Placement of Pickups

Is it important to place pickups along the stringlength at nodes or other set ratios of the scale length?

If so how would a humbucker be set? Node over one coil (or t'other) or place the node between the coils?

I've only measured up one guitar...Neck pickup is 3/4 scale length from nut, bridge pickup is seemingly random.

Is this an issue?

I think that positioning the Bridge pick up closer to the bridge would give it more treble, and moving the neck pick up away from the bridge would do the reverse.
As for right and left alignment - I think the pick up should be symetrical to the total width of all six strings - remembering that the width varies (Tapered ) - widest near the bridge

Gotcha....

But what I was wondering was whether the nodes of the vibrating string needed to be considered as I think I read somewhere that a lot of 24 fret guitars had tonal issues attributed to pickup placement being...well lees than optimal nodally speaking.

I hoped someone might have some solid info on this.

Thanks.

I'm not sure what you mean by "node" but I will breakdown pickup placement for you in a little greater detail. Starting at the most basic... Pickups are placed in general ares... not neccessarily in super-specific areas. Neck pickups are placed farther away from the bridge for bass tones (as said before) because the strings eliptical pattern of vibration is larger, making the vibrational frequency larger and more bassy... the closer you get to the bridge the tighter the eliptical vibration pattern becomes and the tighter the frequency ranges become... making treble tones. The middle pickup is located in the dead center of the two... The only pickup that has a generally crucial placement is the bridge pickup. If you get the bridge pickup too close to the bridge the tone becomes more of a twang (telecaster style) and if it's way too close you won't get much sustain and you will get a deadened string. sound. The other pickups are generally placed in relationship to the bridge pickup. Slanting pickups... such as the s-s-s Stratocaster bridge pickups are slanted for tonal reason. This is to compensate for the larger string guages of the bass strings... The bridge pickup is placed in the "sweet spot"... a place where the tone is clean but just on the edge of being too twangy... The larger the string gauges the farther the "sweet spot" is away from the bridge. This compensation allows maximum bass tones and treble tones accross the entire pickup. the middle and neck pickups don't NEED to be slanted because they are far enough away from the bridge to get a clean tone without twang or deadening the strings. As for humbuckers... humbuckers generally follow the same rules, however, the bridge pickup is placed parallel to the bridge... therefore it must be placed slightly farther away from the bridge to allow for a natural tone. Other than that manufacturers don't use much science in the placement of pickups... I hope this information can be of some help to you!

I think by nodes he meant where the natural harmonics are along the strings.

Yes ...That's what I meant...but the general consensus seems to be that I'm worrying too much.

So thanks to all for helping & I'll basically do what others have suggested & measure existing setups.

I'm still working on getting a sound file up but all the recording programmes have their own special ambiguities!! :mad:

Throw in a possible computer glitch with sound out unobtainable & nothing gets done.

I've heard some of your clips (PRSPLAYA) and they're very good!

Why thank you! Most of my clips are done with a PRS Custom 22 or a Schecter C1 Blackjack into a PODxt into my computer. I can't wait to hear some clips of those sweet Tele's of yours! If you need any help with your recording setup feel free to PM me or post your questions in the Recording section.