Anyone knows how to make Gibson Classic 57 to floating pu?

[Cunamara]

Here is my Classic 57 converted into a neck mounted floater. There were a number of things that had to be done. Cutting off the legs for the mounting screws, filing down the cover so that it was flush with the bottom plate of the pickup, cutting a relief in the side of the cover so that the pick up wire could exit from the side rather than the bottom due to clearance issues against the top of the guitar, cutting down the pole piece screws so that they don't project through the bottom of the pickup into the top, fabricating and mounting a bracket. This was done, as you can see, with three flathead brass screws, and there is also epoxy between the bracket and the pickup cover.



Pros and cons: the pro, of course, is it you have the Classic 57 pickup on an archtop guitar which sounds pretty good. The cons are that the pickup is a half an inch tall, this basically fills the space from the top all the way to the surface of the fingerboard. Meaning that the pickup is in very close proximity to the strings. That gives it a tendency to be rather boomy and bassy. Lots of EQ necessary and there is quite a bit of sensitivity to the sonic characteristics of the room at gigging volumes- at least with my Benedetto style guitar. This did not work particularly well with my tweed Deluxe amp, which is also very bassy; it was better through my AI Clarus 2r and Raezor's Edge Stealth 12.

[jzucker]

Here is my Classic 57 converted into a neck mounted floater. There were a number of things that had to be done. Cutting off the legs for the mounting screws, filing down the cover so that it was flush with the bottom plate of the pickup, cutting a relief in the side of the cover so that the pick up wire could exit from the side rather than the bottom due to clearance issues against the top of the guitar, cutting down the pole piece screws so that they don't project through the bottom of the pickup into the top, fabricating and mounting a bracket. This was done, as you can see, with three flathead brass screws, and there is also epoxy between the bracket and the pickup cover.



Pros and cons: the pro, of course, is it you have the Classic 57 pickup on an archtop guitar which sounds pretty good. The cons are that the pickup is a half an inch tall, this basically fills the space from the top all the way to the surface of the fingerboard. Meaning that the pickup is in very close proximity to the strings. That gives it a tendency to be rather boomy and bassy. Lots of EQ necessary and there is quite a bit of sensitivity to the sonic characteristics of the room at gigging volumes- at least with my Benedetto style guitar. This did not work particularly well with my tweed Deluxe amp, which is also very bassy; it was better through my AI Clarus 2r and Raezor's Edge Stealth 12.

that's why i went with the biltoff version.

[garybaldy]

I did a quick simple search on Classic 57, and retrieved this:

https://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/sear...archid=1389442

What's odd is that at the bottom it says "1-12 of 26." But then there's no way to advance to the next 14.

I started a thread a while back querying that search issue but never got to the bottom of it. Where are those elusive search items? So the website knows of them, but won't let you see them! Very frustrating.

[garybaldy]

Here is my Classic 57 converted into a neck mounted floater. There were a number of things that had to be done. Cutting off the legs for the mounting screws, filing down the cover so that it was flush with the bottom plate of the pickup, cutting a relief in the side of the cover so that the pick up wire could exit from the side rather than the bottom due to clearance issues against the top of the guitar, cutting down the pole piece screws so that they don't project through the bottom of the pickup into the top, fabricating and mounting a bracket. This was done, as you can see, with three flathead brass screws, and there is also epoxy between the bracket and the pickup cover.



Pros and cons: the pro, of course, is it you have the Classic 57 pickup on an archtop guitar which sounds pretty good. The cons are that the pickup is a half an inch tall, this basically fills the space from the top all the way to the surface of the fingerboard. Meaning that the pickup is in very close proximity to the strings. That gives it a tendency to be rather boomy and bassy. Lots of EQ necessary and there is quite a bit of sensitivity to the sonic characteristics of the room at gigging volumes- at least with my Benedetto style guitar. This did not work particularly well with my tweed Deluxe amp, which is also very bassy; it was better through my AI Clarus 2r and Raezor's Edge Stealth 12.

Nice work. Are the screws that fix the bracket to the cover self - tappers? Presumably they are incredibly short!

[Cunamara]

Jack- yes, the Biltoft pickup is easier, customizable to the application and sounds great, with some choices about the sound you want to get from it. If I had it to do over again, that's the route I'd take. To be honest, all things considered, it's a better plan to buy a pickup designed for this from the get-go.

Gary- yes, very short. IIRC I used a tap, but drilling the holes I hit the coil and broke the wire. I sent it to Kent Armstrong, who repaired it and balanced the coils. He also filed down the screws protruding into the pickup space. See the paragraph above.