software

Whats the difference for strat pick ups? What does it mean? Just that the pole pieces are staggered/higher in the middle of the pup? I'm a single coil nooob!!!!!

It's just the hieght of the poles. With staggerd pickups you get louder mids and slightly louder mids than highs. I like staggard for blues and flats for jazz and rock.

It's to to with fingerboard radii originally. Early guitars had quite a camber on them so the pole pieces were staggered to give an even volume across the strings ( string gauge also had a hand in it, as did the old wound 3rd). Nowadays the neck radius tends to be flatter so not as much need for the stagger. However there is a tonal difference between the 2, but there are more qualified people in this forum to explain that little beauty!!

I'm unfamiliar with the tonal differences, but I do know that you don't have quite as much freedom to adjust the pickup height with staggered pole pieces because the middle pieces will get too close to the strings before you can get the outer pole pieces as close as you might like. This obviously doesn't matter to everyone, as they prefer the tone when the pickup is a bit further from the strings. Just something to consider.

Although I can appreciate staggered pups, I like the flatties myself. Smoother sounding and they don't grab your pick when you dig in.

When I compared a set of staggered SSL-1's to a set of flat SSL-2's in the same Strat the staggered SSL-1's were brighter and had more space in the mids...more 3 dimensional.

To me, flat poles tend to make a single coil sound a little thicker and denser in the mids...and less bright and less 3 dimensional. Because the poles are even with the top of the bobbin, when you adjust the ht. of the flat poled pickup the bobbin ends up being closer to the underside of the strings than the bobbin in a raised polepiece pickup would be.....that could account for some of the difference in tone.

That's been my experience with Strat and Tele pickups anyway. Lew