String to pickup alignment OCD

[MoJo 547]

I must admit to being a little guilty of this myself, but an acquaintance of mine recently ordered a Yamaha BB424X on the strength of the reviews he'd read and his needs at the time. When it arrived, the strings didn't align exactly between the pickup pole pieces. It put him off so much that he sent it back. Having owned a number of BB414's and still currently own one, I sent him a photo of mine (see below), which clearly shows the same misalignment and told it was nothing to be worried about as I'd not noticed any volume drop or tonal difference across the strings. He replied that he'd looked at photos of others online and they are nearly all the same and it put him right off.

Is anyone else like this?

[attachment=233972:20161206_214544.jpg]

[MoonBassAlpha 340]

Stick a piece of black Gaffa tape over the pickups. Out of sight, out of (OCD) mind.

[LewisK1975 251]

My alignment OCD only kicks in if the strings aren't equidistant and centered on the neck. Pole piece alignment doesn't bother me unless it adversely affects the individual string volumes...YMMV!

[stingrayPete1977 3,631]

I've never owned a bass with the same nut width to bridge saddles width, there can only be one pickup position where it can line up to every string, all MM,P,J neck,J bridge pickups would need altering for different models of the same bass, I've got the grooved saddles on my Jazz V, you can't quite get any of it to line up in any formation, that would proper mess with his ocd!

[Dan Dare 1,662]

Pointless to get worked up about this. Magnetic fields do not run in a straight line vertically from the pole piece. They're more doughnut shaped. As long as the string is there or thereabouts over the pole pieces, it will be fine

[stu_g 99]

My bb614 is the same,but sounds fine so hasn't really bothered me.

[BigAlonBass 19]

Personally, if I saw that in a shop, I'd walk straight on to the next Bass. It smacks to me of indifferent design(ers), and I would naturally wonder what was simply 'thrown together' anywhere else on the Bass. Not OCD, just that "things were made better when I were a lad!"

[RickyV 2]

My VM jazz is all over the place with string alignment but plays great so I dont care and I am pretty sure that nobody else will notice either.

[Cato 2,449]

I think the BB1024's come with rail pickups.

Problem solved.

[MoJo 547]

Compare with one of my other BB414's and my Ibanez GSR200. I'm sure he'd be happier with these

[url="https://goo.gl/photos/9xJ2cAsL6c2HLuQ29"]https://goo.gl/photos/9xJ2cAsL6c2HLuQ29[/url]

[lowdown 850]

This is why EMG's and Bart's were invented.
To cater for Musicians who suffer with OCD.