Strat Single Coil pickup angle

Heath

why do they angle the bridge pickups on strats and tele's ....... any advantage to it , and any disadvantage to having the pickup straight.

andrewjbryson

I would imagine it has something to do with Attenuating the high / low frequencies being picked up.

The closer the pickup is fitted to the bridge - the more treble will be present

So if you angle it slightly , you are essentially cutting a some of the harshness

MikeM

Personally i think it is to get a little more warmth on the bass, as a single coil in the bridge sounds really thin, even if skewed.

AlanRatcliffe

Leo did it to get twangier treble strings and warmer bass strings from the bridge pickup. That's the sound he was after. Many pickup sets take this into account.

When I was using Fender Custom Shop '69s, which are very bright pickups, I found that reversing the bridge pickup angle worked very well to get rid of the icepick trebles from the bridge pickup. Looks cool too.

Heath

In Other Words a reversed angle ......... so instead of the pickup siting / like that you reverse it to look like this \ . that could be interesting visually . might confuse a few people . I like it

Heath

And what angle do they normally use?????

Bob-Dubery

Tailon. wrote: In Other Words a reversed angle ......... so instead of the pickup siting / like that you reverse it to look like this \ . that could be interesting visually . might confuse a few people . I like it

It would replicate one of the elements of Jimi Hendrix's sound that he got by virtue of playing a right-handed strat left-handed and thus "up side down".

AlanRatcliffe

Tailon. wrote: And what angle do they normally use?????

80 Degrees IIRC.

Bob Dubery wrote: It would replicate one of the elements of Jimi Hendrix's sound that he got by virtue of playing a right-handed strat left-handed and thus "up side down".

Yup. Reverse stagger the polepieces too and you are 90% of the way to the Hendrix sound. Reverse the headstock and you Have a "Voodoo" Strat.

Tailon. wrote: In Other Words a reversed angle ......... so instead of the pickup siting / like that you reverse it to look like this \ . that could be interesting visually .

Yeah, takes a little getting used to the look:

Michael-Oberholzer

Yeah Baby!

Here's mine http://freewheelzone.com/jimi_strat.htm