Rear Routing Pickups

[PunkRockerLuke]

for the pickup hole should I just trace the inside onf a humbucker ring & drill out or something else

Edited June 12, 2007 by PunkRockerLuke

[GregP]

I'm afraid you're probably going to have to elaborate a bit beyond your title and question... for one thing, I don't know anybody offhand that would seriously recommend rear-routing pickups... which is NOT to say that you "shouldn't" do it. Just that for people to give conscientious advice they'll probably want to know things like -- your motivation for rear routing pickups (they might have suggestions to accomplish your end goal that take a different approach), the practical way you're going to handle the cavities... (making a cavity cover of some sort?) etc.

In general, though, I think that assuming you REALLY need/want to rear-rout your pickup holes, people are going to recommend making a template, hogging out the excess with a drill, and cleaning up with a router. Which is of course not the "only" way to do it.

[erikbojerik]

I've rear routed for single coils exactly as you described, so that I could leave as much square footage of the nice top showing as possible (spalted maple over alder).

If I had to do it all over again, I would have done it differently. Knowing what I know now, I would have routed out relatively large areas for the pickups in the alder body, thin the underneath of the top in the area of the pickps, glue the maple top down, then routed hole in the top just large enough for the pickups. With enough room underneath the top, I could have inserted the pickups at an angle and moved them in line with the holes for the height adjustment screws.

The rear rout is working fine, I'd just choose this method next time (though it wouldn't work with Fender-type singles that have a semi-triangular base...I used Lace Chrome Domes). I can't see why you couldn't do this for humbuckers....but this also assumes you have a drop top and haven't glued it down just yet.

[Xanthus]

I really like Perry's routing method for doing his Vine. Of course, he was just routing the top, not the whole body. That, I imagine would be some tough work. I really see the only reason for rear routing being to minimize the hardware on the top of the guitar, but even so, I might go Perry's way. I routed my own as little as possible to leave as much bulk and weight on the body as possible.

::EDIT::

http://ormsbyguitars.com/galleries/vine/pages/157.htm

There's the link to save searching.

[PunkRockerLuke]

GregP what I mean is rear routed like what Dylan did with his guitar:

http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...;hl=rear+routed

And I have a stratocaster trem cavity cover I could mod or could use to make one using the PG tutorial on making covers.

I just wanted to make sure what I thought was right was right before I made a big mistake.

I have two humbucker rings that I got from thegarehanman but I want to use the humbucker rings when I have 2 pickups to use with them.

Another question involving rear routed pickups. How do you mount them?

[erikbojerik]

Another question involving rear routed pickups. How do you mount them?

Just like with a humbucker ring....except your "ring" is the entire top surface of the guitar.

Ever take a humbucker out of a guitar? Now imagine putting it back into Dylan's guitar.

[Jon]

This may be a cool reference point for some of you guys.

http://www.crimsonguitars.com/scallop.html