Pickup spacing

[BluesJunkie]

I just discovered the joys of replacement pickups a few months ago, but I've already got the disease big time. It's so bad that I bought two new guitars on ebay this weekend just so I could have an excuse to buy more pups.

Anyway, on to my question. I'm planning on buying a more pickups over the next few months, and I want to try them in my Les Pauls and in my Floyd equipped Strats. I know LPs generally use standard spaced pups and Strats generally use Trembucker or F-Spaced pups. However, if I want to be able to use the same pup in both LPs and Strats, what should I get? Will standard spacing be more "universal" than Trembucker or F spacing?

[wasteofo2]

I've heard from people who've used regular spaced pickups and their F-spaced counterparts in the same guitar that there is no notivable difference in sound between the two.

[Snags]

I had a standard-spaced Alan Holdsworth under a Floyd with no noticeable problems.

[butnut]

I have a standard (Gibson?) spaced Duncan JB bucker in my Tele bridge. Both E strings slightly fall off the end poles. No loss noticeable. With the Jazz in the neck position, the strings line up perfectly.

[Zhangliqun]

I think spacing problems are far more noticeable to the ear in the neck position. (Ear in the neck position...sounds painful...)

No seriously, I think this is because you lose the low frequencies quicker than the highs when you move the pole-piece or magnet further from the string -- while on the bridge pu, which picks up mostly treble, you don't notice the loss of lows nearly as much, especially on that high E string where there is ZERO low freq's/warmth to begin with.