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Bass pickup tantrum... *** how about some standards?

#61
That's why I like the EMG 35 format.you can put pretty much any type of bass pickup in there.Single coil,split singles like a precision,humbuckers,quad coils or sidewinders.it can all fit in there.
 
#62
danosix said:
To be fair - there are really a lot more sizes than that in guitar even after most were pushed out by the spare parts revolution - the most common are strat and Gibson size humbucker
tele pickups (both are different)
Gibson/Epiphone/MIJ import strat-ish pickups (a differen size again),
P90,
lipstick
Gretsch humbuckers
Dearmond style pickups (single coil Gretsch and Ric style pickups)
Mini-humbuckers
ALL are different enough not to drop in to the two common sizes and there are at least 4 different widths I there.

But the reason for the perception is that guitars did go the way of "parting out" long before basses so a lot of the variation got forced out so companies could use off the shelf stuff whereas basses continued on foir a long time before getting a significant number of after market parts.
Also, for some reason, when it comes to this kind of stuff guitarists are more conservative as a group and stick to variations of he big 4 (stat, HB, Tele, P90) a lot more consistently than bass players have historically done.
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All of the guitar pickup sizes you mention are standards.
Fliptrique said:
Not really. Your usual humbucker may come in - basically - gibson and fender widths, hence all the seymour duncan humbuckers come in the "trembucker" variant. Besides that you have the soapbar pickups, you`ve got tele pickups (two different ones that do not fit anything else!), p90s, lipsticks etc.

Also - how many passive, single coil jazz pickups SD offers? Three if I`m not mistaken? Well, you have something like... twenty passive SD humbuckers.

Granted, there IS more variation in the bass pickups sizes, but most companies offer their pickups in the usual bartolini or emg housing type.
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There is no difference between Gibson and Fender "widths", it's just the pole spacing in the coils. Gibson guitars are 24 3/4" scale and Fenders are 25 1/2", so the strings are a tiny bit further apart on a longer scale guitar at the bridge. The pickups themselves are identically sized and the different pole positions make no difference whatsoever to the sound - it is a purely cosmetic thing manufacturers have done to quiet the anal retentive :) Duncan calls their "F-spaced" pickups Trembuckers because "F-spaced" is owned by DiMarzio so they can't use that name (the same way DiMarzio owns "double creme" coiled pickups).
 
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#63
F-Spaced typically refers to Floyd Rose bridges - given that they have a wider spacing than a standard bridge. But then you have the USA Fender Standard bridge vs the MIM one. The USA is wider. The MIM spacing is closer to vintage spacing. Of course then on the USA reissues, those have string spacing like the MIM Standard. And that's just Fender. You go over to a Schecter or Ibanez, and you gotta figure out the string spacing.
 

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