Friends,I’ve got a SX sjb75 jazz bass,which has a original 20mm spacing bridge.Recently I found that if I install the 20mm strings spacing bridge,the strings will almost perfectly located in the center of the magnetic column while the 19mm bridge cannot do that.Then I just found a lot of fender jazz bass photos,they all got the same problem.It seems like the pickups are build for 20mm spacing but their original bridges are always 19mm.What’s going on here?
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Contrary to popular belief, the strings don’t have to be precisely over the pole piece for pickups to work just fine 
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Of course, As long as the string is within the working magnetic field, but it is not so perfect visually, he could have done it.
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Another thing to remember is that not all P-basses have 19mm spacing. And the first Precision model didn’t have a P pickup as well.
Leo was all about cheap and efficient production, and went with what he could and often probably what they had stock of.
Also the really old ones used the threaded saddles so the spacing was a bit variable.
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that’s kind of a engineering problems
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Yeah I am not making excuses for them, more of “this is likely why.” I am guessing it’s because they went with “just make it 3/4 inch” and with the threaded saddles it just lined up well enough. The “modern” saddles subsequently didn’t.
Fender will also commonly maintain design flaws for “vintage” reissue models.
They aren’t the most “attention to detail” kind of manufacturer.
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got it,tks bro
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You can also swap out the saddle barrels for ones with different spacings to suit
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I wonder now if my BabicZ is any different?
I swapped the ones on my Obass for some generic Chinese ones. Kept the original saddle plate and threads
If you have access to a lathe, it’s very easy to turn 0.5mm off each end of the saddle barrels and make 18mm spacing.
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