SE 594 Piezo compatibility?

[derFunk]

About a year ago, I had my trusted luthier put a Graph Tech Ghost piezo + Acoustiphonic preamp system into my CE24 Semi-hollow (the purple one in my avatar). It's amazing, and I play it all the time. I need acoustic tones sometimes, because our church just doesn't have a regular acoustic player and so I'll pick up some of the acoustic parts when the time is right. I also have an SE Hollowbody II but it just doesn't gel with me. I like it but I don't love it, and I think it's the way the hollow body plays with the clean tones; my SE 594 sounds different despite having the same pickups.

I'm researching whether that's possible on the McCarty 594 SE. The bridge is KINDA Tune-o-matic style, which makes me think that it MIGHT be possible. Graph Tech makes TOM-style piezo bridges. But I'm curious if anyone here has ever replaced the bridge on an SE594. Is the spacing the same as either the import/metric or USA/imperial Gibson TOM? If so great, but if not, I'm kinda stuck I guess.

Anyway, if anyone has any advice, I'd love to hear it. Thanks!

 

[frankencat]

The best I can say is that it might work. According to some sources the saddles are interchangeable with Gibson style tuneomatics although I don’t know for sure. I don’t think the bridges are interchangeable so it would be a matter of swapping the piezo saddles over to the 594 bridge - assuming they fit. Does PRS make a piezo 594?

 

[derFunk]

PRS makes a wraptail 594 core model in a hollow body but no solid body. Simplest solution might be a P22 and do a pickup swap.

 

[derFunk]

So, just to follow up on this, I talked to my sales rep at Sweetwater, and the SE 594 bridge is compatible with the Graph Tech Ghost Tune-O-Matic style bridge made for 4-mm studs. The cost to have them do the work is kind of high at $600 + the cost of the parts (I could basically buy two SE 594s for what I'm paying for this), but I don't have a clue what I'm doing. Since they are doing the work, they include it as part of the 2-year warranty, so I figured what the hey. They're routing a battery box separately and doing the wiring to my spec, too. I just ordered it on Wednesday and the Graph Tech parts are a special order so it will probably be 4-5 weeks before I get it. When it comes in I'll be sure to post photos.

 

[derFunk]

I might be the only person on earth that cares about this, but here is the final product as delivered from Sweetwater today. You can see that they had to plug and re-rout the studs for the bridge if you look REALLY closely but it's hard to see. Impossible from a distance. They also routed the cables right through the body and added a separate battery box. The parts plus the guitar were in total about $1200 and the custom work was around $600 but in my estimate, it's worth every penny.

I think the SE 594 is beautiful. My S2 10th Anniversary 594 doesn't look as nice IMO, which is a really weird spot considering that it's quite a pricey guitar. I guess I'd like to have the USA pickups in the SE, but for now the 58/15 LT "S" pickups are nice. The acoustic bridge is exactly what I wanted. Stereo jack that gets split when it goes out to my Helix. Gonna get a lot of enjoyment out of this instrument. <3

Here are some quick pics I took:

https://imgur.com/a/hJyknbk