Strat pickup position/resistance

[tubehead]

Please help me with positioning the pickups on a project strat. I have 3 G&L Legacy p'ups that multi meter at 7.32k, 7.29k and 6.70k. I am assuming the hotter pick up goes in the bridge, with the 6.7 at the neck? Also, are these ratings pretty normal for a vintage sound? Finally, do pickups have a tendency to lose their k 'strength' over time? I have a 10 year old Tele Texas Special neck p'up that registers 8.96 now but the new ones claim to be 9.5.

Thanks!

[TheDarxide]

yeah, the hotter ones go in the bridge, and i would have said they were pretty good vintage ratings. SD's vintage singles are around 6k

 

I wouldn't have thought a pickup could lose resistantance at all....

[tubehead]

THanks! THat makes sense with the length of the wires - the shorter wire is the lower resistance, ergo the neck.

[headless]

I just got through working on a G&L Legacy (it had a serial number that began with "CLF")

 

This was the respective resistances and positions:

 

Neck=7.15K

 

Middle=6.74K

 

Bridge=7.06K

 

Normally, I would have expected the higher resistance pickup to be in the bridge, I don't think they quality controlled it that precisely (there isn't that much difference between 7.15K and 7.06K)

 

It is important that you keep the reverse wound/reverse magnetic polarity pickup in the middle position, to allow for the # 2 & #4 switch positions to be humcancelling.

 

Yes, in my opinion, those resistance were chosen to reproduce a classic vinatge Strat sound.

 

The guitar I was working on had only a small bit of aluminium-foil (on the underside of the pickguard, beneath the controls) for shielding-no conductive paint or foil in the pickup/control cavities or foil under the pickguard around the pickups. It was a very noisy guitar.