Removing piezo electronics?

[Callan]

Has anybody ever removed the piezo board from a HBii or similar guitar?
I'm thinking of ways to get coil splits in mine without taking out a drill.
I don't use the piezo, so I'm thinking of taking the board out to make room for push/pull knobs.
I may want to reverse this all one day, so looking to do something that can be reversed.

Cheers,

 

[shinksma]

Apparently, if you send it into the PTC, Skitchy (IIRC) has a mod to install push-pull coil splits and keep the piezo, thus increasing (in theory) the value of your guitar, and certainly not decreasing it. But I would bet it isn't a simple $100 fee, either...

 

[garrett]

Has anybody ever removed the piezo board from a HBii or similar guitar?
I'm thinking of ways to get coil splits in mine without taking out a drill.
I don't use the piezo, so I'm thinking of taking the board out to make room for push/pull knobs.
I may want to reverse this all one day, so looking to do something that can be reversed.

Cheers,

I've seen this done a couple times. Seems to work just fine.

 

[Callan]

Apparently, if you send it into the PTC, Skitchy (IIRC) has a mod to install push-pull coil splits and keep the piezo, thus increasing (in theory) the value of your guitar, and certainly not decreasing it. But I would bet it isn't a simple $100 fee, either...

I'm a long way from PTC here in Australia I wonder if they'd ship the parts?
I wonder if something like the 'Free-way switch' would work? It would give me up to 6 combinations and might do the trick. Easy to reverse as well...
Or maybe I just put the $$ towards the PRS-SC hole in my collection

 

[Jazzedout]

If you want to split the original pickups, i'd suggest to check if they are splitable. Not all PRS pickups are...
I would also keep the piezo electronics and replace the volume and tone pots with push pulls for independent splits of the bridge and neck pickups.

 

[Callan]

If you want to split the original pickups, i'd suggest to check if they are splitable. Not all PRS pickups are...
I would also keep the piezo electronics and replace the volume and tone pots with push pulls for independent splits of the bridge and neck pickups.

The originals are 2 wire, but they live in my Les Paul these days (seem like a great pickup for a Solidbody / Singlecut, but didn't work for me in my Hollowbody)
My HBii has BKP Mules in it now, which are 4 wire.

The Piezo HB units have a circuit board in the way, preventing the tone pot from being able to be replaced with a push/pull.
Thus the reason to look at either removing the board, or using some crazy 6 way switch to get the various combinations.