Single Coils - Staggered vs Flat Pole Piece

6L6C

6L6C

Power User
When I say staggered, referring to a vintage staggered.
Mainly interested in the opinions of people who took their single pickups and flattened the pole pieces.
Did you like it? Change it back to staggered? Or did you stagger it to the radius of your neck
 
6L6C said:
took their single pickups and flattened the pole pieces.
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Be careful doing that. You can accidentally break the winding wire, which basically means getting the pickup replaced or rewound, or, end up with a pole that is lose and slips, changes its height and then you've defeated yourself. Way back "in the day" I would adjust mine, but the pickups were potted so there was a little wax that held the pole-piece in place, now days I'd just order the pickup in whichever configuration I wanted.

Flattened pole pieces are good if you have a modern radius neck (AKA "fast"). Staggered are going to give you unbalanced string output, but that's the accepted sound of traditional Strat pickups with an unwound G.
 
I like Strats, I've got Fender and Suhr, but I always thought stagger versus flat was for the 'Cork sniffers'
 
unix-guy said:
Why? Can you not tell the difference when you adjust pickup height? This is essentially the same thing... The pole pieces are closer or further away from the strings.
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Just set the flat pups slightly higher. I'm more focused on playing these days to notice these things
 
I found it interesting that The Edge, who is a self confessed princess who can feel a pea underneath a stack of matresses when it comes to musical gear, wanted the poles of his Fat 50's pickups on his signature guitar flattened. It would appear that he doesn't like staggered. Personally though I can't tell the difference if my life depended on it. I lack the Golden Ears of the Gods.
 
SHEPPARD said:
I doubt anyone here could tell the difference in a blind test.
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As is with most guitar related things: Vintage amps, pickups, strings, tubes, cables, woods. I'd wager if I made a thread about having bought a new customshop Fender and actually used a squier in an audio sample, nobody would ever know. People pretend to hear things, imagination is a powerful thing
 
There is often a noticeable drop in volume between a plain G and B on vintage stagger that is not apparent on a flat set.
I still like a staggered set partly for the look but a set with a lower G than D is better for balance . I have a 54 stagger on my strat .
 
Both don't work for me. On the flat ones both E strings are too loud. On the staggered pickups the G is much too loud. Usually I heat the pickup with a fan to drop the magnet from the G string.
 
When I built my 2nd Warmouth superstrat, I wanted to get a Surfy tone from my middle and neck pickup. So I got SD Surf Antiquities. They had a vintage stagger and I didn't know any better. Later in life, I realized that staggers were totally inappropriate for my Warmouth compound radius neck. I bought a set of flats for 1/4 the price and have been riding the waves ever since.
 
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