Strats Of The 60s

Having analysed the pickups from one of Jimi Hendrix’s Strats, Roger Mayer talks about what made this never-bettered design so good…

 

It’s early 1967 and the psychedelic sound of Purple Haze is blasting through the airwaves. Jimi Hendrix has just recruited his “secret weapon”, Roger Mayer, a British government scientist and acoustical analysis expert, who’s just finished scrutinising the pickups from one of his Stratocaster guitars.

“Jimi, I’ve run the tests on the pickups,” says Roger, “and Leo got it right first time; there is no advantage to be gained by deviating from a standard Fender pickup.”

Some 50 years later, Guitarist is sat with Roger in the lounge of his Greater London home, and it appears that the Stratocaster pickup has indeed required very little in the way of change over the last half a century. “There are other variables that would be much more advantageous than altering the pickup itself, such as moving it relative to the strings and changing the strings themselves,” advises Roger. “There’s an optimum position and it’s not moving the pickup as close to the strings as possible, because if it’s too close it’ll introduce what’s known as a false magnetic bridge. The actual magnetism of the pickup polepieces creates a magnetic bridge and will pull the string out of tune.”