Installing guitar pickups on semi hollowbody

Have you ever looked at a semi-hollow or hollow body guitar on the wall at your local music store and wondered how the heck they get the electronics in there? Fortunately I did some research, performed some trial and error experimentation on my own semi-hollow a very nice Epiphone Dot and found what I consider to be the best way to wire up a hollow body guitar. Start by removing the pickguard and putting it aside.

Next, remove the knobs. I use a rag wrapped around the knob to pull them off without scratching the finish. Once the knobs are off, you can use your wrench to remove the nuts from the pots, jack, and switch.

The pots and switch will fall through into the cavity. You should now be able to gently extract the pots and switch through the F hole. Start with the components closest to the center of the F hole usually the switch and work your way back, using the wires to pull components toward the F hole. The jack should come out last. I use a hand towel to protect the finish.

At this point you should have the pots, switch, and jack out of the guitar with the pickup wires still connected. You can either de-solder the pickup wires or use wire cutters to clip them off. Just feed the leads of the new pickups back through the holes in the pickup cavities. Removal of the old components is now done. To make the template, put a piece of non-corrugated cardboard over the guitar, use finger pressure to find where the control holes are, and very carefully poke through the cardboard with a punch or a nail to make a hole for your template.

You can enlarge the holes with a pencil or a round file until they are big enough for the controls to be mounted snugly. Wire up your pots, switch, and jack on the template. Always use more wire than you think you will need. If your wiring is too tight, it will be very difficult to get it back into the guitar. If you need to know how to wire up the components, Seymour Duncan has plenty of good wiring diagrams to help you. At this point, I strongly recommend testing your wiring before proceeding.

It will be very difficult to troubleshoot problems once the controls are back in the body. Use a multimeter, circuit tester, or just plug the dangling jack into an amp and tap on the pickups. Run a length of wire approx two feet is usually plenty through the jack mounting hole and down into the cavity. When you see the wire in the cavity pull it up through the F hole.

Make sure the wire is long enough for one end to stick out the jack hole, and the other to stick out the F hole. Replacing either the neck or bridge humbucker at a time suffices for making subtle tonal adjustments at an affordable rate.

And the same principle applies to the humbucker designed for the bridge. On the other, hand if you want your instrument to highlight its organic warmth better, change the neck pickup.

As for replacing the stock pickups in your semi hollow-body with new ones, go through the following steps At the same time, remember that once you disconnect the stock pickups, they become useless except if you leave adequate wire for reattachment later on.

Before you start looking for the ideal humbucker s , make up your mind about what exactly you expect from the pickup. Skip to content Are you looking for the best pickups for semi-hollowbody guitars? Pros Bridge humbucker pairs perfectly with semi hollow-bodies Robust midrange presence with ascending clear high-end It does well with a lower-output neck pickup for reliable sound with negligible feedback Cons You may have to deal with some amount of feedback Check Current Prices How to Change Pickups in a Semi-Hollowbody Guitar?

Use thick adhesive electrical tape to wrap both the soldered ends and after that, cover both jointly with the tape. So, the Best Pickup for Semi-Hollowbody Guitar Is… Before you start looking for the ideal humbucker s , make up your mind about what exactly you expect from the pickup. The 4 Best P90 Pickups Reviews Check Price.

Seymour Duncan Antiquity Humbucker Set. If you have heat sink connectors on hand that would be much better, in which case do the appropriate steps up to this point to attach those. Then wrap them both together with the tape.

You should cover the ends of any unconnected wires with tape too. BAM, you are done! Here is an instructional video I slapped together to explain this with visuals and a real life example. If you have ever had an Epiphone you know that the stock pickups are junk and have are terrible resale value, so it was no big deal to destroy the stock pickups in order to install these new ones. These new pickups do sound great by the way!

Your email address will not be published. Time limit is exhausted. G Dorian Jam track Here we have a fresh backing track for you to practice your Dorian licks. This piece has a nice funky pocket, and its driven heavily by the drums and bass.

There Read more…. Hello, good people of the internet. Here is a backing track in A minor Phrygian.