String/ Pickup Alignment?

[Mike E]

Hi all
I changed strings on my MIM Strat and noticed (for thr first time)that the high e string is not over the pickup pole. Is this an issue or how they are designed?
Thanks
Mike

[Billy]

Shouldn’t make any difference to how your guitar sounds, the magnetic field from the pole piece radiates in a V shape, so imho your strings will will still vibrate inside the magnetic field from each pole.
Your guitars bridge saddles look like they are at a slight slant and your needing some shorter grub screws for the B and E saddles.

..Billy..

[sunjamr]

I agree with Billy, but there’s definitely something strange going on there. It looks like your neck pickup is a different kind of pickup from the other two. My son has a MIM Strat, and it’s not like that. I’d say the Mexicans got into the tequila the night before they made that one. You could of course swap out that pickup for one of the bar type pickups. But why bother if it sounds OK.

Sunjamr Steve

[Billy]

I’ve been mulling this over seeing as I’m having another so far sleepless night, for some reason my eye keeps being drawn tho the last fret marker and the string spacing across the fret board, the string spacings seen to look a tad out to me, could just be the angle the pic was taken at. Do you know off hand what the fretboard radius Is?, I’m wondering now if the radius of bridge to fretboard is a little off..
Not sure I can see what Steve is saying about the neck pickup, I’m sure pickups come in two different pole width sizes, 50 and 52mm I think, ideally they should be laid out (from the bridge) 52, 52, 50 but they never are, you either get 3 50’s or 3 52′ pole spacings, I’m guessing that those are 52’s because I know that MiM bridge saddles are 52mm … sorry to ramble on, as I said I’m having a sleepless night and would rather my mind was asking about guitars other than if penguins have knees…

..Billy..

[snakechisler]

The standard of MIM strats has gone up quite considerably over the last few years

As has the squires

Its not that far out that it should affect the sound and that’s your call and you can adjust the pickup hight to compensate.

Looking at my strat the pickups themselves look like there slightly longer than they should be, could be due to a number of factors when you look at yours there’s a drift, like I said I don’t think it will affect the sound but I can see how it would bug you.

Added a pic of mine for context

[Billy]

There is quite a lot of variation, here is my CV 60’s string/ pickup alignment..

..Billy..

[Mike E]

Thanks for your input guys. It just seems that it should like up like the photo Billy shared. The strings are uniform to the edges of the fret board the saddle is not a entire pole piece off. It seems to sound good, its my first and only electric guitar.
The spacing on new pickups and or covers would be the same i assume?
As Snake pointed out it shouldn’t..but does bug me now that i have noticed.

[Billy]

Mike E wrote:

Thanks for your input guys. It just seems that it should like up like the photo Billy shared. The strings are uniform to the edges of the fret board the saddle is not a entire pole piece off. It seems to sound good, its my first and only electric guitar.
The spacing on new pickups and or covers would be the same i assume?
As Snake pointed out it shouldn’t..but does bug me now that i have noticed.

Tbh Mike I would sort out the saddles 1st so that they are level on each grub screw then look at the string radius to make sure its the Same as the fret board, that will probably set your strings a tad closer to the pole centres, but it’s not a big deal if they don’t match perfectly, very few do imho…. I’m thinking the MiM strat is a 9.5 fretboard radius?.

..Billy..

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