PRS pickup rings: Flat or tapered, for stoptails?

[Kiwi]

Crowdsourcing a less-than-life-or-death decision here.

I was noticing the difference between flat and tapered pickup rings. For PRS stoptail guitars, it appears that tapered rings hold the top of the humbucker level(er) with the strings.

McCarty: ( A little tilted here)

DC-245:

Even the hollowbody Archtop:

However, the stock rings on a P22 are flat. Pickup looks tilted. Do we care?

The tapered rings would appear to be preferable, no? Holding the top of the pickup flat to the strings? What sayeth the PRS experts here?


=K

 

[shinksma]

Well, the trick is to ignore how the pickup is sitting, and compare just the ring to the strings. In all your shots they look parallel - even the P22. So it looks to me like PRS uses a tapered vs. flat PU ring depending on whether the bridge is raising the strings from the body or not.

BTW, I copied your photo of the P22 PU ring into an image editor, rotated a smidge, and overlaid a rectangle for comparison, and the P22 ring looks slightly tapered anyway, as far as I can tell. Not as severely as the others, but still tapered (again, AFAICT).

 

[John Beef]

Your P-22 actually has the new style rings that PRS now uses on all guitars with traditionally shaped humbuckers. See how the height adjustment screw is set into the ring? The others aren't like that.

 

[Kiwi]

Your P-22 actually has the new style rings that PRS now uses on all guitars with traditionally shaped humbuckers. See how the height adjustment screw is set into the ring? The others aren't like that.

Yes, the chamfered screw hole is a nice touch.

Shinksma: thanks for the note, and I think you're right: the P22 stock ring is slightly tapered as well.

=K