if they were flat but not truly flush to the cover, although a high G was by far the worst. But I recently discovered that the DiMarzio Area 61 is fine, even though it has raised A and D poles - they're extremely bevelled, and that takes away the sharp edge that (it turns out) was the real problem.

TheBigDipper

My 73 Strat with 7.25” radius neck has always had pickups with flat pole pieces. I bought it in 79, so I don't know what was on it when new. The bridge pup is a DiMarzio, I think (black plastic bobbin) and the others have grey cardboard bobbins. 

I don't worry about the lack of stagger because it sounds great as it is. 

OilCityPickups

ICBM said:

jaymenon said:

What do you think...?

That stagger is irrelevant and unnecessary - flat-pole pickups sound fine, even with a 7.25" radius. The only compensation needed at all is possibly a little for the wound strings, so the A and D might benefit from being a touch higher, but that's all.

In fact, with a plain G you actively *don't* want a stagger, with the G highest. The G is always clangy on a vintage Strat because of this.

But I would listen for any problems before assuming they need adjusting, anyway - especially with any kind of overdriven sound it's unlikely to be noticeable.

Simply this ... 

thegummy

Alegree said:

In my opinion the stagger imparts a tonal quality irrespective of radius. Even with a flat board, it'll sound more vintage accurate using pickups with the vintage stagger. They're not staggered in an arch because there was some tonal compensation going on in the design of it too.

If you're playing full 5 or 6 string chords, the vintage stagger will make them sound different because whichever note is being played on the G string will be louder than the others so that part of the chord will be emphasised.

It's musically arbitrary though - different chord shapes will place different notes on that string. So it's not like that stagger will make all chords more thirdy or more octavey or whatever, it'll almost randomly emphasise different parts of the chords you play depending on the shape you use.

For single note playing I hate the stagger. My Strat came with staggered pole pieces (at first I actually thought they looked so cool compared to the flat ones I had seen before, maybe this is the real appeal?) and I'd be playing just at the point where the amp stays clean on other strings then as soon as I go up to the G string it's distorted instead of clean. That's surely never desirable to have that much difference between strings.

You could maybe learn to use that and only ever go up to the G when actively wanting it to be more distorted. But I don't think many people already play like that, I'd much rather be able to go up and down the strings to reach notes without worrying about it changing so drastically in sound.

thegummy

jaymenon said:

Personally, I am not at all insisting on a staggered set of polepieces.

The set of pickups I already have just so happens to be staggered with a significantly elevated 4th pole and a mildly elevated 3rd.  Ideally, I would want to drop the 3rd pole very slightly -  apparently that’s safer than the first and sixth poles, but I’m not going to risk damaging the pickup.

I wanted to flatten mine (see above) so I made a thread on here but there weren't many replies at first. I then found a Youtube video where a guy does it to the exact pickups I have (Fat 50s) and it works fine so I went ahead and did it.

By the time I had done that I looked back on the forum and there were a few replies saying that pickups where the wire is wound directly on to the poles - which includes mine - it's very dangerous to do it and it can ruin them. But it was too late and, thank God, I didn't do any damage so now I am much happier with flat pole pieces.

Just to note: I was either going to flatten them or buy brand new ones with flat pole pieces; keeping the stagger wasn't an option. So the gamble was really risking having to get new ones and not being able to sell the old ones if they broke vs. not having to buy new ones at all. So I had quite a lot to win and not too much to lose. But if keeping yours as they are is an option for you then the risk is a lot higher for you so you might not want to touch them.