I got brave and took the horseshoes off of my V63 today. Feels alot more natural to me. I can finally lower the pickup (super hot), enough to get a more "balanced" sound.
Looking good Scott, I was going to get a V63 and do the same, but then an 'S' came up on ebay and I hope that will do the trick. Not here yet, about one week.
How does the playability around the bridge P/U feel compared to a 4001/3. I guess it is the same?
I pick right over the treble pickup. So the shoes were really an issue for me. I absolutely love the way the shoes look, but as always, functionality wins out in the end.
You can bend the shoes open slightly so that they allow more string clearance. The V63s and many C64s have narrow shoe gaps. A few years ago, RIC started shaping the C64 shoes to more closely resemble the vintage shoes. It makes them visually more accurate and allows more practical adjustment. Jeff Scott bent his open a bit (perfectly safe). Maybe he will chime in here.
John Hall described a method to open the gap in the shoes in a post a while back, I just can't recall what it was, Ted I think it might have been in a response to one of your restorative projects.