Pickup Audition Test Bed Guitar

[pullshocks]

The idea here is a guitar that I can swap different pickups in and out without loosening or removing the strings. Rear-loading is an idea that many people have thought of for that purpose, and this is my version. No focus on cosmetics, just a simple poplar body, with one coat of clear shellac and 2 coats of amber shellac.

I did do my typical "gut cut" profile ("Why settle for the belly bevel when you can have the gut cut") With the controls mounted to the front of the body, if I decide to change control layouts, I can just plug holes and redrill. If you look closely you can see I have already done this once.

First up for audition is a pair of Duncan P-Rails, with a Gibson T-top for reference on the humbucker sounds. Each of the P-rails has a 2P4T rotary switch for p90, parallel humbucking, series humbucking, and rail combinations.

The neck I am using needs a new nut, so it will probably be Saturday before I get to plug this in.

[pan_kara]

Interesting idea.

I had something similar in mind for some time in the future, though I hadn't though of making it rear-loaded. One extra thing that I though of was making the pickup position adjustable - so that you could take one pickup and slide it all the way from the bridge position to the nut position to watch the tone change.

[Workingman]

Cool idiea. BTW, Pan_Kara, Electra/Westone made a bass that had that feature in the 80's called the rail.

[dpm99]

Hey, when you audition pickups, I wonder if you're planning to make videos? Let posterity benefit from your work!

[YetzerHarah]

Cool beans, the only thing missing is a cool track like on the old Dan Armstrongs

[bob123]

Damn, I think everyone here has wanted to make a guitar like this! I know I have!