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I want to remove the front shell from my pickups. Bad idea?


maruaderguy

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I want to remove the front chrome shell off my les paul pickups. I freed my neck pickup on my '89 les paul and looked under it and there are two very smooth (nicely applied) large areas of solder on two of the undersides holding that shell in place. If I remove that solder using a solder remover, and take off the covers, will it screw up my pickups?

 

Or should I buy some late 80's 49x pickups that are already missing the covers and install those?

 

I want my guitar to look like this?

 

Imsxasxxaxge1_zps4ac19623.jpg

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I want to remove the front chrome shell off my les paul pickups. I freed my neck pickup on my '89 les paul and looked under it and there are two very smooth (nicely applied) large areas of solder on two of the undersides holding that shell in place. If I remove that solder using a solder remover, and take off the covers, will it screw up my pickups?

 

Or should I buy some late 80's 49x pickups that are already missing the covers and install those?

 

I want my guitar to look like this?

 

Imsxasxxaxge1_zps4ac19623.jpg

Removing the covers from your pickups shouldn't hurt them. It's pretty common for people to remove their pickup covers.

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Hello!

 

My advice is to use a quality soldering iron. These solder joints are pretty tough ones, until You melt them You might heat up the whole cover. Use a solder sucker and heat sinks too, and Your pickup will be safe.

 

Cheers... Bence

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If the pickups are wax-potted, you might need to use a heat gun to 'melt' the wax after you desolder the cover from the baseplate. If the pickups are non-wax-potted, then all you will have to do is desolder the cover and off you go. I did this to a set of Sheptones, purely for cosmetic reasons, no discernible difference in tone. Good luck.

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I've done it. It's fairly simple to do. Occasionally, depending on the brand of pickup, there'll be a layer of wax to clean off.

 

I actually removed the chrome covers on one of my Hollow bodies to replace them with black covers, its actually quite simple.

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