Vintage stagger strat pickups with 12" radius neck?

Megii

Entirely hypothetical, but as per the title - bad idea, or doesn't it matter much?

richardhomer

Doesn’t matter much in my experience. I had a set of vintage stagger Seymour Duncan Alnico IIs in a Schecter that had a really flat board. It was my main gigging guitar and worked fine.

thegummy

I've thought about getting flat ones from an OCD perspective but when when trying to concentrate on string differences I don't hear any at all so just stick with the staggered.

I think if it made much of a difference Fender wouldn't sell them together as standard.

Megii

Thanks @richardhomer and @thegummy - as you may suspect, not entirely hypothetical, as I'm building a strat from parts at the mo, including a 12" radius neck. I've already got some flat pole pickups for this (inexpensive Vanson ones) but from time to time bargains do pop up in the classifieds, but with strat pickups, they're usually made with the vintage stagger on the poles. I'd prefer flat poles, all other things being equal, but if the vintage stagger is not a biggie, it bears consideration. On the other hand, maybe later I can always custom order my perfect spec strat pickups from Oil City or Mojo. But anyhow, cheers again.

StuartMac290

Actually, I found it did make a difference on a 10.5" radius board. I found the difference in level quite distracting and annoying sometimes on clean arpeggio parts.

thegummy

StuartMac290 said:

Actually, I found it did make a difference on a 10.5" radius board. I found the difference in level quite distracting and annoying sometimes on clean arpeggio parts.

Very surprised at this. Unless I've got to the point of auto compensating without knowing it. I was even measuring loudness on a daw.

Megii

StuartMac290 said:

Actually, I found it did make a difference on a 10.5" radius board. I found the difference in level quite distracting and annoying sometimes on clean arpeggio parts.

Fair enough @StuartMac290 , happy to hear a view from the other side of the coin, cheers.

OilCityPickups

As a pickup maker, the only reason to have vintage stagger pickups these days is for the authentic 'look' ... that is unless you intend to fit vintage spec strings to your instrument, and it's got a vintage narrow radius fingerboard. It does very little harm on a 12'' radius, but it does no real good. Flush pole or a 'radiused stagger' make more sense today ... 

Megii

TheGuitarWeasel said:

As a pickup maker, the only reason to have vintage stagger pickups these days is for the authentic 'look' ... that is unless you intend to fit vintage spec strings to your instrument, and it's got a vintage narrow radius fingerboard. It does very little harm on a 12'' radius, but it does no real good. Flush pole or a 'radiused stagger' make more sense today ... 

Cheers - I guess I'm not really into the whole authentic look thing anyhow, and in fact I prefer the look of level poles, that's just me. But for now I think I'll see what I think of the "economy" pickups I've already got, and then if I want to upgrade, I can go to someone like your good self, take advice, and get the perfect specs.

thegummy

TheGuitarWeasel said:

As a pickup maker, the only reason to have vintage stagger pickups these days is for the authentic 'look' ... that is unless you intend to fit vintage spec strings to your instrument, and it's got a vintage narrow radius fingerboard. It does very little harm on a 12'' radius, but it does no real good. Flush pole or a 'radiused stagger' make more sense today ... 

Don't think I'd purposely choose the vintage stagger, they just came stock on my guitar.

When I first saw staggered pole piece pickups I did think they looked very cool - not because of any authenticity or anything to do with guitars from the 50s, just because they look different to flat pickups really.

OilCityPickups

thegummy said:

TheGuitarWeasel said:

As a pickup maker, the only reason to have vintage stagger pickups these days is for the authentic 'look' ... that is unless you intend to fit vintage spec strings to your instrument, and it's got a vintage narrow radius fingerboard. It does very little harm on a 12'' radius, but it does no real good. Flush pole or a 'radiused stagger' make more sense today ... 

Don't think I'd purposely choose the vintage stagger, they just came stock on my guitar.

When I first saw staggered pole piece pickups I did think they looked very cool - not because of any authenticity or anything to do with guitars from the 50s, just because they look different to flat pickups really.

Have to admit there is a certain quirky 'cool' to staggers :-)
Fender went over to flush poles in the CBS days purely for cost cutting ... and staggers really only came back with the thirst for all things 'old and with mojo'. 

stickyfiddle

I forget which pickups it was (possibly BK mother mills?) but the staggered ones I had gave balance issues on the G& B strings

OilCityPickups

stickyfiddle said:

I forget which pickups it was (possibly BK mother mills?) but the staggered ones I had gave balance issues on the G& B strings

Not all staggers are the same, some are a little more extreme than others. 50s Fenders are very extreme, with the B pole being very low indeed. Below is from the StewMac site.

stickyfiddle

TheGuitarWeasel said:

stickyfiddle said:

I forget which pickups it was (possibly BK mother mills?) but the staggered ones I had gave balance issues on the G& B strings

Not all staggers are the same, some are a little more extreme than others. 50s Fenders are very extreme, with the B pole being very low indeed. Below is from the StewMac site.

Yeah, that’s how they were staggered (whatevee they were!). It wasn’t an issue for chords or gainy stuff, but made finger picked stuff sound weird if played through a clean/crunchy type of sound, which is my bread & butter

HAL9000

TheGuitarWeasel said:

stickyfiddle said:

I forget which pickups it was (possibly BK mother mills?) but the staggered ones I had gave balance issues on the G& B strings

Not all staggers are the same, some are a little more extreme than others. 50s Fenders are very extreme, with the B pole being very low indeed. Below is from the StewMac site.

As I understand things, the vintage stagger goes back to the times of having a wound G string. The trouble is that on a guitar with a plain G it will give balance issues.

mistercharlie

I hear the difference on my Strat, with CS69 pickups. It doesn’t bother me, but it’s definitely there.

Megii

Cheers for the further replies, interesting stuff. I'm sure it's no big deal, but I have decided to stick with level pole profile for my strats - probably makes it less likely I'll find a second hand bargain, but new custom-made prices don't seem all that high for strat pickups (most of them anyhow), so may as well get things exactly as I want them.