Official Luthiers Forum!

howdy fellas, i am faced with a predicament, i am building a guitar for myself right now which some of you have probably seen in another thread on here, my original intent was to put in a set of gfs p-90 sized humbuckers and split them, then i recently found out about the p-rails from sd. i went on youtube and watched a couple demos and was blown away, more expensive but they at least seem as though they would be some really great pickups. problem is i really wasn't planning for a humbucker style pickup, as a result i wasnt trying to be pickup ring friendly with the contours of the carve top. simply put in order to put the pickups where they need to go pickups rings are completely unpractical. this had initially dashed my hopes of p-rails until i had a thought tonight. i have seen humbuckers mounted without the rings before, but i am not a fan of doing so because i dont like being able to see the ears. however that got me thinking, i was planning to make my own covers for the pickups from walnut burl anyway so i figured why not grind the ears off of the pickups ( or maybe bend the under in case i ever want them in something else) and make covers for them similar in style to a p-90 cover and have the height adjustment screws between the poles of the p-90 bobbin same as you would a normal p-90 pickup. im partial to the look of this style of mounting anyway, and it would be pretty unique. my only concern is compromising the pickup because i would have to drill holes through the bass plate and stuff. i dont have an intimate knowledge of the inside of pickups and dont know if this would cause problems or is doable. if there are any other foreseeable problems that im missing please point them out.

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~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

My advise is don't drill through, bend or modify the pickup.
Just figure out a way to mount them.
I don't like pickup rings of any kind.
I'd rather see a minimal routing for it,
and I like to screw them right to the body.

Make wooden humbucker rings that conform t the top of your guitar. That would be cool!

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Old growth, shmold growth!

The blade can't get as close as the big coil pole screws if you use a cover. This makes the small coil have even less output, balance may become a factor, but you might like the result.
I really like these pickups and have bought some to put in my guitars.
Try a 4 way blade switch. Think of the 2 coils as 2 different pickups. Have fun.

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How long is that in luthyears?

thanks for the advice guys. ultimately i decided to go with my original plan and get some humbuckers in a p-90 body. i think i could have done it the was that i described here, but no matter what method i wound up doing i think it would have been more headache that it was worth. i would still really like to give the pickups a try sometime though. so maybe on an upcoming guitar that i arleady have routed for a set of buckers.

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

that is a pretty sweet method chris, i'll have to give that a go on a couple upcoming archtops. for my current build the pups im using are already in the mail so i wont have to do anything unusual. i am already doing few unconventional things on this guitar and dont really want to add to the list. i'll be getting two gfs dream 180's and wiring them with a 5 way like filippos last build, but im also going to throw in two mini toggles for series/parallel/split on each pup.

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/