The ring

 

When you purchase a Seymour Duncan Trembucker pickup, a complementary mounting ring will be included - have you ever wondered why?

Before we begin, Trembucker here refers to the slightly wider pickup pole pieces of the Seymour Duncan bridge humbucker to accommodate a Fender-spaced string spacing type. This is usually in the range of 5cm - 5.2cm. The DiMarzio version of this string spacing is called the F-Space. Contrary to popular belief, F is not for Floyd Rose, it's for Fender. The Floyd Rose brand follows the Fender spacing. Logic would tell us that, chronogocally, the Fender bridge was created way before the Floyd Rose.

Moving on, unlike other pickup manufacturers, Seymour Duncan actually widens the pickup structure to match this spacing. Other manufacturers simply space out the pole pieces only, the pickup dimensions remain the same. This is the reason why the SD Trembucker is a super tight fit in many default pickguards & mounting rings as those do not accommodate the Trembucker. This is the reason why SD includes a mounting ring when you purchase a Trembucker. From the picture above, we note that SD mounting ring (top) is slightly wider than the Ibanez mounting ring (bottom) which was chosen for this example. 

Snipped ring

To the unsuspecting guitar wielder, the Ibanez S-series guitars saw a simple, 2 fret addition- there's nothing to it, yes?

But be informed that due to the additional 2 frets in the current generation of S-series guitars, the pickup mounting ring was snipped at the factory to make way for the extension. The picture above also shows the neck extension which aligns itself with the cavity wall so we know that it's not an overhanging fretboard extension instead.

Jaguar tamperings

I think I've been looking at my Jaguar's body for too long. It suddenly dawned on me the Special HH is a peculiar guitar; why would it need additional pickup mounting rings when it already sports a pickguard?

As I was removing the pickguard's plastic lining (which required the removal of the mounting rings), I took the opportunity to probe the cavity. The Special HH's pickup cavity is actually wider than the mounting rings' dimensions. This makes sense because from an economical perspective (& that Fender is a business entity after all, duh?!) it's wiser to use available resources for a humbucking guitar as opposed to incurring costs to route a fresh body for humbucker fittings. In this case, the Special HH's body, judging by the dimension of the pickup cavities per se, is actually a Jazzmaster body whose routing are a little wider to accomodate the P-90 type pickups.

Seymour Duncan: Triple -shot mounting ring

This is a clever product by pickups manufacturer, Seymour Duncan; can't get used to splitting your humbuckers via your guitar's volume/tone knobs? The simple but brilliant solution is seen above- the Triple-shot is a pickup mounting ring which lets you do that.