Direct mounting

[Spychocyco]

Not really a wiring question, but pickups, so apologies if this is the wrong place to ask.

I'm working on an MM1Q at the moment, and thinking ahead. The pickup rings just don't work for me. On the lower side of the body, the corner of the ring is going to go right to the edge of the guitar if not over a bit, and to be honest, I just prefer the no-ring look that my EBMM Axis models have.

I'm concerned, though, about having enough wood to properly direct mount the pickups. At the bottom of the pickup routs, there are indentions on either side to accommodate the adjustment screws on the ring mount. It doesn't look like there's a lot of wood between the bottom of that and the back of the body, and I'm wondering if I'm going to be able to get screws in there far enough for a good, solid hold.

Anyone done a direct mount on a similarly routed guitar who can offer some advice?

[Dedman]

I did it on the Community project Supa Strat. I put some short springs under the tabs for height adjustment. Had no problems. Just check the length of your mounting screws.

[Simon Barden]

Have you tried measuring the depth of the cut-out area and taking that value away from the depth of the body to give the actual wood depth at that point?

You may well find that you need to raise the pickup height up anyway, so you could glue some wood blocks to the bottom of the cut-out to give you the height, plus more depth for screws.

I'd prefer to fit some foam under the pickups rather than use springs, or even sit the pickups on the top of two or three short but wide brass wood screws, which you can use to adjust for the pickup height, then screw it down using screws through the tab holes so that the pickup is solidly attached to the guitar.

[wazkelly]

I actually did this on my 2nd build and had 2 attempts at it before getting the right height.

In recent times, and on one of Frankenwashies build threads - clear coated Tele I think, this topic came up again and a bright spark suggested using a metal bracket screwed into the middle timber part underneath the pickup and for the mounting screws to screw down into such either through springs or latex tubing as found on Tone Rider Tele pickup arrangements.

The way I went required filling the deep side holes with rounded off timber to fit the unusual shaped holes and purchasing longer pointy nosed screws. Also delicately drilled 2 fresh holes ether side of the original mounting screw hole just in case I wanted to swap them out at a later date. No springs were used and I may have placed some high density foam underneath. Memory is a bit sketchy as this was done around 18 months ago and done 4 more builds since.

These shots might help....
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Cheers, Waz