Neck half of humbucker tilts towards pickgard

Re: Neck half of humbucker tilts towards pickgard

All the pics I'm seeing online show it slightly tilted to the neck, so this must be the way they designed it. I can't imagine it making that much of a difference given how slight it is, I don't see the rationale for doing this unless for aesthetics. The tilted humbucker being a feature of Van Halen's frankenstrat, which was done I believe because it was lifted out of a Gibson and the string spacing was different vs a strat with a Floyd Rose (or whatever he had before the Floyd Rose was released). As long as the strings line up with the pole pieces you're good.

Edit: Think I completely misunderstood your question, thought the pickup was angled forward. Ignore me.
 
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Re: Neck half of humbucker tilts towards pickgard

You can always put foam underneath it to level the pickup. I don't know if you'd hear a difference, though.
 
Re: Neck half of humbucker tilts towards pickgard

Sometimes this is related to the way the springs sit on the pickguard. Rotating the springs 180 degree, or pushing them to one side by even 1mm can make a difference. Of course you need to have the pickguard out of the guitar to do such a tweak.
 
Re: Neck half of humbucker tilts towards pickgard

Depends on how much of a tilt. I have seen several with direct mount humbuckers in particular then were badly out of alignment with the strings and it was defiantly affecting tone in a big way. Have had several of the very early Washburn USA MG guitars before they went to the inserts where the screws were not straight in the wood. This cocked the bridge pickup enough to really hurt the tone. I had to plug the holes and redrill them straight to fix the issue.
 
Re: Neck half of humbucker tilts towards pickgard

BTW, the foam I use is the foam SD uses in their pickup boxes.
 
Re: Neck half of humbucker tilts towards pickgard

Pickup foam is also quite good for silencing noisy Strat springs.
 
Re: Neck half of humbucker tilts towards pickgard

I actually bend the screws a bit to tilt the pickups in all my guitars. Been doing it since 1970. Not much, just a little will fix this.
Steven Buffington
 
Re: Neck half of humbucker tilts towards pickgard

I actually bend the screws a bit to tilt the pickups in all my guitars. Been doing it since 1970. Not much, just a little will fix this.
Steven Buffington

Surgical tubing and foam make those methods obsolete
 
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