Metropoulos Forum

IS IT A MUST GET A F-SPACE FOR THE NECK P/U ON A 1-5/8" NECK?

if you want your poles on your pup to line up... Yup. neck width doesnt play a part in weather is f-spaced or not..

No. The field produced by a pickup is plenty wide enough that an F Spaced pickup isn't necessary. It's purely cosmetic...and makes the pickup winders more $$$.

Southbay Ampworks wrote:No. The field produced by a pickup is plenty wide enough that an F Spaced pickup isn't necessary. It's purely cosmetic...and makes the pickup winders more $$$.

+1

thanks guys. i am basically replacing the wolfgang pickups in my wolf and putting in dimarzio virtual paf hot in the bridge and virtual paf neck in the neck. not a fan of high output p/u'ps anymore. you lose articulation, detail and charcter with them. 9-10k in bridge is enough.

i hear ya. my darkburst is something like 8.2k

Southbay Ampworks wrote:No. The field produced by a pickup is plenty wide enough that an F Spaced pickup isn't necessary. It's purely cosmetic...and makes the pickup winders more $$$.

I hate winding F-Space. Charging more though. There's an idea!

I had a guy once send an e-mail tirade over the fact that the pickups I just built for him weren't the correct spacing (a fact we'd neglected to hammer out ahead of time). He hadn't even tried them out yet. I just asked "well, how do they sound"? He ordered 4 more.

Some folks claim dead spots when bending on one end or the other but for the most part it's not a big issue.

I would only recommend the wider f-spacing in the bridge position and standard spacing in the neck. Gibson sells the Les Paul Classics (496R/500T) this way.

You dont need an "F" spaced pickup in the neck position at all. Think about it.. if the spacing was significantly wider than a stock HB's spacing, the strings would be too close to the edges of the fretboard. It only an issue as you get close to the bridge (the bridge pickup), and even then, really only for the "E" strings. The "A/B" strings, and especially the "D/G" strings are pretty much in line, no matter which pickup spacing you use. There is even a line of thought that says if the "E" polepieces are slightly inboard (narrower) than the string spacing at the bridge, you actually GAIN signal when string bending, cause it pushes the strings closer to the poles at that point.
Honestly, its all bullshit. Get an "F" spaced pickup for the bridge if you feel better about it, and just a standard spaced pickup for the neck.
BTW, look at EVH's guitar... the poles are not lined up with the strings at all, especially the "E" strings. Pickup builders have a field day concerning players with this kind of thing. Its got some validities, but its not a critical issue.

+1 no f space needed on a Les Paul guitar. f space is for the bridge of a strat style guitar. and again as mentioned its not necessary.

But is it ok to put an F-spaced pickup in a standard gibson guitar with a standard gibson spaced bridge?

it won't explode or anything, but why would anybody want to?

they like the sound of single coils but like the shape/neck of a gibson

Herec wrote:they like the sound of single coils but like the shape/neck of a gibson

Dont understand your line of thinking here. What does an "F" spaced pickup have to do with sounding like a single coil pickup?? An "F" spaced pickup is is designed strictly to line up the polepieces with the strings on a guitar that has a wider string width at the bridge (Strat/Tele/Floyd Rose bridge). It doesnt sound like a single coil pickup, it sounds the same as whatever pickup it woulda been without the "F" space (PAF, Super Distortion, etc). The "F" designation stands for either Floyd or Fender, which have a wider spacing E to E than a Gibson bridge. ( But as 45auto said, it wont explode!! )

Putting a Fender single coil pickup in a gibson, is what I meant. I thought Fender spacing is what everyone meant by F spacing.

My bad.