# Confused about pole-spacing on pickups...



## Greg Ellis (Oct 1, 2007)

I measured the E to E distance on my SG and came up with these dimensions:

50mm at the bridge pickup
47mm at the neck pickup

It's clear to me that I don't need an "F-spaced" pickup at the bridge - this is a hard-tail Gibson-style guitar, so I wasn't expecting that I would.

What threw me for a bit of a loop was how narrow the spacing is at the neck.

Is it common practice to use 50mm pickups in both positions?

I see that different manufacturers list different dimensions:

Seymour Duncan seems to use 49mm for standard and 52.6mm for F-spaced
Dimarzio shows imperial measurements - 1 29/32" (48.4mm) for standard and 2" (50.8mm) for F-spaced

I guess my question is - does this stuff actually matter?

It seems like no matter what I choose, I'm not going to get a perfect alignment with the strings.

e.g. 49mm is too narrow for my bridge and too wide for my neck.

Are there any important guiding principles here? e.g. pickups "outside" the strings is ok, but strings "outside" the pickups is not?

Curious...


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## TonyD (Jan 11, 2010)

to a point, it doesn't matter if the slugs or screws are slightly out of alignment to the strings. It matters less on the low strings than the high but unless you're way out, the magnetic field over the entire pickup will respond to string vibration just fine. There is a large aesthetic factor for some players however. Traditional Gibson measurements have been 49.2mm for the neck and 50mm for the bridge.


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## LowWatt (Jun 27, 2007)

I remember JS Moore saying here before that the pole spacing differences between Gibson and Fender spacing is more about looks than function.


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## J S Moore (Feb 18, 2006)

The pole pieces do not have to sit exactly under the strings. The magnetic field extends about 1 cm from them so unless you are outside of that there won't be a problem.


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

J S Moore said:


> The pole pieces do not have to sit exactly under the strings. The magnetic field extends about 1 cm from them so unless you are outside of that there won't be a problem.


^^I'd say he has some experience to know this.

I've found it to be true on my own guitars as well.
But I'm nto the expert.


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## SkunkWorks (Apr 12, 2007)

Greg, Gibson uses only neck spacings on many of their pickups that they install in both the neck and bridge positions, like the '57 Classic & Plus version and all the Burstbuckers. It doesn't make any difference, but if you're buying aftermarket covers you need to get the right ones for your pickups because Gibson also makes true bridge spaced poles on some pickups like the 498T.


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