67 Flying V humbucket string spacing issue

petero

Hi. I am in the process of building from scratch a 67 Flying V, a first time for me and I think I have made an error in my choice of humbuckers. Not being sure about the string spacing I bought a set of Seymour Duncan vintage blues humbuckers which are 49mm string spacing. I intend to put on a Nashville T.O.M. bridge and vibrola trem. These I believe have a string spacing of about 51mm, (might be wrong here) hence my issue. So will these humbuckers be ok or what are the correct type for this model. Are there any alternative make of pickup that will do. Thanks

SteveRobinson

They'll be absolutely fine. In 1967 all Gibson humbuckers had 49.2mm spacing. 

petero

Thanks very much. So it would be ok if the outer poles are not exactly in line with both e strings albeit only about 1 mm

SteveRobinson

It will cause no problem whatsoever.

petero

Thank you much appreciated

ICBM

It only makes any difference if the strings are not over any part of the polepieces at all, and even then only barely. The magnetic field is just not that defined.

Play a Strat on the neck pickup, bend a string up to directly in between two of the poles, and see how much the signal level drops. It makes slightly more difference at the ends of the pickup, but still not a lot.

petero

Nice one thanks

Modulus_Amps

I am a bit OTT for this sort of thing, with testing it is easy to see that it does make a difference and so I generally would avoid it, but to some extent you can adjust pole height to compensate.

You may find the string tone will be different whether you pick up or down too, puling the string over the pole or away from the pole.

But it might not be a problem for you when playing in the moment so I would fit them and if you find the volume drops off too much on misaligned poles then replace them.

petero

Thanks