Jump to content
Gibson Brands Forums

PUP REPLACEMENT FOR '14 SG SPECIAL..OR NOT!


shababy

Recommended Posts

I need any input I can get! I am considering replacing my neck and bridge pup on my '14 sg special. Especially the neck pup. I'm also considering just installing a preamp to have more control over the existing ones. What size pup can I put in the neck? Standard humbucker? M.M.? Is there any particular preamp that compliments the existing pickups? Lastly, where on Earth can I get a replacement cover for the neck pickup? That's driving me crazier than anything!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello Shababy, and welcome here.

 

I own two SG basses featuring same types pickups as yours. The weirdest thing was the rattling of the neck pickup cover at certain notes. I addressed the problem with removing the cover and putting narrow-cut, self-adhesive felt stripes to both sides of the four "pole screws" - no rattling anymore after reassembly. I set "pole screws" in quotation marks since they are none. Being placed right at the dead center of the magnet, they don't carry any magnetic field and thus affect neither tone nor level. Using a common ferromagnetic screwdriver will prove that - it won't be attracted by the "pole screws" obviously being there for looks only.

 

The neck pickup has a proprietary size different from everything else. There's a DiMarzio replacement, but I don't recommend that.

 

When about tone - that's why I own these basses, with roundwounds on one and flatwounds on the other one. I think a toggle switch would be better than the two "reverse wired" volume pots severely loading down the pickups when turned down. They only make sense cranked up. I typically have one at 10 and the other one at either ten or turned down only a bit. In this case the pickup just turned down to 8 or 7 doesn't contribute to the tone anymore. However, it will when the other volume pot is turned down a bit, too, but as mentioned before, the sound is badly affected by the pots' loads.

 

This circuitry, widely spread on Fender Jazz basses, can't be improved with an active circuitry which also would help only with at least one volume pot fully open. In case you don't like the way of using I described above, I recommend the following: Remove one volume pot, replace it with an SG toggle switch, wire its inputs to the hot wires of the pickups and its output to the remaining volume pot's outer leg which is not soldered to ground. This is the correct, "non-reverse" kind of wiring which won't load down the pickups. Then the volume pot's center tap is connected to the output jack's hot leg, and the tone pot has to be wired to the output signal path like before. Now you have just one volume pot, but you didn't have to route the body and drill an additional hole, and the volume pot acts like it should and most of the common volume pots do.

 

Hope this helps.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...