500T and 496R with pickup covers

[Bruno Codes]

I am an owner of a Gibson Flying V Faded 2008 and got a bad bridge pickup last month (500T) cause of some kind of melt or erode on the pickup's side tissue. And probably some sweat or finger touchs on the exposed coil wrecked it. The fact is: I LOVE 500T and want to replace the broken one with a new 500T. But I am afraid of having the same problem with the new one and this is driving me to replace it with a covered pickup (like EMG's). So, the only solution for replacing the broken pickup with a new 500T would be using a cover like a Gibson PRPC-Bridge over the 500T (and 496R too, with a PRPC-Neck, just for matched pickups). I know it's not a factory option, but that's the way I found to have a protected pickup.

 

About the cover solution I have 2 questions:

 

1) Is there any warning about using a 500T and 496R with PRPC-Bridge and PRPC-Neck?

2) Would these covers change the pickups' original tone?

 

Thanks!

[capmaster]

Hello Bruno,

 

sad to hear about the unlucky end of your 500T.

 

As for 496R, the tone is affected somewhat more by the active circuit without a cable-simulating capacitor than by its stock chrome plated cover in my Alex Lifeson Les Paul guitar. Since the source impedance is even higher this way, and the cover still has no significantly adverse effect, I don't think it will deteriorate tone in passive use with a common cable capacitance.

 

I also don't think the losses would be remarkably higher for a 500T, but one has to be rather fast when soldering a cover to it. As far as I know, there are two additional magnets instead of maple spacers, and heat will weaken the magnetization. However, they made several Gibson guitars with covered 500Ts, so I think it should work on principal.