You are very perceptive! I like them that way on that guitar (that's a lie) Here's the big story:
When I was younger and absolutely dumb, I enjoyed throwing the Explorer over my shoulder and spinning it around. Great fun....until the strap anchor pulled right outta the bottom of the guitar one day, sending the Explorer head first into a dance floor at high velocity - snapping the headstock in two. The only thing holding it on was the strings in the last four posts, and the plastic covering on the headstock that contains the Gibson inlay.
That guitar sat in it's case for 2.5 years until I had the balls to fix it myself. First, I don't recommend you do this if you've never worked with wood before. I had a little bit of experience and thought I could easily glue a couple pieces of wood together, right? I did fix it, and I can personally guarantee it will NEVER break there again. I ran four dowels of hardwood through the break to be sure of that, the fit was so tight that glue was squirting out as I tapped them into the holes. That said, I'm not much of a craftsman sometimes, and I can see a little bow in the hockey-stick headstock....nobody else sees it, but it haunts me sometimes.
Then, with absolutely no experience whatsoever, thinking the value was already gone from this axe anyway....I refinished the guitar. This was an absolute mistake - in hindsight, I should have fixed the headstock and left it at that. I had no idea what I was in for, and I made tons of errors along the way. I stripped off the Gibson Custom Shop (candy-apple-red) paint job and got it down to bare wood. I tried staining the solid Korina (yes, this is a Korina Explorer) but, no colors would stick evenly...I ended up with a blotchy looking guitar. So, I ended up painting it instead. I have to say, the paint job came out pretty nice, but I may still add some more coats of clear to make it look even 'thicker' and wet.
Back to the pickup - About a year and a half later, I was done with the paint job and rewired the guitar, according to the notes I took when I disassembled it. I had no idea I put the pickup in upside down until much later. When I was hooking it up, the wire had somehow become too short to turn it around without lengthening it
so, I tried it this way and it sounded awesome, so I left it. I gotta say, the clean tones in that thing, on that pickup, sound like a hollowbody blues box. It's pretty amazing. I'll post a clip in here.