Carved top guitar with a set-in humbucker?

[campusfive]

I actually can't argue with you on this one. It's not a vintage guitar or a luthier-made one, so it's fungible. I'm still against something like this by default, but I can see what you're going for.

Funny thing is, I found a listing for a late 30's L-5 that was...shall we say, "suspiciously" low priced, and I thought about how much I'd be willing to pay for an L-5 shaped home for a CC-pickup. No matter how messed up the guitar was, I could probably work with it, since I was going to be carving a hole in the top anyway.

Of course, I checked and Johnny and Oscar Moore's L5CC's were almost certainly parallel braced, and the guitar I was looking at was almost certainly X-braced, so I passed. Probably wouldn't be able to fit the pick up on there...

Still...

[campusfive]

Wait a second... weren't ES-250's x-braced.... oh, here we go....

[vinlander]

also consider the pickup placement. When I cut the top on my emp reg I had to cut off the last inch of the braces. That was years ago. Still stable and I sleep very well at night. If had to cut the braces closer to the middle I would be more concerned

Happy it turned out good for you with a full CC-rider, in my case I was too stuck in the humbucker mindset and I routed a classic 57...which was later swapped for a Humbucker CC. If I was to do it again I would go your way with the Rider.

[Hammertone]

...Johnny and Oscar Moore's L5CC's were almost certainly parallel braced, and the guitar I was looking at was almost certainly X-braced, so I passed….

Wait a second... weren't ES-250's x-braced.... oh, here we go....

In the late 1930's Gibson Advanced body archtops changed from x-braced/short scale to parallel-braced/long scale. There was some overlap. I'm sure some of the folks here have direct experience with this as well. I'll check the ES-250 available to me and get back...

[Spook410]

I dropped a heavy Sunrise pickup in my oval hole Mr. Wu which allows for a pretty good amplified acoustic sound with PB strings. Didn't impact the sound of the guitar unplugged but I don't think the area around an oval hole vibrates all that much anyway. Do you think you could see the braces just putting a powerful LED light inside the body below the area to be cut?

[Eddie Lang]

A few years ago, I put just a few mini Christmas lights inside my (former) 1957 Martin 00-18 to capture the brace pattern.

I know that the top of a flat-top is thinner than the one of a carved archtop, but it could probably work if you put more of those lights inside. (Then cover the sound holes, and turn the room light off.)

[Ol' Fret]

LED lights are helpful. I use a conventional saxophone LED leak light tester and a bigger pocket mirror (not the one of my missis!). The mirror is epoxy-glued to a long, semi-flexible, loop-like (double) wire. This way you can adjust the mirror - with the long wire ends put outside the sound holes - at any point and in each direction/angle. Much better overview and brightness, IMO, than with any of those endoscopes (perhaps except extremely costly ones).

Identify the center seam from the inside around the area where you want to place the PU and count the spruce grain lines from the center to the outside, up to the inner edges of both tone bars. Note that some bracing might be asymmetrical, like on old Epiphones. Then put the template for the pick-up notch onto the soundboard and shift the template until you meet the particular number of grain lines. As any good guitar maker is trying to use boards with parallel, strictly quartered grain (it's often different with the backs), you can't go wrong with this procedure. It's done in one or two minutes, you have just to control beforehand that the center seam is also the center line of your guitar - which, IMO, it is in by far most of cases.


Here an old ROGER guitar with a set-in PAF-type humbucker (not done by me!). Unplugged there's very little difference in sound, volume or power, compared to other full-hollowbody ROGER guitars (1940s to 1960s) that were always supplied with floating single-coil PUs or offered as pure acoustic guitars. There are a few days when I think I could hear a difference (but never on Saturdays... ). Plugged, of course, there's always a difference of timbre!

One advantage of PAFs - and reason for success, I think - is, IMO, that their electric sound component (timbre) is relatively strong. They level the sound of different guitars (built more or less acoustic lively, like it happens in any production line) to more "uniformity" or brand "recognizability", if that makes sense. It's easier and more profitable to get more equal and uniform sounding guitars by adding pick-ups which sport a stronger "color" than building equal and more uniform guitar boxes - and add to them relatively clear-voiced or natural PUs. A sacrilege to state, I know, but some players will still have to realize that not all guitarists are enthusiastic about PAF-style properties.




Ok, you think a German Carve guitar like the pictured may be something unconventional... Maybe it is for you.
Then you could pass on cutting a hole into a top and instead add a full-size floating humbucker. It's not the typical American style (I know Peter Bernstein... ), but is, at least, practical to perform on many ROGER guitars and some other lesser known German guitar brands too.
The reason is that on many German vintage guitars the neck extension is fully floating above the soundboard, quasi the real cello style. Another reason is that on certain German archtop guitars, in contrast to the majority of US made archtops (dare I say even some really prestigious ones?), first the cutaway area was sawed out, only after this the carving done. Again, the real cello style, which they also imitated on cheaper laminated or pressed solid soundboards. These measures create some space where a full-size neck pick-up can be placed more easily.
More cello-related coherences exist on certain guitars, for example, the empirical fact that the tone and power of acoustic archtops often gain from a (even sligtly) higher strings' break-over angle, which implies a bit more bridge height. But this is another topic.

[Cunamara]

If there's enough room between the top and the strings, putting a full sized neck-mounted floater on the guitar might work. I believe- without any actual scientific proof- that the same pickup mounted to the neck versus the pickguard will sound very different. I base this mainly on the differences I hear between a Gibson Johnny Smith and similar guitars with pickguard-mounted mini humbuckers. The latter sound brighter and thinner to me.

I modified a Gibson classic 57 to fit my carvetop as a floater (not without a misadventure requiring the pickup to be sent to Kent Armstrong for repair).

I am quite pleased with the amplified sound of this guitar now- much more so than I was with the original pickguard mounted mini humbucker or the Kent Armstrong 12 pole floating PAF that replaced it. Again without any actual proof I think that mounting the pickup solidly to the end of the neck makes a difference. The sound of the neck mounted 57 is close to the Pete Bernstein type of sound.

There is a lot of fiddling to this mod, however, and first there has to be room for it between the top and the strings- many archtops don't have quite enough room. I had to file down the cover to be flush with the base plate, move the pickup wire exit hole to the side of the cover, fabricate the neck bracket and attach it to the cover in the right place. It might be faster and easier to mount it into the top! The reason I didn't with my guitar was due to a consultation with a local luthier; he was concerned that the top plate wasn't thick enough to accommodate the loss of strength that would result from cutting a hole into it, as well as being concerned about whether the X bracing allowed room for the pickup.