Doing away with pickup foam and springs?

[tommorichards]

Is there any sort of method whereby you can adjust the pickup height to a set level and have it sturdy without the need for a spring / material underneath it? LIke using metric bolts or something with a retainer to keep the height....

hmmm

Erm, im gonna have a little look into this. Ill let you know what happens

[jmchich]

I imagine if you used an appropriately-sized piece of wood, then remounted the screws without foam or springs it would work. Or you could use a high-density foam that doesn't squash so much.

[booboo]

You could stack thin washers tho the right height on the screws between the pup and the body. this would be solid and wouldn't move, but although the foam seems a bit old school it does give you real micro-adjustment.

[LukeFRC]

like warwick's bridge setup, 4 bolts to adjust height, two to fix in place

[ikay]

Zon and Alembic use a method for mounting pickups designed to eliminate springs and foam. It works for 4 screw pickup mountings and has two screws on one diagonal that push up (from under the pickup) to set height and two screws on the other diagonal that screw down to lock them in place. More details here - [url="http://www.zonguitars.com/zonguitars/online_userguide/adjustments.htm"]http://www.zonguitar...adjustments.htm[/url]. Relevant section is 'adjusting soapbar pickups' along with the two bottom diagrams on the right of the page.

Excellent mounting system and locks the pickup firmly in place rather than floating. Bit difficult to visualise but when viewed from the top it looks like two of the mounting screws are missing (these are the two that push up under the pickup). You can just about see that on the pic below.

[attachment=150402:IMG_0589-crop.jpg]

Edited December 13, 2013 by ikay

[tommorichards]

thats not too far from what i was thinking of, with threaded inserts. Thats pretty cool

[tommorichards]

So i got some pieces, and what ive put together works as well as i hoped. I just needs smaller heads on it, and a proper thin spanner for the lock nuts. Ive used m3 wood inserts at the bottom. Here are a few pictures of what ive put together as a test.:

[ikay]

Hmm, ingenious! With this fixed locknut arrangement there will presumably always be a tiny degree of play to allow the screw to turn freely for up/down adjustment. With the Zon/Alembic method the pickup is more firmly locked in place. It needs a four screw mounting to work though. This is an interesting variation for a three screw mounting.

[tommorichards]

[quote name='ikay' timestamp='1387317354' post='2310734']
Hmm, ingenious! With this fixed locknut arrangement there will presumably always be a [b]tiny degree of play to allow the screw to turn freely for up/down adjustment[/b]. With the Zon/Alembic method the pickup is more firmly locked in place. It needs a four screw mounting to work though. This is an interesting variation for a three screw mounting.
[/quote]
This is what i was sort of after. What the sponge, spring allows for.