[kindred_spirits]

I don't think its worth it. You will have to ream out the mounting holes on the pickup to accommodate for direct mounting, and if you decide to ever move the pickup to another guitar, it better be direct mounted or it will be a bitch to mount to a ring.

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

I don't have the foam thingys in mine, I have small blocks of wood sanded to provide the desired height, but even then the noticed results are subjective. I've been playing this guitar for over 10 years now, & I have another set of the same pickups I had in an Ibanez basswood body'd guitar & I could tell a minimal difference, but most folks won't.

But then again, I probably hang on to my gear longer that a lot of people do, perhaps enough to notice.