Music man axis - replacing pickups

melod

I have a semi (hard tail) music man axis. Lovely guitar and uber comfortable.

I did go through a process of replacing the pickups with more traditional dimarzios (36th Ann.) and did like the results but I always wanted to put something like a hot p90 style in this (even dare I say d armond flavoured)

Now, you might say to switch back to the originals .. I liked them a lot but I still want to try and take this guitar somewhere a bit different. 

Problem is these are screwed to the body and have the triangular ears so it’s a nightmare sorting out what will drop in. 

What options do I have? Any of the respected custom pickup builders here could help with?

Winny_Pooh

The ears could be filed down? @OilCityPickups ;

I found my ALHH too dark (EVH style pickups) so put an oil city winterizer in the neck and a PAF style in the bridge.

Funkfingers

Some makers offer triangular baseplate "feet". Rectangular ones can be shaped with a file.

Soundwise, the DiMarzio PAF Pro makes a nice neck position pickup.

The Crunchlab/Liquifire pair should work nicely for high gain overdriven styles.

nacnudnai

A pickup with triangular baseplate feet and built to emulate a hot-ish P90? Dimarzio Bluesbucker.

Dave_Mc

Just watch the height of the replacements- when I replaced the EVH Dimarzios in my Axis (the standard one with the Floyd) I had to get shorter polepiece screws to get it to fit properly. I think the Dimarzios are quite thin, so you don't want to get anything too thick or it might not fit...

(I don't have any experience with HB-sized P90s so I can't help there, I just remembered that about the pickups in mine and wanted to warn you.)

gumbothewiddler

I’ve filed/cut down the base plate feet on pickups to fit in an Ibanez with similar triangular routing issues. 

I think dimarzios switched away from metal bases in their pickups to glass fibre so they’re even easier to adapt to fit with a bit of perseverance and a file.