Why aren't rail pickups more widely used?

[J Bass Flats]

With never having to worry about the string and pole-pieces lining up, wouldn't they be a superior design?

[bassist4dalord]

Rail pickups as in blade style? My Squier Standard Precision V has two Jazz Bass blade-style pickups (as in no coils, just a straight "coil") and they're pretty weak. Albeit, these pickups are poorly-designed and I'm not entirely convinced there's actually anything amplifying the B-string..

That being said, these are my only experience with rail/blade/whatever you want to call them pickups, and it hasn't been good. I'm looking at single-coil replacements for these pickups, when money is more readily available.

[mmbongo]

I believe that's all that Bartolini, SGD, and Barden make.

[Darnell Jones]

Classic EMGs are also rails I believe. I also think it is a superior design also but gear is sold not by quality but mostly by fashion. People like seeing poles so successful businesses sell them what they want.

Pickup covers without holes also solve the problem of clicking if you keep the pickups close to the string but more people will take the clicking, or an inferior pickup placement, to avoid clicking than just using covers without holes.

[SGD Lutherie]

Yep, it's a better design.

Not only do you not have to worry about the strings lining up with the poles, you have have any number of strings that fit the length of the blades, and when you bend notes, you have less string pull as well, because it's distributed better.

All my pickups use blades. So do most EMGs, and many Barts (some use another method that is like a blade), and probably most of the soapbar type pickups.

As far as why its not done more, well that's probably because so many pickups are copies of Fender pickups, and except when they used Lace Sensors, they haven't changed their pickups much in the last 50 years.