Pickup Placement

[duosonic]

I'm trying to learn about pickup placement.  Is there some harmonic wisdom that Leo Fender came up with that acts as the basis for where pickups should be placed on a guitar?

I thought perhaps placing pickups in the octave positions might yield something.  The picture attached show roughly where the 24th, 36th and 48th frets would be if I extended the neck along the body.  The strange thing is that it doesn't seem to line up to a strat.  Hence why I'm trying to figure out if there are specific harmonic points that are better then others.

I'm trying to learn about this stuff and haven't been able to find much on the web or in books.  Any help is appreciated.

Thanks
Rob

 

[Cagey]

I'm trying to learn about pickup placement.  Is there some harmonic wisdom that Leo Fender came up with that acts as the basis for where pickups should be placed on a guitar?

No. There are such things as "nodes" and "anti-nodes" along the string where the travel distance of the string is wider or narrower, but they move all over the place depending on where you fret the string. So, the "perfect" pickup placement only works for a single note. In other words, no matter where you put the pickup, it's going to be wrong most of the time with respect to the greatest amplitude of the string vibration.

 

[line6man]

Is there some harmonic wisdom that Leo Fender came up with that acts as the basis for where pickups should be placed on a guitar?

The general consensus is that Leo was looking to make something that could be mass produced easily. There was no special application of advanced engineering, or brilliant calculations of physics, or divinely-gifted knowledge, as some would like to believe. Pickups are where they are because Leo probably thought they looked or sounded best where he chose to put them, and no one wants to break tradition.

You might find this link useful.
http://www.till.com/articles/PickupResponse/

 

[AutoBat]

You'll find that the neck pickup aligned to the 24th fret area (most strats & teles) lose the 5th harmonic due to placement (refer back to Cagey's nodes & anti-nodes).

 

[duosonic]

Thanks for the help guys.  That link was quite a read.  I may have to read it a few more times to get the full gist of it. 

I have experienced the missing harmonics syndrome before on strats and teles.  I usually just changed pickup selection for the song depending on the missing harmonics to get around the problem.  At least now I know why that was happening.

I guess i'll read some more and test what I've learned before starting the routing.