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Humbucker Cavity Help


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Erm, draw it out? Cavity needs to be big enough to hold the pickup, small enough to be covered by the pickup ring. That's really all there is to it.

Alternately, get ye a copy of Melvyn Hiscock's 'Make Your Own Electric Guitar' (book, that). Very useful, has templates for common pickup shapes in the back.

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Erm, draw it out? Cavity needs to be big enough to hold the pickup, small enough to be covered by the pickup ring. That's really all there is to it.

Alternately, get ye a copy of Melvyn Hiscock's 'Make Your Own Electric Guitar' (book, that). Very useful, has templates for common pickup shapes in the back.

No it doesn't at least not in the version I found. I think it is the older version of it. And would I still be able to use a humbucker mounting ring with a universal pickup cavity???

Edited by PunkRockerLuke
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Erm, draw it out? Cavity needs to be big enough to hold the pickup, small enough to be covered by the pickup ring. That's really all there is to it.

Alternately, get ye a copy of Melvyn Hiscock's 'Make Your Own Electric Guitar' (book, that). Very useful, has templates for common pickup shapes in the back.

No it doesn't at least not in the version I found. I think it is the older version of it. And would I still be able to use a humbucker mounting ring with a universal pickup cavity???

The second edition has 'em, the first doesn't. And what the heck is a 'universal pickup cavity'?

Again: just draw it out with the pickup and the mounting ring in hand. it's pretty self-explanatory.

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pickuprout1yb.jpg

Note: Drawing not to scale. I whipped this up in paint in about 2 minutes, so draw it out yourself on a piece of paper or what have you. These measurements are taken from the Stewmac plan for the '59 Les Paul. Also note that the deeper recesses are centered along the side of the shallower recess.

Edited by matttheguy
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answer: universal pickup cavity is pictured on this strat body from stewmac, it allows any combination

of single coil and humbucker pickup configurations.

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Bodies,_necks,...rat_Bodies.html

Ah. That. AKA 'swimming pool route'.

Seriously, the answer to that's completely obvious: can you route a big giant hole in the top and leave invisible by covering it with pickup mounting rings instead of a pickguard? Seriously, dude, the mounting rings would probably fall into the route.

That's a big fat 'No', by the way.

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I'm using a pickguard as well as wooden mounting rings. And not that large of a universal pickup cavity, just one large enough to accomodate a single Dimarzio Fred humbucker in the bridge position. (the wooden mounting rings will be topside.)

Edited by PunkRockerLuke
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Or if you want to spend money on something you could do in about ten minutes with a little effort you could buy the stewmac template. link

I have found that the stewmac template is a wee bit to big. The pickup ring -just- barley covers it.

The Stewmac template is a little too big because it is a template for cutting pickgurads, not the cavity. Therefore it is going to be closer to the dimensions of a pickup ring.

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Or if you want to spend money on something you could do in about ten minutes with a little effort you could buy the stewmac template. link

I have found that the stewmac template is a wee bit to big. The pickup ring -just- barley covers it.

The Stewmac template is a little too big because it is a template for cutting pickgurads, not the cavity. Therefore it is going to be closer to the dimensions of a pickup ring.

Uh...not s'much. It's for cutting cavities in the body; if anything, cuts in pickguards should be SMALLER than the cavity, as they need to cover it entirely.

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If you look in the back of the Hiscock book, there are two different humbucker templates --one's for a universal humbucker size, the other's for a Gibson.

The interesting thing is that the Gibson humbucker is not symmetrical --there's a millimeter difference to either side of the center line (width not length).

But it's easy enough to figure out the route --just measure the pickup (not the ring) then add in extra deep cavities at either end for the wings.

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Yeah, probably a minor mistake, or maybe a printing error.

You gotta remember that blueprints are not accurate representations of the guitars, if printed on paper. The numbers are important, but paper - like wood - shrinks and moves and distorts.

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