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Pickguard Idea


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I was just thinking, say I could have some sort of quick connect between my output jack and wire connecting my electronics to my output would it be worth the time to have two pickguards 1 with single coills on 'er for a nice vintage sound and another one with humbuckers or 'er for a thick rockin' out sound so if I wanted one sound I could just take off the pickguard with one set of pups, put the other one on and connect 'er all up? Seems like a neat idea for me. But maybe that's why someone invented coil splitting :D so would it be worth the money?

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Ordinarily I'm all for weird and wacky ideas like this one...but it seems like it'd be a lot easier just to put one guitar down and pick up the other...

Mostly because in order to swap out the pickups, you'll have to detune the strings, unscrew everything, undo the hookups, redo the hookups, screw in everything and retune the strings...a lot of work!

Now, if you were able to mount the pickups on either side of a flippable panel, you'd be in business... :D

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Dang, dang, dang! There was a thread about this about two years ago and I can not FIND it. I think the thread was like about a TRANSFORMER guitar that you could switch around the setup by changing universal parts. I thought that when you needed more variety, you added more pickups and switches. Ever seen Bootsie's guitar?

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I've been thinking about a great way to pull off quick pickup switching. I can't tell you what it is yet but I can tell you this. It will take less than ten seconds to switch any or all of the pickups to one or more alternate pickups, the strings will not have to detune one bit, and it will make the guitar look really, really, ugly. The body shape can remain exactly what it is, as long as it's about strat size or bigger, and it won't need and huge mechanisms (your hand controls the entire process), but its definately gonna look wierd.

Anyway, maybe you should just get very versatile pickups, or a coil tap. I think after the novelty of pulling the plate and replacing it wears off, you'll wish you had two different guitars. It would probably take almost as long as just switching the pups. Just my 2 cents.

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I saw a photo of a Gibson pickup tester --it was a Les Paul routed out from the back so you could just pop in any pickup (humbucker) that you wanted in order to hear how it sounded. You didn't need to detune at all.

I'd say something like that would be your best bet--the front of the guitar ends up looking the same. You could install 'master' rings on top and mount the humbuckers to a back panel instead. You'd need to put the wires on clips, but that shouldn't be difficult to do.

You're not limited to humbuckers though. You could get or make something similar to these Pickup Adaptor Rings

But you could also just get humbucker-shaped single-coils too.

This probably wouldn't work with a guitar with a trem cavity though, unless you're willing to convert to a hardtail.

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What about the Dan Armstrongs idea with his old Ampeg guitars? (I always loved those things, but I'm a huge Greg Ginn fan. Someday I'll have the money)

The pickups where potted into a brown epoxy, it seems, sort of like those Bartolini p'ups, and they had what appears to be "banana" (I think that's what they're called) connectors on them. The guitar had sort of a weird "scoop" taken out where the pickups went in, so you could slide it in under the strings.

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I have made pickups with Quick connectors:

PICT0056.jpg

pretty much like the EMGs. It wasn’t much more work to wound, but it were for a Tele, and you don’t swap a Teles bridge pup just like that. Not completely well thought out… :D

But for a Strat style guitar I think that it could be possible to make a complete pick guard with switching and all, and a quick connector to the output jack. If you also find a way to snap the pick guard in and out I think it would be an interesting instrument.

Edited by SwedishLuthier
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It is a nice idea, but really, it would be too much work to switch pickguards that much. I would suggest just getting humbuckers that can be split to sound like single coils. flipping a switch is a LOT easier and faster than changing a pickguard.

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