As you can see, my '70s p has gone through some changes. The B&B maple neck is now on my my Highway one body, and visa versa. In the fist pic, the SB body from the '70s p still sports the original black pg. Starting with the lower horn's most forward screw and moving back toward the treble side "waist hump", you can see the different spacing of the second screw. On the black PG, the spacing is more even with the location of the third screw, with the tort pg, the second screw is MUCH closer to the first. I prefer the screw location of the black pg, personally. Also if you'll look at the spacing on the black body of the highway one, you'll note the more crowded (vintage) spacing there as well.
I believe the tort pg has a more vintage style spacing (note also the holes for a treble side pg and pickup cover). Fender must have respaced the holes somewhere along the way, and I think it was the right move. Occasionally you'll see an old instrument with the vintage spacing and the pg is warped because the gap between screws is too great. But then again, my Highway one seems to have the older style spacing so maybe the spacing on the '70s p is the exception.
As I've said before the only real annoyance was having to sand and file the hole for the pickup to get it to fit. It required a flat file for the edges and a round file for the cutouts for the pickup height adjustment screws. Not a huge deal, but ever other pickguard I've ever bought was a drop in replacement. BTW, that black PG on the Geddy Lee was custom ordered from Pickguard Heaven as a Geddy Lee models have a nonstandard jazz PG and when I bought mine, the SB with black PG was not yet offered, so there were none available from Fender. I don't know what the situation is now.
Hope that helped. Rock on.
