I'm still considering using it for a project, the problem is, right now, even with the route under the non-original bridge, changed tuners, etc - the bass plays and sounds excellent.
If I screw with it, the people who were going to kill me for ripping apart the steels that I did to make horseshoe pickups, will team up with the preservation of 4001 CB/FWMOP folk and hang me.
I've got one just like it but from July, so it has the smaller inlays. But it, too sounds killer. Could it be the aluminum-backplate early hi-gain with larger magnet?
Anywho...I say a re-issue horseshoe would be a mistake. My '73 cuts through the mix better, is easier to play, has more tonal possibilities, and is lighter than my horseshoe-equipped Ricks.
Couldn't resist throwing that one out there as a counter argument to the above idea from the President of the Horseshoe Brigade, Jim Glen!