Opinions needed! rear routed birdseye maple strat

[Bobblybook]

Hi everyone!

I have a warmoth body on the way, a birdseye maple on alder:

Finish will be brown to clear burst, with a maple + rosewood neck.

I'm not sure what to do about the pickups. I don't really want to mount directly to the body, I think it looks bad, especially with the pickups being a different shape/size from the rout. I have a set of SSL1's that will be going in this, I am not going to custom order a set from SD flangeless so that's out of the question.

I don't love SC pickup rings, especially the triangular shape, but I wanted to go rear-route and I think that direct mounting the single coils somehow looks even worse  :sad1:

My initial idea was to get some (flame) maple mounting rings and go with parchment or aged white pickup covers + knobs. I think the maple would be a reasonable match to the birdseye maple front of the guitar. The grain pattern and colour will never be 100% matched, but it should blend quite well.

My issue with this is that sometimes when something almost matches, but doesn't, it tends to stick out like a sore thumb. It's almost impossible to find any examples of this exact style online (clear/natural maple finish + single coils + wooden pickup rings), but from my somewhat crappy mockups so far, I'm a little worried that it will look like "everything's trying to match, but failing just a little bit".

My other thought was to use rosewood pickup rings with black plastics. It won't be blending in at all with the body, but it might look decent with the rosewood  neck. I could also go for some weird high-contrast option, like maple rings + black, or rosewood + parchment or something, but I'm not too keen on this unless someone can convince me it would look good.

Does anyone have any thoughts about this? Maybe some suggestions that I haven't thought of? I'm open to ideas. Obviously the plastics are cheap for me to switch around, but the wooden pickup rings are a little pricey and I only want to buy one set if I can help it. Other woods are available (mahogany, cocobolo, walnut, etc..) but I don't think that adding a third wood type to the build is going to add anything to the equation.

Edit: here's a quick example image from the warmoth builder thing. The metal hardware will all be chrome plated.

 

[Rick]

That's a beautiful top.  Me, I'd Either go with pickup rings that match the hardware or match the knobs or the fretboard inlay or the binding.  That's easiest ... That said  it'll look great with anything.  Good grab!

 

[zebra]

Yeah, I agree with Rick2, but more specifically - I would match to either the hardware or the knobs.  I think black rings and knobs would give high contrast to the middle of the guitar where the burst it lightest, and also harmonize with the edges where it's the darkest. 

I know exactly what you mean about trying to be to matchy-matchy with similar colors and it not working out right - I had a roasted maple neck on a transparent yellow tele, and it looked weird.  Put a neck with a contrasting rosewood fingerboard, and it came right together for me!

 

[stratamania]

For single coil mounting rings on rear rout strats just look a little odd to me in most if not all cases.

I would mask off the body and paint the pickup cavities matt black and direct mount the pickups or with some inserts so you have some possibility of adjustment. And live with it for a while.

That way you have not got holes in the body from some rings you probably may not like and can always add them later if you decide to.

 

[JohnnyHardtail]

Its just my opinion, but any wood-coloured hardware such as pickguard or mounting rings always looks kind of "oddball" to me.  Colours that nearly match but have a contrasting hue really annoy me too, so I have to think really carefully about choosing woods.  I'm almost certain it would look better without pickup rings. 

I'm more accepting of chromed metal pickup rings, but I always wonder if it will affect the tone when using true single coils.

 

[Bobblybook]

Thank you all. That all makes sense and I'm not so keen on the maple-on-maple idea now.

I would mask off the body and paint the pickup cavities matt black and direct mount the pickups or with some inserts so you have some possibility of adjustment. And live with it for a while.

The only issue with this is that I would have to go with a dark (i.e. black) pickup option if going this route. Even if I don't paint it black, it will be very dark from the shadows. Which may be ok if that's what I decide to do.

Also I'll be using SSL1's, and I've heard that because they are vintage style low output, the pickup height is quite sensitive and needs to be quite high. Therefore I'm not all that keen on direct mounting them into the body, given that I may need to adjust the height a lot until I find something I like. It may not be a big deal, but I don't really like the idea of constantly screwing/unscrewing into the body, I don't really want to be wearing the threads that much. Though I guess I could glue a little slab of wood into the base of the cavity and screw into that - a bit like a disposable pincushion that I can replace later if it gets too worn.

Though if I can get away with not using rings, I would probably like it more.
Does anyone know of any method of mounting pickups to hide the pickup bobbin/baseplate, the wiring and the excess space? If I can find a solution to this (even DIY something myself..) I would probably find something I'm happy with.

Thanks for the point about the screw holes. I am cautious about screwing holes for hardware (pickup rings) that I will be stuck with. Not so much for resale value but nobody wants to wood fill screw holes on a figured top..

Its just my opinion, but any wood-coloured hardware such as pickguard or mounting rings always looks kind of "oddball" to me.

Yep that's the whole goal of this thread, to get other people's opinions  :toothy12: :help: Thanks for the input, it supports mostly what I was thinking and I agree about the wood hardware for the most part. The only plastic left on this will be the pickups and knobs, so I was thinking about going all wood or all metal, but I think all-wood hardware can look a bit.. try-hard. This will actually be a vintage-style strat with some modern changes, so I still want it to retain a classic strat vibe to some degree.
I just thought that maybe rosewood or maple ones would help it blend into the body & neck of the guitar and not stand out too much, as opposed to sticking on plastic rings or tortoiseshell or similar.

 

[stratamania]

I did mention using inserts. Perhaps look up threaded inserts. I have an 80s HSS Hamer that the single coils are mounted using this method and the humbucker uses a pickup ring.

The idea of using matt black is that if you are using lighter coloured pickups it just blends into the shadows as it were.

 

[Bobblybook]

I did mention using inserts. Perhaps look up threaded inserts. I have an 80s HSS Hamer that the single coils are mounted using this method and the humbucker uses a pickup ring.

The idea of using matt black is that if you are using lighter coloured pickups it just blends into the shadows as it were.

Yes you did but I wasn't sure exactly what sort of inserts you were talking about. Just a solid block to screw into or something more complex. I'll check out the threaded ones, thanks for the info.

I was also thinking about some sort of metal bracket inside the pickup cavity that I could then mount the pickup into. Similar to some humbucker mounts.. though I'm not sure if mounting them to a metal frame will alter the tone or introduce microphonics or such.

Edit: threaded inserts seem to be what I'm after, they seem the simplest solution!