2002 Squier Strat Pickup Construction

[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?