Originally Posted by
RomanS
Pablo, measure the distance between the top of your guitar and the underside of the strings - typically a P90 measures about 18 or 19mm from the bottom of the baseplate to the top of the polepiece screws, so if you add a bit of clearance, you need about 21-22mm clearance for the P90 to be able to float above the top of the guitar, in that case, you will be fine with spacers, as only the pole screws will protrude into the body (the Lollar video isn't really relevant here, since it is about a solidbody guitar, where the P90 sits inside rather than on top of the guitar).
If you've got less than those 21/22mms, your P90 baseplate will alos have to go inside the body; you will have to cut the four corners of the HB route, where the humbucker frame holes are located. The length of the P90 baseplate (without mounting tabs) is 84.1mm - almost identical to the length of the humbucker route WITH the HB mounting tabs (that's about 84-85mm, there's some variation); the length of the route for the baseplate of the humbucker is around 70mm (again: +/- 1mm); so you need to cut out the 7mm difference in length on each of the corners of the humbucker route, to make it one long rectangle (rather than a short one with "ears").
Even if you can float the whole neck pickup above the body inside its cover, you probably still won't be able to reuse the four HB frame mounting screw holes - unless you've got so much clearance that the P90 baseplate would sit even above the shim itself - something like 30mm; I doubt that that's the case with the neck pickup...
Now, about covering the width of the HB route with your shim: a HB route is about 39-42mm wide - there's no hard rule for that, some builders use more some less, they only need to take care that it's more than the 38.5mm of the HB baseplate, and less than the 44.5mm of the HB ring. A P90 dogear cover is 40mm wide - so it may cover the HB hole, but most likely, there will be a tiny gap on the sides. In that case, you'll need shims that are slightly wider than the dogear cover, about a mm on each side. However, if you look at pictures of vintage ES175s and ES295s, that's actually historically correct - they also had shims that were wider than the actual covers (on most ES295s they even painted the shims the same gold color as the body...)
As for your original conundrum, I'd totally do it, and I wouldn't mind drilling for dogear mounting screws, either. Dogears look a lot cooler than HB-sized P90s; a 90s Gibson is not exactly a rare "vintage" guitar; as you said, this is a "user" guitar, so make it useable, and disregard resale value. And if you have to sell it for whatever reasons: If you check the forum here and other places, there's quite a bit of demand for P90 ES175s, but there aren't that many around - so some buyer might actually appreciate to find your guitar, and not having to mod one himself...
And: a guitar is a tool for making music, not an investment - I never even think a second about resale value. Unless it's some historically significant, rare vintage guitar, mod away!
Replacement rosewood bridge base for 1977 Gibson...
Today, 02:39 PM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos