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Archtop pickups

1K views 13 replies 6 participants last post by  cboutilier 
#1 ·
Changing pick ups on an old archtop hollowbody but there are no pick up cavities, the old pick ups were attached directly to the wood using a sticky foam pad. Any suggestions on which pickups would work well for this? Any advice on the foam would be appreciated as well. Thanks
 
#2 · (Edited)
Welcome to the forum! I hope you enjoy being here and continue to participate /contribute.

What make and model is your guitar?

You can post a pictures from a host site (e.g., Imgur). A few pictures would save you from having to write 1000's of words (hint, hint).

What genre(s) of music do you want to use this guitar to play.?
That could influence the choice of pickups to some extent.

This should be an interesting thread. I can not remember ever seeing a thread about pickups mounted with sticky foam pads.

Cheers

Dave
 
#3 ·
Well hopefully they were screwed into the body and the foam pad was simply used for leveling or to act as a spring. If they were really just stuck in there this will be interesting :)
 
#6 ·
Very impressed with the enthusiasm of this forum!
I'll add some pictures as soon as I can
It is a Raven guitar, I do not know the model or much about them. Maybe you guys can fill me in.
I haven't found too much info on them but I was told they were manufactured in Japan and exported here to Canada under the Raven name in the 60's and 70's. I could very well be wrong about that.
I've attached a video that has a picture of a very similar guitar. The guitar in the video is in much better shape and looks more modern, with an updated headstock and pick up selector.
I got mine from a retired true road dog, it was in pretty rough shape. I'm in the process of changing the twisted neck and dead pick ups.
I love the look of the guitar, and it sounded great acoustically, I'd love to bring it back to life.
Sorry for the confusion, the pickup covers are screwed into the body with a small screw on each side, but the pickups underneath are held down by this red sticky foam. Is this normal?
I can't seem to find too much info on pick ups that are installed like this but I'm also not an expert.
Thanks for your help with this, sorry if you were expecting some rare and luxurious guitar

 
#12 ·
The sticky foam is there to prevent mechanical buzzing from an imperfect junction between the guitar body and pickup chassis. I was working on an older Teisco "Tulip" guitar the other day, and the pickups were also of the form that screws into the surface. Except in this case they sit on top of the pickguard, rather than affixed to the body directly.

I suppose one could approach your guitar in two ways. One is to preserve the guitar in the spirit in which it was created by finding updated surface-mount pickups that can fit the available space (and body-to-string clearance is critical here), and turning it into the best possible version of itself.

The other approach is to view it as a platform for development, maybe cut a hole or two, and install pickups better suited to whatever you view as "jazz" tone. Twenty-five years back, I had a Pyramid semi-acoustic that I modded before selling it. Much like what I imagine your Raven to be, it was fully hollow, which made it prone to feedback at anything greater than speaking volume, unless you were quite distant from the amp. Some more professional guitars (e.g. Epiphone Casino) are also fully hollow, but tend to use materials, like thicker wood for top or back, that diminish susceptibility to feedback.

I mention this because if your intent is to make it more than something you strum unplugged, you may want to consider ways to reduce susceptibility to feedback. That could be achieved by installing some sort of post or small block inside the body; ideally under the bridge. And that, in turn, would be facilitated by cutting one or two holes in the top for installation of humbuckers or P-90s. Alternatively, some sort of dense foam block could be wedged inside; not visible from the outside, but still damping unwanted resonances.

The limiting factor there may well be the nature of the neck/body joint. The picture suggests there isn't much room for any sort of larger-footprint alternative at the neck-pickup location. But at the same time, it also suggests a very normal bolt-on arrangement, given the extended heel. If you are amenable to it, take the neck off, post a pic or two of the lay of the land at the neck/body junction, and perhaps that will prompt some useful and feasible ideas. At the very least, one could pop a hole near the bridge for a larger-footprint bridge pickup. That said, I could see where one might want to preserve the cosmetic aspect of same-pickup-style-at-bridge-and-neck.
 
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