pete.young Posted June 12, 2007 Share Posted June 12, 2007 I have a jazz body bought from someone on bassworld which is an OK plank but the pickup routing is abysmal. The neck pu will be OK because I can fit a scratchplate, but the bridge one is horrendous, the bumps are in the wrong place and the slot isn't wide enough. If I fit a Seymour Duncan MM pickup or a Wizard combo set I reckon that will give me a way to use the body, but it'll mean re-routing the cavity and making a template. I've got loads of 5mm acrylic and reasonable fitting skills so I'm reasonably confident that I can make a decent set of templates up. Question is, how much space do I need to leave around the outline of the pickup cover to make sure that the hole is the right size? It's quite critical for the bridge pickup. I was thinking along the lines of the pickup plus the thickness of the router guide sleeve. Someone must have done this. What are the pitfalls? How much clearance do I need? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lfalex v1.1 Posted June 13, 2007 Share Posted June 13, 2007 Whilst I [i]do[/i] own a router, I don't have the exact answer. However... had you considered sizing it up a bit on the small side, and practising on some old off-cut of MDF? Then offer up the pick-up cover, and see if it fits. If it does, great. If it doesn't, enlarge your template and have another bash. Keep going until it's just right! Don't make the mistakes I have with a router; i) Trying to pull a bit from the collet with your fingers. Never underestimate just how sharp router bits are ii) Hitting a screw which you'd forgotten was beneath the surface being routed. Molten metal in the eye is painful. Please wear eye protection etc.! Hope this helps! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pete.young Posted June 13, 2007 Author Share Posted June 13, 2007 [quote name='Lfalex v1.1' post='16664' date='Jun 13 2007, 08:24 AM']However... had you considered sizing it up a bit on the small side, and practising on some old off-cut of MDF? Then offer up the pick-up cover, and see if it fits. If it does, great. If it doesn't, enlarge your template and have another bash.[/quote] Good suggestion. I'm certainly going to practise on an old plank or two before tackling the real thing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JPJ Posted June 14, 2007 Share Posted June 14, 2007 [quote name='pete.young' post='16158' date='Jun 12 2007, 12:21 PM']I have a jazz body bought from someone on bassworld which is an OK plank but the pickup routing is abysmal. The neck pu will be OK because I can fit a scratchplate, but the bridge one is horrendous, the bumps are in the wrong place and the slot isn't wide enough. If I fit a Seymour Duncan MM pickup or a Wizard combo set I reckon that will give me a way to use the body, but it'll mean re-routing the cavity and making a template. I've got loads of 5mm acrylic and reasonable fitting skills so I'm reasonably confident that I can make a decent set of templates up. Question is, how much space do I need to leave around the outline of the pickup cover to make sure that the hole is the right size? It's quite critical for the bridge pickup. I was thinking along the lines of the pickup plus the thickness of the router guide sleeve. Someone must have done this. What are the pitfalls? How much clearance do I need?[/quote] It will depend on your router. Most routers come with a collar which fits in the bottom of the baseplate to act as a follower to go around a template. To work out the offset, fix the collar to the router and fit the bit you are going to use for the routing. For pickups I use a 6mm straight cutting tungsten carbide bit (about £30) because this gives you nice tight corners (3mm radius) and nice sharp edges. Measure from the outer edge of the collar to the outer edge of the router bit and that will give you the offset, or how much bigger than the pickup the hole in your template will need to be. Word of caution though. Most router collars are too big to get into the 'blisters' for the pickup mounting screws. So what I do is drill the blisters using a 13mm drill (or rather a 6mm followed by a 10mm followed by a 13mm) BEFORE I route the pickup cavity. This way you get nice sharp blisters and your routing template only needs to be a square hole. I have a fairly high power router which has a 4mm offset from the collar to the bit, but this means the collar is something like 14mm across making it too big to get into the corners of pickup routes. So to do the corners, I 'plunge' the router in at the four corners before routing out the meat of the pickup route. Alternatively, you can get the same effect by drilling the four corners with a 6mm drill. Hope this helps, and good luck, and practice on some scrap before attacking your bass body! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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