quote:

Originally posted by sigspecops:
I've always wished that guitars had a standard pickup mount so that all you had to do was press the pickup into the mount, like putting a battery in. Imagine being at a guitar store and being able to easily swap between pickups until you find the sound you're looking for. Without all the disassembly and soldering.

The closest you're gonna find are the ones with solderless buss kits. EMG makes them and I think a few others do. But it's no small feat to pull a Strat pickguard off and swap pickups. And then check out how to do that on an ES-335 (not that you'd want to replace those stock pickups). Just ain't gonna happen. You will need to solder and rely on your ears or Youtube videos for comparisons.

quote:

Originally posted by sigspecops:
I've always wished that guitars had a standard pickup mount so that all you had to do was press the pickup into the mount, like putting a battery in. Imagine being at a guitar store and being able to easily swap between pickups until you find the sound you're looking for. Without all the disassembly and soldering.

Truth is, it’s entirely possible. But if it worked the way you imagine it would, everyone would have been doing it for decades already. There’s a ton of how and why I’m not gonna get into, but suffice it to say there’s reasons the guitar industry doesn’t have an Mlok equivalent standard for stuff like this. Plus, solderless connections aren’t optimal for this application, a good solder joint is.

EMG or Gibson offering Molex connetors isn’t what I would call an affirmation for it being ‘done right.’ One is a guitar manufacturer, first and foremost, and always has been; the pickups are simply functional because you can’t sell an electric guitar without them. The other, well, they make some stuff that some people like, but tone isn’t their overriding concern, and if anyone thinks the 9v powered ceramic inductive devices that ride in so many pointy guitars made overseas at all resemble what’s in the guitars that endorse them... I hate to disillusion them, but those pickup covers fit over all kinds of stuff.

Even the solder you use makes a difference - stranded vs solid wire too.

I soldered a star grounding system into one guitar. McClish synth pickups into others. Hand wound my own pick ups. Put in a Jensen oil filled capacitor into another. Had Ren Wall wire up one system with a spin a phase. Split coils. And so many other things.

The load due to solder and wire and cap and potentiometers in terms of voltage and size, linear vs audio vs cheapos makes a difference.

As I said, its just fun. I've tried butt splices to do quick changes but there's nothing like solder.

On the acoustic side, I have used modular kinds of connectors but that is how some of those systems are designed.

By the way, if you like the Seymours but get hum, you might try star grounding or a Faraday cage out of paint or foil in the control cavity. . . . works for me.