Strings over pickup pole pieces

[pluto]

Have you guys ever noticed that strings on Anderson guitars are not perfectly centered over the individual neck pickup pole pieces (especially the low e)? I've owned five Andersons and I've seen a lot of them at the store and on websites, and I've always wondered why that is since I thought conventional thinking was that for ultimate tone, the strings should be centered over the individual pickup pole pieces. BTW-this is not a knock on Anderson guitars as all my Andersons sound great regardless of the positioning of the strings over the pickup.

[Stan Malinowski]

I never noticed it until you pointed it out! On the other hand I have noticed this before with "strat" type guitars which have a humbucker in the bridge. I believe Seymour Duncan actaully has versions of their humbuckers which have different pole spacing for trem equipped guitars (Trembucker models).

[pluto]

I just noticed it because when I was a kid, my guitar teacher gave me tips on what to look for in a guitar (back then, in the early 80's, there were loads of junk, ie., Cort, Hondo, Memphis, etc., not like these days where you can buy a great cheap guitar!). One of the things he told me was to make sure the strings were centered over the pole pieces-so I always watched out for that. In the end, I guess it doesn't matter-I've yet to play an Anderson that sounded bad!

[LeonC]

The fact that they don't all line up perfectly is not noticable to me from a 'sound' persepctive. FWIW, one of the things I really like about TA's pups vis a vis others is that the pole pieces are wider--they cover more ground and as a result, they are noticably better than more traditional designs in terms of minimizing dropouts when you bend the strings, for example. This was by design, I'm sure.

I recently built a Warmoth strat and tried Suhr pickups (V60LPs). Sounded pretty good...but boy, the volume drops when you bent strings was quite noticable and frustrating. Just pulled them out and put in some TA S1s. Big difference. No more dropouts. Sound a bit warmer too. (Thanks for the tip Tom!)

[tom]

so you got the SN's? i've always has a soft spot for those, but we don't sell many of them. they look so un vintage. if you exclude the VA's and TV's, all our pickups have a very wide and soft magnetic field, which makes the alignment very un critical. with smaller alnico pole pieces the field is much more focused, and needs to be better aligned.

[LeonC]

Hey Tom, yep, put them in on Saturday and was quite impressed with the improvement: smoother and a bit warmer sounding. As you said...similar to the Cobra s/c sound. Really appreciate that wider pole pieces too.

I know some guys value the "vintage" thing so highly and knock pups like this because they don't have "the vintage look"...but when it comes to pickups, listening (done with the ears ;)) is just WAY more important than looking (done with the eyes). And these pups just sound better.