software

I've been gearing up to upgrade the pickups on my MIM stratocaster, but I have learned in my research, that the bridges on these guitars are narrower than the traditional Fender string spacing, even narrower than American Standard strats. The E-to-E width is 2 1/16quot; while vintage Strat bridges space the strings at 2 7/32quot;. The stock pickups on a MIM Strat look like the poles are spaced closer together than on regular pickups. Now it seems this could cause problems (especially with the bridge pickup) when changing to pickups like SDs becuse the string/pole alignment will be way off on the the bridge pickup.

Kinman's pickups have narrower spacing on the bridge pickup, and he claims that because of this they will work properly with MIM Strats unlike other brands.

I know others have upgraded their MIM Strats, have you run into this issue?

Apparently, replacing the bridge on a MIM strat with a vintage bridge (like a Callahan) to get the 2 7/32quot; width would require filling the original screw holes with dowels and redrilling for the new spacing.

yeah i faced that on my MIM strat, ended up changing the pups to rails to cover it up.

Use a Rails type pup... HotRails, Cool Rails, Dimarzio X2N or if you want pole pieces, an Invader.

I have a MIJ Squier with a narrower spacing and Gibson pups line up perfectly...

Had the same problem with a pair of Van Zandt's that came with my MIM Strat (used). Didn't really seem to cause too much of a sound problem, except that I yanked 'em out later, but that was a preference thing. Found I really didn't have a use for single coils at the time.

I never had a problem with string spacing using SD classic stacks, on my MIM.

i think XSSIVE had a problem like this a couple months back, he might be able to help