Pickup Swapping

There can be a few reasons why you would change the pickups on your guitar. Noise problems, looks, replacing dead pickups. But usually the reason you change them is for the tone and sound differences.

I'm a serial pickup changer. I only have two of the 6 or 7 or so guitars I regularly play that has factory pickups in. There is something about one of them them that just works, and the other is from 1979 and has famed Ibanez/Maxxon super 80 pickups which sound awesome.

Choosing which ones is a minefield, because usually the sound you hear in your head is hard to replicate, and opinions and reviews are hard to go by because of taste being so subjective, and the strange need guitarists have to be different, yet always searching for a certain tone no one ever finds.

Anyway onto the actual post for today, I was going to take picture of a pickup swap and post them up here, but I then remembered that the mighty Seynour Duncan himself has some very good vids that should cover most solid body electric.

The first is the Les Paul which should cover any Superstrats or front mounted pickups too



And the second one here is for Pickguard mounted electronics.



I haven't yet put one up for hollow body or semi hollow bodies because I have a 70's epiphone casino I need a full electronics and rebuild which I will post pics while doing it and post up here.

Hope this gives you a bit more guidance and confidence about changing the pickups in your guitar.

Hot Buzz!! - My Fender Telecaster Sheilding guide!

I own a Fender Telecaster, as you may or may not know, can be a little noisy at times.

They tend to pick up the 60hz mains electricity hum, plus no end of other interference from TV's and computers too.

This being the case I decided after getting a new Seymour Duncan Hot rails pickup I would do a proper job of Sheilding the guitar so that I can cut down on as much unessisary hum and noise as I could.

First thing I did was go to my 1 stop guitar parts shop, the brilliant Axesrus.com and ordered some self adhesive aluminium sheilding for under £5.

Then I stripped as much of the guitar down as I could without removing any electronics (bar the pickup as I was changing that anyway). It ended up looking all naked. like this!


As you can see it overlaps slighty onto the face of the guitar. I trimmed this back once the bridge and controls were back on. I had a large 2 foot by 1 foot sheet so I cut them into peices and let it overlap with each other untill all wood colour was gone.

I then put some on the reverse of the pickguard as well. I soldered the earth to the sheilding itself rather than on the back of the bridge, as I found that it would come loose from the bridge very easily. Make sure as always, but especially with earths, that the solder joints are nice and shiny. This ensures that its a good clean joint.

After soldering up the pickup I re-assembled it and bang it looked like this.

I plugged it into an old marshall 12 practise amp, as I know there are no fancy noise gates and was sounding great. Nice and punchy but with good lows too. Great pickup the Hot Rails. And I know its a humbucking pickup but, but I plugged in my guitar with EMG81/85 combo, which are active pickups well known for being quiet and you can barely tell any difference.

So all in all very impressed!!