Putting Dog Ear P90s Into A Hb-routed Guitar

[Stray Dog]

First off.... do NOT reccomend I buy HB-sized p90s! I have tried that, and I want REAL p90s in my sheraton, not just for the sound but also for the looks. And don't bother reccomending I buy a casino or any other knew guitar either...

I wouldn't normally consider this because conventional wisdom is that it can't be done, hence the HB-sized p90s. But I have seen it done before, on a sunburst sheraton which was on ebay a while ago. It had black dog-ears. It wasn't a PERFECT fit, as there were some hairline gaps beside the pickups, but Im ok with that. So first, does anyone happen to remember this guitar? If you could link me to any information or pics of this guitar I saw on ebay a while back, that would be great!!

So what can you tell me about how a dog-ear can fit into a HB route? If it can't be done, please tell me why. Will I need to do any routing myself?

Any information appreciated!

[jnewman]

Boy, you sure are picky. If you're going to set conditions, then at least say them in a polite way.

The conventional wisdom does NOT say that it can't be done, just that it's a huge pain in the ass. If you want to do it, the only way for it to really look right is to strip the finish, glue blocks of wood that you've cut exactly to the right size into the hb routes, trim them to match the top of the guitar, route for the dogear p90's, refinish, and mount the p90's. You probably won't be able to make a good enough grain match for a transparent finish really to look right.

If you try to just mount them without filling the holes, but then you'll have holes along the top and bottom of the pups that will look stupid.

You could also use soapbars and make rings like HB rings that will surround the soapbar and cover the holes, but you were pretty specific on the dogear thing.

[SwedishLuthier]

Jnewman is right about the process.

A dogear cover is typical 1-5/8" (41.28mm) wide and a HB cavity is somewhere around 1.68” (42.5mm) wide (measured my StewMac template). You will have, like you said, a small gap 0.0275” or 0.61mm on each side. If you can live with that is up to you. But you will have ugly holes from the screws holding the HB ring. And you might have to enlarge the cavity some lengthwise (only a few mm or so) but that depend on the actual cavity of the actual guitar. So its up to you to decide if the gap on the side of the pickups look better than humbucker rings and HB sized P-90s. And regarding the sound of HB-sized P90’s: They sound exactly like the real deal.

Now that we have that covered I too would recommend that you keep a slightly more polite profile. Making demands about the answers might put of a lot of people that have good advices for you.