Yeh that's an excellent point - I'd forgotten all about it. I ran into that with Ric Duncan replacements - the original Rics may be worse yet. You've got the Rics so you can measure the poles. The Duncans are blades.
What I did with the Duncan bridge, and I understand you can do the same with the Rics, is remove that bass plate and just use the same screw holes to attatch a thin piece of wood so you'll have mounting for it. You can do it so you don't make any permanent mod to the pup and you can put it back like it was when the time comes. That way you don't have to make that goofie routing (or trash the value of that pup). You can just make a humbucker type routing.
May basses have a 3/4" x 4" x 7" routing and the only pups I have had any problem with are the Ric (too wide) and original MM (too thick).
I've got schaller roller bridges on all my basses and for that Ric neck had them as close as the outside rollers would go in - and it barely made it. Had a similar problem with the Gibson EBO. Neck pups with pole pieces are the worst.
If original Rics (which I've yet to try), are anything like the Duncans, I'd be willing to bet you'd get a Ric-like sound out of that transplant. Different bass so it won't be the same as the original but the sound from both the Duncan neck and bridge pup is unlike any other pup I've run across. It's a shame the spacing is so narrow at the neck cause I really would like to have seen what it was like moving it down. I thought about picking up another one and trying them P style - but had actually forget about that till now.
