2002 Squier Strat Pickup Construction

[Simon Barden]

I recently refurbished a fairly beaten-up 2002 Squier Affinity Strat for a friend and fitted some new pickups to it.

The old ones looked fairly standard from the top:


But underneath they looked quite different. Definitely not the standard 'ceramic magnet stuck to the bottom with steel pole pieces' style than you normally get on budget Strats, and not the Alnico magnet pole piece types found on standard Strats. Was this a very thin strip magnet embedded in the base of the bobbin?


So I got the hacksaw and knife out and decided to take a closer look. I removed all the windings, cut off the plastic base of the bobbin and stripped away the plastic from the bottom of one side of the bobbin. This is what I saw:


I've never come across this particular construction for a single coil pickup before.

There are six short steel slugs that extend halfway down the bobbin, whilst the bottom half of the bobbin is filled with a bar magnet installed end-on under the slugs.


It's quite an involved bobbin moulding.

I never heard this guitar play in anger (broken and rusted strings) but I did have a similar 2002 (20th Anniversary Squier) Strat a few years back and that sounded OK, but nothing special in the way that basic Squiers do, so I had no compunction about removing them and fitting some vintage-style Alnico V pole piece pickups and it now sounds fantastic and plays really well (it had a very good neck).

The pickups came from Amazon under the 'Alnicov' brand name, and cost about £32(AUD$64) for a set. The only thing I don't like about them are the slight greenish-tinged (to me anyway) and very shiny pickup covers. But they fitted in the existing covers so that wasn't a problem. Otherwise great low-powered 50's Strat sounds.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[fender3x]

It looks like sort of the same idea as a lipstick tube pickup, but with pole pieces and no tube. Or maybe the bar magnet style mini humbucker with pole pieces stuck on top. It would certainly work...but what possible advantage would it have?

[Simon Barden]

Maybe an attempt to make a ceramic magnet pickup sound more like an Alnico V pole-piece pickup.

The Burns Trisonic pickups had a coil around a bar magnet, so this is halfway there. Originally they were made with two bar magnets, one per 3 strings (just end to end so equivalent to a single magnet). The US patent for them indicates an intention to have split coils like a Precision bass or the G&L pickups - either two or three coils, and with two or more outputs for stereo or trieo(?) effects. They were also supposed to be very low impedance with impedance converting transformers. I imagine they realised the production costs of this would make the guitars far too expensive, but had already ordered a big stock of the smaller magnets, so went ahead and used them, despite a single magnet being easier.

[Rabbit]

As far as I can tell, it wasn't uncommon for manufacturer to just use what was at hand rather than spend more, or use whats available. Case in point the colour of the flatwork in the first zebra humbuckers.

[fender3x]

The US patent for them indicates an intention to have split coils like a Precision bass or the G&L pickups - either two or three coils, and with two or more outputs for stereo or trieo(?) effects.

A side-by-side split coil like that would be similar to the way DiMarzio Model J bass pickups are built.

It also occurs to me that if they built the pups as ceramic bar magnets with the ceramic bar showing from the top...who'd buy them? So someone around the table, just spitballing, said "What if we just stick some short pole pieces on top?"

They were also supposed to be very low impedance with impedance converting transformers. I imagine they realised the production costs of this would make the guitars far too expensive, but had already ordered a big stock of the smaller magnets, so went ahead and used them, despite a single magnet being easier.

That sounds like stuff that Gibson was doing with basses in the 1960's and 1970's. It may be that Fender decided they would prefer not to go bankrupt. Fortunately, Fender found lots of other ways to lose money... Remember the Performer series?

[Simon Barden]

I have vague recollections of seeing pictures, but I don’t think I ever saw a Perfomer in a music store.

[fender3x]

I have seen exactly one Performer series IRL. It was a bass. I went to a little hole in the wall guitar shop in Miami because I recognized the background in an eBay photo of a G&L ASAT bass, that I ended up buying.

Fender produced the performers at that tail end of the CBS era. Only a few hundred were produced, all MIJ. An MIA version was created designed but never sold.

[david bodycomb]

I used to have a Burns Bison years ago interesting to note about the pickups with Burns guitars you dont see them round much, i have an old set of singles from a Squier too probably similar era, and yes they have the rectangular magnet bar glued on unlike the one in your image Simon, however they are quite rusty but actually sounded quite good thats why i kept them, i may use one in the tele im building just to see what it sounds like.
Maybe the rust and ageing makes them better?

[fender3x]

Are these like the pickups that Brian May used?

[Simon Barden]

Are these like the pickups that Brian May used?

The Burns Trisonics were what Brian used in the red special.