2 1/16" and 2 1/8" are both considered to be narrow, modern, Gibson, or import spacing. There's nothing suspicious or low-rent about it, why some of my best fri....
Well, OK. Where it gets important is that "vintage", "wide", classic "Fender" spacing is 2 1/4", even listed as 2 5/16" sometimes. The reason Mr. Van Halen angled his first few humbucker pickups is because they were Gibson -sized and the pole pieces were too narrow for his bridges. At first it was Fender that seemed to be out of touch, but then Floyd Rose made his bridge the same as older Fender. Now, Fender had changed their own spacing to the narrower 2 1/8" on their American Standard bridges - their Strat bridges went to a two-point whammy, their Tele bridge went to six individual saddles. But now they re-issue the "classic" "vintage" stuff too, mix and match all different bits with one another, it is something that has to be paid attention to. And several pickup companies offer both "F-spaced" and regular widths.
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The other place where it gets important, more important in my mind, is the neck width at the upper frets vs. bridge width. If you take the standard, Fender dimension neck butt that is almost universal among bolt-on, then you put really big jumbo frets on it -
then you dress the fret ends to a nice comfortable curve - the fret contact area will not be wide enough using a wide Fender or Floyd Rose bridge.
It seems quite ridiculous to me - the world need wider necks, wider at the butt end, not at the top - but evolution is evolution, sometimes it gets stuck for a while. When they put me in charge of everything, there are gonna be some big shakeups coming.
