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aschleman
Registered User
Joined: 04/26/05
Posts: 2,051
aschleman
Registered User
Joined: 04/26/05
Posts: 2,051
08/04/2005 12:43 pm
Hm... The '57 Gibson pickups you are referring to is a humbucker... am I correct? So in short you want to put a Humbucker in your acoustic electric guitar... Correct me if I'm wrong... The guitar that you have has a quite shallow body which is going to make this job a nightmare... and along with that comes a lot more stuff that will make this job a nightmare. Its not impossible but you may want to think twice after all this:

1. It's built to be an acoustic. Your guitar is an ACOUSTIC/electric... an acoustic first, electric second... This means that they designed it as an acoustic guitar. Acoustic guitars are different than electrics in that their woods and structural integrity are much much more vital to the sound. If you go cutting into the soundboard of your guitar you are going to be putting a significant damper on the tone... as well as cutting through the soundboard you will be cutting through the bracing which will compromise the structural integrity.

2. Due to the fact that this acoustics body is so shallow it will be hard to work on. You probably won't be able to fit your hand inside to fit the neccessary pots that you would want (1 volume and 1 tone). You would also need to be able to access the current jack to be able to wire the pick up into. Along with that you would need to ground the pickup... which is harder to do on acoustics...

3. The magnitude of the job... This job will require cutting, sanding, drilling, soldering in tight places, custom wiring, along with a lot of swearing from being frustrated.... This job is not impossible and I would be the first to admit that it would be very cool.

The wiring itself would be the easiest part if you ask me. You can get wiring scematics all over the place on the internet... if you find one that is a two humbucker configuration just neglect the second ones wiring. that would pretty much be how you would wire it. I would have a toggle switch wired in as well so that I could wire in the signal from the acoustic preamp and the pickup... giving you the ability two switch between just acoustic, acoustic/pickup, and just pickup. So give it some thought... if you decide you're dead set maybe I will do a schematic for you.