Surfing Waves

Hey, since I think there are a few guitarists on here, I just thought I'd ask if anyone has had any experience with upgrading the pickups on their electric guitars?

I've just bought a Seymour Duncan Jazz Model for the neck of my SG... and I figure I can install it myself, but if anyone's actually done this, any pointers or things to watch out for will help me heaps!

Not my field of expertise but i read a lot of really usefull stuff on this forum regarding such things http://www.guitarzone.com/w/Main_Page

good luck and keep us updated always liking checking out some mods

Bah pickups are a (couple) of coils of wire, with 2 wires leading off to the other componentry, take the old one off, solder the new one away you go.

RJD wrote:Bah pickups are a (couple) of coils of wire, with 2 wires leading off to the other componentry, take the old one off, solder the new one away you go.

Thanks for the confidence!!! I figured it was probably just a case of following the old wiring..

Will let you know how it's all going when my pickup arrives in the post.. Hopefully any day now!

Well, my pickup arrived today, so naturally I set about installing it in my guitar...

I unscrewed everything I could - both existing pickups and the back plate covering the wiring. I cut out the old pickup wires, and removed the old epiphone neck pickup, and put in my new seymour duncan.. then I struggled through poking the wires through the holes in the body to take them back to the vol. pot.

At this stage, I thought I had done pretty well.. and went to the pub.

about 4 hours later I got back home, and thought I should solder it all up.

So... I stripped the wires, and discovered that there were 5 wires - instead of the 2 wires coming out of the epi!

Never fear - look at the instructions I though! but alas - they only told me how to connect up 3 of the 5 wires... So on to the interweb for other user tips! 30 min later, and I've got everything (hopefully) soldered up correctly, and reassembled!

Hooked up to an amp, the pickup makes noise, and better still, there's much much better tone than before....

But alas - it's after 1am, and I can't actually play my guitar now for fear of waking up the neighbours, and the first chance I'll get won't be till the weekend - probably sunday night... NOT FAIR!

LOL @ the pub break before soldering

Suprised there so many wires, new fangled contraptions! Wasnt on my SG!

no, the SG is simple - there is only a hot wire (the core) and an earth (the sheath) on the stock pickup - where as the new Seymour Duncan has the capability to run as a split coil pickup - therefore has 2 extras to allow separate connection to a switch....

In spite of this - it all went well - I just wish I had half a chance to play it properly!