Not offensive at all Bob, the truth may always be revealed! I’m glad you shared your sobering view because what you say sounds very plausible to me. Perhaps the following needs another thread but I had similar thoughts about the slanted pickup with regard to the alignment of the pole pieces with the strings and I can fully agree with you about the reason for the slant of the Mosrite Neck Pickup.Bob Shade wrote:Hey guys! Some guys may not want to hear this but after building these guitars by hand myself, you get to notice things that you would not notice otherwise. I have drilled enough of the solid brass rockers for Hallmark guitars to know that it is nearly impossible to make a perfectly straight line of holes all the way across the rocker even with my heavy duty floor stand drill press and a machine vice. One or two holes always seems to be a tiny bit off or not just perfect. If we had modern machinery like a milling machine this would not be a problem, but how many luthiers have a milling machine laying around?
So what do you do? Throw out a batch of rockers you just took all that time to be drilled out after having paid good money to have them cast? NO!!!....you may laugh but.........have the holes a bit off in your original pattern so it will be forced to come out a bit off to begin with and tell people it is now compensated!
We all know Semie would not throw ANYTHING away, he could not AFFORD to. From the re-made Guild vibramutes used on the 63's with the Guild name simply ground off, to misplaced fret markers drilled out and filled with dust and glue, to bridges mounted in the wrong place and left that way to sell, the list goes on. In those days you were lucky to find the money to eat with if you were a full time small shop luthier.
Another example of Semies creative salesmanship was the slanted neck pickup. On a Mosrite. Semie stated that it balanced the tone. Rubbish. From a builders standpoint, you would have had to make two different pickup covers made for the strings to be aligned with the polepiece screws if the neck pickup were horizontal at the neck, and the same at the bridge. This is because the strings width is different at the bridge than it is at the fingerboard due to the nut being much smaller in width than the bridge. Right? So how do you get the polepiece screws to be in perfect alignment at the neck when you are using the same pickup as at the bridge? Tilt one. Presto! You now have the "All New Balanced Tone Neck Pickup"
Here is another example, Semie claimed the 80's pickups were self sheilding because there was a piece of aluminum foil on the bottom of the pickup. Not true, the pickup would have to have been completely wrapped in copper foil and a ground wire soldered to it for the pickups to be completely shielded. My theory is the aluminum foil was cheap and made the pickup have a better presentation when the foil was on the bottom of the brown goop squirted in the pickup that appeared to be construction adheasive you buy in a tube at Home Depo.
And this is not just for Mosrite but Fender and Gibson as well. If Gibson made a gutar (Les Paul for example, and I have seen a few of these) that the bridge was mounted in the wrong place.......well you guessed it, it got a plate put over the holes that said in nice pretty letters " Custom Made" then the holes were re-drilled in the desired position. And it was sent off to a dealer.
So to answer the original question...in my best opinion......I have to agree with Terry....Bill Gruggett agrees with this too...the quote un-quote compensated holes in the rocker do nothing. The term compensated was used as a sales pitch for a tailpiece that was nearly impossible to drill perfectly straight so another pattern was used. Does this make these any less desirable? Not for me! I like hand built well made guitars that have a story.
And to answer the next question, why did they make the die cast in the same version? What would YOU tell people who bought your guitars for the last 3 years? Those were not made right?
I hope this is not offensive to anyone, but I had to comment.
Bob Shade
(see also my post: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=820&p=7107&hilit=slanted+pups#p7107 )
However, in the case of Leo Fender’s slanted pup on the Stratocaster for example, it has to be a different story since the slanted pup is the one closest to the bridge where the strings are spaced widest making alignment even the poorest of all the three (single coil) pickups! Moreover the slant is in the opposite direction to the Mosrite’s slant and this is where I have to agree with what Aaron (oipunkguy) had to say about it:
oipunkguy wrote:Hey Veenture,
the only reason for a slanted pickup is tone. a strat guitar is a perfect example. if you flip through the different tones on the pickups, the tone has a more treble bite the closer you get to the bridge, and bassier the closer you get to the neck. slanting a pickup (in the case of a stratocaster) would give more treble on your higher strings, G,B,high E. the reverse is also true, that in the case of a mosrite ventures model, a slanted neck pickup would have a fuller bassier tone on the high notes.
of course it does look cool too...hope this helps, cheers!
)on these two Mosrite features and so helping to clear up some of the questions in our minds relating to them 
