Good Pickups For Narrow String Spacing

[verhoevenc]

Hey, I'm looking for humbuckers that will have their pole pieces spaced quite narrow. My string spacing at the bridge is JSUT over 2 inches, and therefore if I put a normal spaced humbucker in there the pole pieces aren't gunnab e in the right place and not only will it not loko good, but it won't pick up as well. I've looked into the blade style humbuckers, but ahve found only two, one from dimarzio, one from seymour duncan, and both are these massive output ones...

Any suggestions owul dhelp.

Chris

[crafty]

Any Gibson-spaced humbucker will look and sound fine with a little over 2 inch spacing at the bridge. Most humbuckers are spaced at 1 15/16.

[GregP]

I agree totally, and will add 2 other things:

1. If you're particularly picky, you can use "rails" style pickups, Lace sensors, Carvin, or other types that don't use typical 6-pole spacing.

2. Exact alignment of the polepieces isn't really necessary. Even F-spacing I'm not really convinced is strictly necessary. A magnetic field is pretty wide, and being out by a fraction of an inch will still put you well within the usable magnetic field of the pickup.

Greg

[radrobgray]

or you could get emg style covers or gibson style covers without the holes and just put em on any pup.

[GregP]

I think his concern was with the magnetic field, not the cosmetics. EMG and no-hole style covers only affect the magnetic field very minimally. Despite what your eyes may tell you and your natural intution dictates, they won't "blend" the individual magnetic fields into one massive one.

But, as I already believe, not having the strings perfectly aligned is a smaller issue that some people realize.

[andaliteuk]

you could try EMG pickups?? failing that try blade pickups, what is the matter with them being high output? im sure u could find a way to drop the output if you want, a limiting resistor or something 2 that effect.

[Robert_the_damned]

I've been doing a lot of research into pickup magnetic fields and trust me you don't really need the poles to be exactly in line with the pickup. Its purely cosmetic unless its for screw poles in which case it can affect the ease of balancing the string levels.

but as Crafty has said a standard neck humbucker is spaced at 1 15/16 which is so close it shouldn't even be noticable because it'll only be out by 1/32 of an inch on each outer pole piece and less than that for the poles in the middle. in fact thats a hell of a lot better than many production guitars!

Robert