How to direct mount a humbucker, With easy height adjustment.

[Raphta]

Hi i am new here, I just saw a thread here on direct mounting pickups and i would like to share a neat trick i discovered. http://unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=21361.0

You can use this method by mounting to a fu tone style mounting plate, a humbucker baseplate, threaded inserts into the body or just wood screws.

A few of you might have seen this fu tone mounting plate. As you can see in this video it bolts in and you adjust the height by removing the pickup and adjusting the baseplate. :frowny

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIBEh0jp9kk

Now for my idea.

start with 1 pickup rout like so or threaded inserts etc.



Mount a humbucker base plate. You can buy them from stewmac or if you're like me you will have a few in the spare parts box.




Grind/file away some of the top of the height screws so they can move up and down. ''may need to shorten screws and springs also''





Install with sprigs as normal





The rig,



Here is a simple diagram to explain it using two different methods.

 

[ragamuffin]

Sorry for the thread revival, but has anyone else used this method? It sounds perfect for getting easy height adjustment without doing threaded inserts

 

[Cagey]

My guess is that after 260+ reads and 0 comments, interest was not very high.

Regardless of how you do it or what Eddie VanHalen did as a kid, mounting magnetic pickups directly to the body on an electric guitar has no sonic return on investment. So, unless there's a good aesthetic reason to do it, it seems like pointless work.

In my view, doing so leaves the equivalent of having installed doors and windows in your house without any finish molding to hid the openings those items went into. It looks unfinished. But, that's just me.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

I prefer direct mounted, but more for a place for my pinky to sit in the hole where the lower height adjustment screw resides.
Sonic-ally, can't tell a difference.

 

[raystankewitz]

I agree with Cagey on this - it might be an elegant mounting solution but it looks very unfinished. But that's just me. YMMV.

 

[Raphta]

Wow i didn't even know i posted this here. Anyway i can say that after some work doing this i can say it works like a charm.

Here is another project i did with the same method of mounting. Easy height adjustment on the fly and no fudging taking strings off.

 

[Raphta]

This was the one in the original post. The humbuker route was bigger than it needed to be but anyway the concept works.



Any of you doubting it i say try it before you make up your mind.

 

[Logrinn]

Is that a 31-fret neck? 

And a map on the body and the neck? Can you tell us more on how you did that?

 

[Raphta]

They are material finished.  :headbanging:

 

[Cagey]

Well, that certainly clears things up :laughing7:

 

[Raphta]

The original ibanez jem floral was done the same way its basically cotton material glued on, then sealed and finally finished. Its a good trick and i have done many jobs using this method.

This one was done the same and every other graphic guitar in my photobucket.

 

[Raphta]

And when you guys said it looked unfinished what did you mean? Obviously the pictures i provided were from a guitar in the build process. The actual mounting method i have shown is solid and fool proof. FU tone have something similar but you can't height adjust. Its a fudging unreal idea and I'm surprised no one has thought of it.  Direct mounting only has cosmetic benefits as far as I'm concerned but this thread wasn't meant to be a debate about that.

Hope that clears it up.

 

[Logrinn]

I did something similar - out of neccesity - when mounting my DiMarzio P90's in a strat with universal routing.

 

[stratamania]

Seems like a sound idea to me. Perhaps you could also drill the holes of the humbucker out as an alternate to dethreading the bolts/screws.  Of course, then you would have to be certain you don't need to sell the pickup or use it in a more traditional manner.

 

[Raphta]

If you did that the height adjustment wouldnt work. The pickup needs to float on the smooth part of the thread whilst the thread holds it in to the base plate. That's one of the resons i thought of it because i dont like modding a pickup to do it. Modding screws is much cheaper/smarter.

 

[stratamania]

Got you. Or buy something like a captive screw that already has no threads and is thinner in the required spot.

 

[Cagey]

A captive screw setup like Stratamania is talking about would look like this. The screws...

...which are available here in a variety of sizes along with retainers and springs to form an assembly like this...

For pickup mounting, you'd put the spring between the body and the pickup's mounting plate rather than between the screwhead and the mounting plate, and you wouldn't need the retainer. The only potential fly in the ointment would be that the smallest thread size they come in is 4-40, which might be too large for pickup mounting. Dunno. Never measured what is normally used.

Then, you, too, could leave your guitar looking unfinished without pickup mounting rings to hide the unsightly cavities pickups get mounted in  :laughing7:

Actually, if you wanted to go around your thumb to get to your elbow, you could mount your pickups this way and have Doug make some fancier trim rings without height adjustment screwholes, just to clean things up. Mount the pickups and set their height, then install the trim rings last. Those unsightly cavities that were seen are now unseen. You do your best, then caulk the rest, as they say in the glazing business. Of course, if you ever sold the guitar, the new owner might question your sanity. But then, that would be their problem, wouldn't it? :laughing7:

 

[Raphta]

I like the look of no rings.  :bananaguitar:

You can do a better job of those screws using a drill press and a file.

 

[Cagey]

I've seen some untrimmed mounts that I liked, too. For example, some of Frown's minimalist designs are very attractive. But, more often than not, it just looks unfinished to me. It's not that I want to see trim rings, it's that I don't want to see all the details of the cavity and in some cases, the pickup base. Kinda like the difference between a beautiful woman in a bikini vs. completely naked.