F-spacing, important or not?

[mountain dave]

And yet another question? I ordered pickups for my DXMG, an sh-2 for the neck and an sh-5 for the bridge. It was only after I recieved the sh-5, still waiting on the neck p/u, that I realized I should have gotten the tb-5 for proper spacing due to the Floyd. I tried to return it in exchange for the tb-5 but this online dealer will not accept opened pickups even though the thing is still virgin,i.e the wires aren't stripped or haven't been soldered. That pisses me off, but apparently I'm stuck with it. FYI, Music123 is the dealer. When mounted, the low E barely passes over the pole piece, the high E is pretty far off too, but not as bad. Who else has installed pickups like this and do you think it will have a substantially adverse effect on pedrformance? Any opininions would be greatly appreciated.

[Spivonious]

I'm sure it will still sound just fine, but it sure does look nice having a TB-4 with my floyd - the strings line up perfectly over the poles. FWIW the TB-4 was noticeably bigger than the stock Jackson hum in there beforehand.

[Grandturk]

A. If you want to exchange it, call Duncan directly and they'll do the exchange for you.

B. To my ears, I dont notice much of a difference between normal and trem spaced. I had a floyded kramer for years with a normal spaced JB in the bridge and I didn't feel like I was missing anything.

[Rich#6]

Higher output pickups should be fine. they just look funny up close.

[rjohnstone]

I don't hear any significant difference between F-spaced and standard pups.
More a cosmetic thing for me.

[mountain dave]

Thanks for the advice guys. It probably wouldn't matter, but, I'm so anal over things like this, I know it would bug me, so I took your advice Grandturk and called them. They were super nice, told me to send it to them and they'd send me a tb-5 in it's place. Just have to wait awhile longer now but it least I won't be questioning my decision. Thanks all.

[Sunbane]

Some users here on the JCF claim that the TB versions are brighter than the original SH ones. I don't have enough personal experience with Duncans to be able to confirm that - but I'm thinking that maybe the added wire length around the coils could affect the sound in one way or another. The difference (if any) is probably unnoticable though.

[jackson1]

I used a Screamin' Demon non-trem spaced for years on a Floyd'ed guitar and didn't notice weak output strings, missing harmonics or anything.
I've also used an SH-8 Invader without any noticeable problems on a floyded guitar. Of course, with the Invader it's no big deal with the alignment; its pole pieces are the size of a small country.

[mountain dave]

Probably not, but I already sent it back to Seymour Duncan. The shipping was $4.60, not much more considering what I already had invested. I really hope the TB version isn't any brighter than the SH, I've already swayed back and forth on that decision but thought the SH-5 came as close as I could get. I'm sure that it'll sound alot better than the EMG HZ's.

[OnlineStageGear]

Your pickup would have to be pretty close to the string to have it make a difference I would imagine.

[Newc]

I've noticed a small bit of weakness on the Es with a standard-spaced pickup, but only on lower-gain settings where the pickup is doing more of the work than the preamp, and only on lower-gain pickups like the 59 and Pearly Gates.

There's a distinct difference to my ears between a TB-6 and an SH-6 though (Duncan Distortion). The TB-6 almost makes it sound like you're pushing more compression than overdrive, whereas with the SH-6 the notes have more saturation with the exact same preamp patch, and all other things being equal (i.e. same guitar, same pickup height, etc).