Pickups?

[father son]

hello,

im taking apart my old guitar and stripping the paint. How can i take off the pickups without messing them up?

I have the back and most of the front stripped. just arpund the pickups and the knobs ints not sanded. It's kinda funny because on a previous thread of mine i asked if pine would be okay to make my first guitar out of and everyone said no, and this guitar is pine. lol

So how can i get the pickups off?

also, how can i get the knobs off? they're the metal ones.

Thanks

[psw]

Hi there...

Starting on a premade guitar and modifying it is a great way to start and there are lots of things you may want to do with electronics and pickups further down the track to improve things even on the cheapest guitar.

Pine is a very unusual guitar material although I believe fender tried it on the original tele. It is not a very stable or solid wood generally and is not generally advisable to build guitars out of becauise it also tends to shrink and warp...nevertheless, cheap guitars can be found made of just about anything...

Ok...

So, if you are refinishing a guitar, it is best to strip everything out and solder it all back in again afterwards, it is amazing you have come this far. A pic would help by the way...

Anyway...metal knobs could either have a small grub screw in the side or simply push on. If no sigh of the screw, then simply pull straight up and they should pop off. You can then undo the nut that holds the "pot" onto the guitar (hidden under the knob).

It sounds like you will need to cut some wires and solder them back later. If unsure and want it to go back just as before, cut the wires near the control pots but leave enough to reattach them. Don't cut them near the pickups themselves. If the wires are shielded, it is probably best to unsolder them or cut them close and reattach the wires directly to the pots later. This will require soldering. Similarly the output jack wire and ground wire. Make a diagram so you don't forget what goes where.

It is hard to tell what kind of pickups we are talking here or how they are attached. Most are simply screwed in or attached to a scratchplate, all of which should be unscrewed before any refinishing, or even sanding. Likewise any hardware and if the neck bolted on this too needs to be removed. Screw a piece of wood to the neck socket to hold the body for spraying or whatever in place of the neck for a handle is a good tip.

Again, it is hard to tell exactly what you are dealing with without a picture, photobucket is a free hosting service, you copy the link into the picture button when posting and it should appear.

There really is no what around soldering, but this is not hard to do. Dust and paint is not good for electronics and really should have been removed before starting, but generally it is probably ok. If it is pine, you may need grain filler or sealer...depending on how it is being finished.

Good luck...I could be more specific if I could see the thing but you should be ok, just take notes or label the wires for reattachment.

pete

[killemall8]

psw pretty much nailed it. but i just cant imagine why the heck you would start sanding without removing all of the parts. thats just insane to me. now since you sanded around the pickups, you will have to sand even more just to get the areas under the pickups level with the rest you already sanded. i am still not convinced that it is really a pine body. how do yo know for sure? pine looks like a ton of other stuff. or the other way around. we definitly need a picture. i think you have gotten way ahead of yourself, and need to slow down and read up more. starting to refinish with parts still attached is suicide in my book. something WILL go wrong.