Re: Screw polepieces vs slug polepieces - tonal different
I haven’t noticed any string balance issues. And if you angle the pickup farther away on the bass side, it takes care of those strings being too loud.
I’ve never found the screws on a humbucker all that effective. Seth Lover didn’t even want adjustable poles. Just a closed metal cover.
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If you look at both DMZ and Duncan single coil rails they do indeed have a slight curvature to the rails. (obviously made more for strats with lower radius)
I suppose they figure that any full size rail bucker will likely being going into a higher radius "metal" type guitar so they figure the curve isn't needed.
It's not that the bass strings are louder, as you said one can simply lower the bass side of the pickup for that, and most guys run the action higher on the bass side anyways.
The thing is that the inside strings (especially the G and D strings) are so much further from the rails if the rails are flat-style and the guitar's bridge radius is lower (like 12" or below).
If one could see the magnetic field of any pickup that's flat, or any that has the poles set even/flush,,,,,,,they would see an ever-so-slight bubbling-out of the field in the middle area of the pickup due to magnets always having more pull in the center and less on the edges. This fact somewhat negates the need to raise center poles or have a curve to the rails/blades.
My conclusion is that a flat rail actually creates a magnetic field with a radius in the 16-18" range.
In my Prestiges I have a Dimebucker in one and an X2N in the other. Those guitars are like a metric 17" radius and the flat-rails seem to match perfectly from string to string, unlike when I've had them in lower radius guitars where the center strings are always getting jipped a bit.
