Fitting saddles to match pickups

[KX36]

Hi guys, another newbie question from someone foolish enough to buy things online and find things aren't quite right.

 

I have just noticed that the pickups I bought a few months ago and only just got round to fitting don't quite fit my 06 Epi Les Paul Standard . I'm at work now, so I don't have the guitar in front of me and may be the wrong way round, but I believe the pickups are standard spaced but the Epi bridge is F-spaced. It's too late to return the pickup now.

 

Would it be possible/realistic to get some blank saddles and file new notches into them to fit the pickups rather than spend a lot more money getting F-spaced pickups?

 

Thanks a lot,

Matt

[Sin]

I would sugest selling the ones you have and getting the correct one. But if you really wanna try to fit them in, some pictures would help.

[CajunBlues]

The f spaced bridge should make your E to E distance larger then pole to pole distance on the standard gibson spacing pickup...

 

Do you have a tremolo ? If not, that is weird to have an f spaced bridge... Anyway get a new bridge, it only makes sense to have Epi parts on an Epiphone... not Fender compatible parts...

 

Of course measure the hole distances on the bridge you have to find what is compatible... My guess is its metric, so it may not be the same as a USA part...

[KX36]

measuring up when I got home I got these results:

 

Both pickups are about 49mm, the strings at the bridge are about 50mm and the strings at the neck are about 47mm

 

This is the stock epiphone bridge and standard seymour duncan (not trembucker/F-spaced) SH-1

 

It probably doesn't make that much difference, the stock epi pickups seem to be 50 on the neck and 52 on the bridge.

[i Can Tuna Guitar]

First off, the bridge pickup is not F-spaced. Not all pickups come in separate bridge and neck spacing, and it's not a problem. In fact, many guitars, like the Gibson ES335, come with two identical pickups, where the string/polepiece alignment is slightly off in one of the pickup positions.

[KX36]

No, I know now it's not F-spaced, but at the time of posting I was at work and going by memory of what I had seen the day before.

 

I had expected when I bought a set of pickups labelled neck and bridge that there would be more difference between them than the neck being 7.77k and the bridge 8.33k, I expected the pole piece spacing to be different (something that was backed up by a lot of what I was reading on forums, but apparently people just make assumptions and write in forums as if it's fact without checking themselves or just blindly copy what other people say).

 

I know it's not really a problem, it still works, but it's not really ideal and I was panicking thinking I bought the wrong pickup, since Epiphone sizes on everything (tuners, pots, switches, bridges) are slightly different to Gibson.

[i Can Tuna Guitar]

.... apparently people just make assumptions and write in forums as if it's fact without checking themselves or just blindly copy what other people say.

And there lies one of the big problems with guitar forums.

 

I bought GFS Mean 90s and also expected different pole piece spacing. Not so. Just to be sure I didn't get two identical pickups, I checked the resistance, and the readings were different, as expected.

 

So, for the assumers out there, just because it says "bridge pickup" does not automatically mean that the spacing is such.

And it doesn't automatically mean that the resistance is higher. Always check specifications to be sure.