Pickup is too tall for cavity - direct mounted pickup

[tomizm]

Im putting a Duncan '59 in the neck of my USRG, and the pickup is too tall. *It's a wee bit higher than the 24th fret and it's in as far as it will go.
Do I drill the cavity out more, or fig'r out some way to shorten the mounting legs on the pickup?

[frankfalbo]

I rout the cavity deeper. There wouldn't be a good way to take the height of the Duncan's metal baseplate down. If its close like you say I use the dremel and freehand it. Not for the novice, but then its easier than routing sometimes. Dimarzios have a little triangle, so I've done those just by drilling down. The round hole accomodates the dimarzio piece. But the Duncan is rectangular. If you wanted to do as little as possible to the guitar, you can dremel the Duncan's "ears" into a smaller, rounded triangle and then a brad point drill bit is just what the doctor ordered. If you have a drill press set the depth and use it. If not, go about one shaving of wood at a time, at a slow speed until you have the depth you want. The brad point bit will center on the mounting hole, and leave you with a perfect pilot afterwards.

[tomizm]

I've already Dremel'd off the ears of the pickup. *I had thought about using the drill press also. *That pretty much just confirms my thoughts about the process. *The only problem is when I want to put Dimarzio's in it later, I guess I'll have to put a tall spacer under the feet.

[Project Guitar]

I have never heard of this problem :glare:


How tall was the pickup originaly?

[rickboot]

The pickup bobbin and base is about normal height for a tall humbucker pickup. The problem is the metal "legs" are longer. I presume because the original PAFs were made this way.

I almost had the same problem. I custom orded a zebra 59 4 conductor to put into an S2020. Surprisingly though, the S2020 leg routes were deep enough. Whew.

Otherwise I was going to take the dremel tool to mine too. It would have been worth it. The 59 and JB sound great. Plus the black/cream zebra coils look great in the S2020.

Rick

[tomizm]

The problem turns out to be the screws/polepieces under/thru the pickup. *The screws are really long and are preventing the baseplate from resting against the wood. *Can I just cut the bottoms off enough to let the pickup down closer to the wood? *Why are they so long anyway?

[jemsite]

cut the pickups before cutting the body

Some pickups are too high for the JEM/RG cavities, probably because they fit older axes with front cavity routing... glen

[frankfalbo]

For that situation I must tell you that cutting the bottoms of the pole pieces will change the sound of the pickup. You have just shortened the invisible oval magnetic field and therefore changed the field and its relationship to the other coil. There is no difference in hum cancelling, but the resulting sound is slightly brighter. In these situations I rout a channel under the screws, but if you have a drill press, you can easily take the pickup, press it down until it makes some sort of indentation in the cavity so you know where to drill, and then just drill six holes at 3/8" diameter, maybe 1/4" deep. You'll have enough clearance around the screws for minor errors and you'll remove just enough wood for the job. By not lowering the whole cavity, you've made the transition back *to a Dimarzio simpler in the future.

[tomizm]

Frank

Thats exactly what I was hoping to hear. *I'll just create some pockets for the screws.