Duffy
New Member
I have decided to solder raw nickel/silver covers onto the zebra pickups that came stock in my brand new SE Custom 24, vintage yellow. I was inspired to do this by Shinksma because I am very impressed with the job he did doing so on his SE ZM, spalted maple. Check out the, "Show me your ZM . . ." thread.
So far I have ordered raw nickel/silver covers from Phily Luthier Tools and they are about to show up at our house. My plan is to install the raw metal covers "as is", or I may take some 220 sandpaper and gently sand up and down on the top of the covers to give them a "brushed nickel" appearance. I'm not sure yet. I'll have to look at the covers that I get. They may look uniformly great just the way I get them and compliment the trem plate and guitar just looking "raw". I want that raw nickel/silver look, but some light sanding might also look great and give the covers that cool linear brushed look.
My plan is to put the covers over the pickups and not use any type of wax potting or other attempts to quell any microphonics "before" I check them out just plain soldered on.
I am going to use a clamp and clamp the pickup into the cover for a tight fit and then prepare the soldering sites, lightly sanding a two small areas on the baseplate and two more areas at the corresponding areas on the long sides of the metal covers. Then I will apply a small amount of soldering flux to the soldering site and quickly heat a soldering site with my 40 watt Weller pencil style soldering iron. I hope that "quickly" heating up the soldering site will result in a concentrated area of heat rather than heating a large area of the cover and pickup using my 15 watt soldering iron, in order to get the site up to a high enough temperature to melt the "leaded" solder. I will wrap the area of the pickup around the soldering site with a wrung out, damp washcloth, used as a "heat sink" to keep the body of the pickup as cool as possible without getting it wet. This cooling technique may help to keep the heat of the soldering iron from damaging any parts of the pickup itself. I plan to heat it up quickly, apply the solder and get the heat off of there as quickly as possible.
Then I plan to check the aspect of the pickup in the cover and, if oriented well, with the screw heads centered in the holes, proceed to tack solder pickup base on the other side to the cover; hopefully doing a nice balanced looking job with the pickup adjustment screws looking properly aligned when viewed from the top of the pickup.
I'm hoping it will be this simple and I am going to try to do this with the pickups still wired to the guitar, just turned over with some protective material, such as a dish towel, under the pickup and surrounding area to protect the guitar top from any accidental dropped solder, etc.
If the pickups turn out to be microphonic at all, due to there being no wax potting between the pickup and the cover, I hope that the feedback is of the pleasingly nice sounding type.
Evidently all of the early Gibson humbuckers were unspotted as well as some of the currently made models of Gibson's and many other premium pickup making companies.
I think that the raw nickel/silver covers will look very decent on the SE Custom 24 vintage yellow, brushed or just totally raw. That dulled out look may be more pleasing to my eye than the sometimes unsightly bright and reflective chrome plating; if not, I'll order some chrome or nickel plated versions and install them.
Does anyone know if I will notice a tonal change as a result of the open coil pickups being under a metal cover? The pickup adjustment screws will be directly exposed to the strings, as before, but the pole pieces will be under the metal cover.
this will be my first time trying this mod, and I have no ideas whether or not it can affect the sound of the pickups. I understand that some players remove the covers with the understanding that they will be getting a somewhat different sound from the pickups. Whether or not there is any truth to this or not, I do not know. It seems reasonable that the metal cover, although probably mostly transparent to the magnetic field, could absorb or reflect some of the magnetic field waves; to what extent I do not know.
Anyway, this will be an interesting mod for me.
Note: I have some identical Seymour Duncan JB bridge pickups in various guitars, some of which have metal covers, and I cannot hear any significant difference between the open coil and metal covered ones. Does anyone here notice a difference?
Feedback appreciated.
I'll take some before and after pictures with my very decent digital camera - Nikon L810 or D5000 DSLR.
I'm hoping that this interesting mod will go well and I'm excited about trying it.
So far I have ordered raw nickel/silver covers from Phily Luthier Tools and they are about to show up at our house. My plan is to install the raw metal covers "as is", or I may take some 220 sandpaper and gently sand up and down on the top of the covers to give them a "brushed nickel" appearance. I'm not sure yet. I'll have to look at the covers that I get. They may look uniformly great just the way I get them and compliment the trem plate and guitar just looking "raw". I want that raw nickel/silver look, but some light sanding might also look great and give the covers that cool linear brushed look.
My plan is to put the covers over the pickups and not use any type of wax potting or other attempts to quell any microphonics "before" I check them out just plain soldered on.
I am going to use a clamp and clamp the pickup into the cover for a tight fit and then prepare the soldering sites, lightly sanding a two small areas on the baseplate and two more areas at the corresponding areas on the long sides of the metal covers. Then I will apply a small amount of soldering flux to the soldering site and quickly heat a soldering site with my 40 watt Weller pencil style soldering iron. I hope that "quickly" heating up the soldering site will result in a concentrated area of heat rather than heating a large area of the cover and pickup using my 15 watt soldering iron, in order to get the site up to a high enough temperature to melt the "leaded" solder. I will wrap the area of the pickup around the soldering site with a wrung out, damp washcloth, used as a "heat sink" to keep the body of the pickup as cool as possible without getting it wet. This cooling technique may help to keep the heat of the soldering iron from damaging any parts of the pickup itself. I plan to heat it up quickly, apply the solder and get the heat off of there as quickly as possible.
Then I plan to check the aspect of the pickup in the cover and, if oriented well, with the screw heads centered in the holes, proceed to tack solder pickup base on the other side to the cover; hopefully doing a nice balanced looking job with the pickup adjustment screws looking properly aligned when viewed from the top of the pickup.
I'm hoping it will be this simple and I am going to try to do this with the pickups still wired to the guitar, just turned over with some protective material, such as a dish towel, under the pickup and surrounding area to protect the guitar top from any accidental dropped solder, etc.
If the pickups turn out to be microphonic at all, due to there being no wax potting between the pickup and the cover, I hope that the feedback is of the pleasingly nice sounding type.
Evidently all of the early Gibson humbuckers were unspotted as well as some of the currently made models of Gibson's and many other premium pickup making companies.
I think that the raw nickel/silver covers will look very decent on the SE Custom 24 vintage yellow, brushed or just totally raw. That dulled out look may be more pleasing to my eye than the sometimes unsightly bright and reflective chrome plating; if not, I'll order some chrome or nickel plated versions and install them.
Does anyone know if I will notice a tonal change as a result of the open coil pickups being under a metal cover? The pickup adjustment screws will be directly exposed to the strings, as before, but the pole pieces will be under the metal cover.
this will be my first time trying this mod, and I have no ideas whether or not it can affect the sound of the pickups. I understand that some players remove the covers with the understanding that they will be getting a somewhat different sound from the pickups. Whether or not there is any truth to this or not, I do not know. It seems reasonable that the metal cover, although probably mostly transparent to the magnetic field, could absorb or reflect some of the magnetic field waves; to what extent I do not know.
Anyway, this will be an interesting mod for me.
Note: I have some identical Seymour Duncan JB bridge pickups in various guitars, some of which have metal covers, and I cannot hear any significant difference between the open coil and metal covered ones. Does anyone here notice a difference?
Feedback appreciated.
I'll take some before and after pictures with my very decent digital camera - Nikon L810 or D5000 DSLR.
I'm hoping that this interesting mod will go well and I'm excited about trying it.
