Testing Pickups In the Guitar--thoughts

[jschweid]

Hi, new to the forum, but have been making pickups and working on guitars as a hobby for awhile. I have a dedicated guitar that I ear test pickups in. It's a Les Paul that is very predictable, has good natural resonance, and it allows me to compare pickups. The problem is that every time I make a new pickup the swap out is kind of painful. Once upon a time I saw a set of pickup testing rings on ebay that allowed for quick swaps...but I've never seen anything since. Has anyone figured out a way to swap the pickups out of a guitar quickly...solder free...etc. Searched the site and couldn't find anything...so if there is already a thread on this, I apologize. Appreciate your thoughts.

Jonathan

[big_teee]

Welcome Jonanthan:
There are all kinds of ways guys test them.
I use a Stop tail guitar like your LP.
Easy to get apart, and it has a rear access body cavity .
I have one that I soldered short test leads to the Pots.
I install the pickups and on the rear I use small wire nuts to connect to the test leads.
Pretty easy and painless, and you don't have to solder to the pots all the time.
GL,
T
** I hope others jump in with how they test pickups?

[chad h]

I suggested that my luthier-friend build a guitar specifically for pickup testing. I envisaged the body being constructed in two layers : front and back. The front layer could be sliced into three segments: the part that attaches to the neck, the part that holds the bridge, and the middle section that could hold all of the electronics. That middle section of the front layer could be free to slide in and out of place, while the ends would be permanently attached to the back. Effectively, the middle section of the front layer would be a removable cartridge. It would be simple to produce multiple cartridges, so that you could have multiple sets of pickups ready to go, and could swap them on the fly. No need to loosen strings or anything.

Ergonomically, I imagine this thing would not be convenient to play. The tone/volume controls and the jack would end up in the wrong place. But for testing pickups it would be extremely useful - especially as it would allow for immediate comparisons between pickups without lengthy periods in which aural memory degrades.

Of course, this project has never progressed. And I have no real idea whether such a guitar could work effectively.

[Steve A.]

I agree with Terry's suggestion for humbuckers. Some suggestions... make sure that it is easy to pull the strings out of the way to access the pickups. (I will hold them in place with masking tape.) Also I would try to drill a hole from the neck pickup to the control cavity. Otherwise you would need to remove the bridge pickup to change the neck pickup. I assume that you are starting off with a junker guitar...

Steve A.

[jschweid]

Appreciate the ideas. Have an Epiphone Les Paul-- that I bought for $100 at a garage sale that I test with. It is surprisingly quite good tonally. I will take it to my friends at Lays Guitar and see if they can help route out (no pun intended) a good solution.

[mcgruff]

I use header strip connectors so pickups don't have to be soldered in to the guitar wiring. I'm also planning to cut pickup routs right through the body of my guitar so I can mount pickups quickly from the rear. One day all guitars will be like this

[LtKojak]

http://music-electronics-forum.com/t15009/#post119347

A good idea from one of our own members.

http://www.tdpri.com/forum/tele-home...ml#post4733040

http://www.luthiertalk.com/forums/11876-post11.html

Other takes on the same subject.

HTH,

[buddha0709]

I bought a cheap $50 SX strat from rondo for this purpose (though I think it went up to 70 now).

I was going to use the "channel" idea found here, routing an easy slide in and slide out route for neck, middle, bridge.
Not sure how I was going to do the mounting system yet though.

For connections I bought a large terminal block with the 2 rows of screws. Just leave one side connected to your pots and leave the other side open to screw in the wires from the pickups. I'll probably rig up some wiring and switches to switch from 500 to 250k pots (maybe via switching a resistor in/out of the circuit) and push pulls and whatever else I can think of.