I have a project (or two) in mind and I wondered if any of you good people on FB have any advice on how to easily swap pickups, to A:B different models and different types too.
If I can find a way to make it easy to swap from various single coils, through P90s, and into the various "Trons", to humbuckers, it would make A:B ing them much simpler on a "couple" of bodies.
This could be on different bodies, so I am open to advice on scratch plate loaded, but also advice for LP types would be appreciated. I know LP type installation will be a pain routing cables through the body, so that is one issue to overcome.
I also need to allow for extra switching to fully explore the possibilities.
Any advice? Thanks, Chris
Edit: to sort typos and formatting, and to re-title the discussion.
Comments
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I was hoping someone (else) would come along and answer this one!
I've never done it, so there might be a more practical / easy answer, but from thinking about it hypothetically, this is probably what I'd do ...
For guitars where everything is mounted on the scratchplate, it's easy-easy. Even if the output jack is mounted separately, it's only going to be 2 solder joints, so it's still easy. Ideally have as many scratchplates as you want to try configurations, so you can mount and solder each config on it's own scratchplate, and then just remove/replace the whole assembly. Don't need to use "proper" scratchplates either - some thin mdf with a few of the mounting screw holes in the right places would work OK, I think?
For anything else, the *easiest* way would be to put some push-fit connectors on the ends of the pickup wires and push-fit the connections rather than solder them. I'd probably do all the connections in the pickup cavity, so you'd either need to cut the pickup wires pretty short, or have enough room in the cavity to be able to coil them out of the way. That saves you the hassle of feeding wires through to the switch/control cavities. You'd need to run a longer length of hook-up wire from the control cavity into the pickup cavity, but everything else remains untouched.
Or .... if you're trying to do a lot of quickish back-to-back A | B | C | D configuration comparisons, it might be best to do all the wiring away from the body of the guitar - ie you fit the pickups, but everything else is mounted on a separate board outside the guitar body and feed the pickup wires out through the (now empty) control cavity to the separate board. That would make soldering access a lot easier, although playing the guitar would be more awkward, so it'd only be a short-term thing to do the comparison.
What's the even-easier, blindingly obvious, practical approach that I've missed ???
Plenty of room to slide in and secure pickups in a 'pool'
Mostly I just buy more guitars to demo pickups in ... two functions in one ... practical and GAS
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
Many guitars have a re-sale value. Some you'll never want to sell.
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I've got a cheap thomann LP special that's got slots routed in it so I can slide pickups in on little carriages - and croc clips to hook up.
Now that only works from a point of view of getting an idea of how a pickups going to sound - to get the correct tone it needs to be fitted really! There's a guy on eBay selling drop in circuit boards with screw terminals - they look cool for this sort of thing.
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
Made me remember this one ...
http://youtu.be/hNfNKy6PexU
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
Your life will improve when you realise it’s better to be alone than chase people who do not really care about you. Saying YES to happiness means learning to say NO to things and people that stress you out.
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