Pickups and string spacing

[Rageofklugman]

Morning all, not sure if this is the best forum for my question, but it seemed sensible. Anyway, I've been having a rummage through the various bits and pieces I've accumulated and am planning to fit a thunderbird pickup onto a p bass body I have. My questions is this: I gather that the string spacing on a thunderbird is a fair bit narrower than on a p bass. If I use a bridge with the standard 19mm string spacing, is this going to cause issues with the pickup? 

[Hellzero]

Not at all, this strings spacing thing for pickups is just pure marketing. If the sensing area is large enough (which is the case here) all strings will be covered. You have to remind the way a pickup works. The simplest I can do is this : when the metallic string is moving it perturbs the magnetic field generating an induced current on the output.

The pole pieces don't need to be aligned with the strings perfectly. Think blades instead of pole pieces and you'll get it.

[Rageofklugman]

Thanks for that, certainly makes sense. Another good thing: because the Tbird pickup doesn't have visible pole pieces then there won't even be a cosmetic misalignment.