ESB-4SC pickup replacements?

[pablopepper]

Yeah, shoot. I missed the gold part.

[Simon Barden]

If you found some reasonably priced and sounding pickups with chrome or nickel plated covers, it would be possible to remove the covers and have them gold plated. There should be quite a few companies around offering a plating service. Probably a lot cheaper than buying the only premium pickups you can find just because they've got a gold finish. It could be done with the stock pickups, but you might want to see how they sound first before going down this route.

[Dedman]

these in gold rings would be close-ish
http://www.rockinger.com/index.php?c...&product=DB15S

[wazkelly]

You could always brush up on your High School Chemistry lab experiments and have a go at Gold Plating. There are a few different ways to do this and the cost can be on the high side but this one works by brushing on a solution and there was another one on Amazon too. Alternatively you could go the full electrolysis method but that requires nasty chemicals and the donor gold may blow the budget. Plenty of info to be found on the internet.

http://www.goldplating.com/chemicals...oldPricing.htm
https://www.amazon.com/Liquid-Platin.../dp/B002SHS6M2

[Simon Barden]

You could of course fit all-black pickups but then use gold plated rings (as Dedman suggested) in a simple reverse of gold pups with black surrounds.

[nDR01d]

Wow, thanks guys for all the info. I do like the idea of gold plated rings with black pups. And thanks for the idea of DIY electroplating - but I think I'll ask around if anyone else does it first. If not, then because of budget constraints I may have to compromise and go with the black/gold setup, or even chrome - which I was really trying to avoid. I was hoping for the Gretsch White Falcon bass look. Kind of.

[wazkelly]

Never owned an axe with gold hardware but have seen many LP guitars that friends owned where the gold had been worn off or become badly pitted and corroded from perspiration. Seems like it could be very hard to keep gold hardware looking good if the axe gets played regularly.

[Simon Barden]

A lot depends on where you put your picking hand when playing and how acidic your sweat is. My 21 year-old LP still had 99% of the gold left on the stop bar, but maybe 50% left on the bridge. The tuners had a little bit of gold worn off on the edges but still look gold. OK, I've only just removed all the gold hardware and replaced it with nickel, but the tuners at least will be re-used on my ES-3 build. The pickups had exposed bobbins with gold polepieces, and they were still OK, though covered pups might have suffered a bit more damage - though again, it does depend on your playing style and hardness of pick etc.

Here it is pre-hardware change:

[wazkelly]

Nice axe Simon.

Out here the humidity can also play it's part with corrosion too. Where nDRo1d lives it does get quite damp & cold in winter and generally a lot drier heat in summer but still an area where most of the severe thunderstorms come from which also builds up the humidity.

Like most things, if well maintained and looked after it should be fine. Just a little bit more of a challenge in coastal regions where salt air will corrode anything metallic.

[Simon Barden]

It will also depend on your house construction, and whether you've got AC. Brick-built houses have a lot more thermal mass than wooden ones, so internal temperature variations tend to be less (unless some form of fairly close temperature control is in operation). AC units can really suck the water out of the air, so it can end up very dry unless there's some form of humidification or a very humid make-up air supply.

But if you mainly keep your guitar in a case, that should protect it from sudden temperature and humidity changes. Having them permanently out on stands or hanging on the wall is probably not the best way to keep guitars in coastal locations.