Difficulty with 57/62 pickups pole height

inspectorvector

Hello everyone on this forum, 

this is my first post so sorry if this has been discussed before and my search didn't turn it up, but just wondering whether anyone might have some idea of how to deal with an issue i'm having.

A while ago I bought my current second guitar, which is a mighty mite strat with all-fender parts that the previous owner built. It's a really nice guitar - i've owned squiers, mex and usa fenders and this is as good as any, and the pickups have a lovely sound (they're a sometime post-98 set of fender 57/62s). 

The problem is the pole height. The poles for strings D and G are way too close to the strings and basically forces me to put the neck pup sunken so low it's level with the pickguard, which loses a lot of tone in the B and high E strings. Even still, when fretted beyond the 5th fret or so, the magnet interferes and creates an annoying harmonic-ish overtone that im finding intolerable. It's a real shame as if these weren't staggered so extremely i'd be very happy with them - their tone is great.

So my question is: can i sensibly lower the poles somehow without doing any damage? I've had my eye on a set of irongear texas locos (or maybe oil city new stonetones) and i'm wondering if it's more sensible to throw in the towel and replace them. Bit of a shame as they are great pickups, just with an awkward stagger.

Thanks for your help!

ICBM

If they're traditional-construction Fender-style pickups, no - not without a serious risk of breaking the coils. The wire is wound directly onto the magnets.

The problem is not only to do with the height of the G pole either - because it's physically bigger, that magnet is slightly more powerful than the others and even if it's pushed down (which you can do on plastic-bobbin pickups) it still remains louder.

The only real solution is to change them for pickups with the same spec but without that ridiculous stagger. Which was never necessary at all, really… it's just become "desirable" because it's associated with 50s and 60s Strats.

littlethoughts

I have the same pickups and don't have this issue - perhaps some unhappy combination of neck radius and bridge saddle height might also be at play.

normula1

I had a similar isuue due to a pretty flat neck radius and what I did was to demagnetise the G magnet slightly by using one of my son's "geomag" magnets. These are cylinders about an inch or so long with a strong magnet at each end.

Use the opposing pole (i.e. the one that tries to push away) to touch onto the G pole for a second or so

You have to be careful not to demagnetise the pole totally and if you do, you should be able to bring it back by swapping the geomag round so that the attracting pole is now on the G magnet

inspectorvector

ha, neat idea...I'd not like to chance it with my unsteady hands though, not to mention the problem occurs over all 3 pickups, so 6 magnets. I think the neck radius is the source of the incompatability for me too - very flat indeed. Oh well. I think my safest bet will be to pick between the oil city and irongears, and sell the 57/62s on to find a home in a more suited instrument.

Thanks for all your info!