Pickguard on a contoured body?

[dincz]

Should I forget it or is there some relevant magic? I've got some very unpleasant excavations where the original humbuckers used to live on my Mingray.

[JPJ]

Tricky! Scratch plate plastic will bend with heat. What I would do is make the scratch plate to the shape I wanted, heat this in the oven until it is 'floppy' and then lay this on the subject bass in the correct alignment. Problems are the hot plastic can damage the finish on the bass or worse still stick to it, so I'd probably put a sheet of paper between the bass and scratch plate to minimise any direct heat transfer.

Once the plastic cools, it should retain the shape of the bass at least close enough that the screws will close up any gaps. You might have to file and fettle the pickup openings and neck pocket openings in the scratch plate as once bent, these will be slightly smaller than when you first cut them.

By way of an alternative, you could just make pickup rings to cover the gaps around your new pickups. Yamaha used to do this on the BB series basses that had chrome rings around the pickups. Looked pretty cool to me

Good luck if you decide to do this, and let us know how you get on!

Edited November 4, 2014 by JPJ

[dincz]

Thanks JPJ. The heat thing might just work - especially as I now realise the body is only contoured cross-wise and not length-wise so it's a simple curve. Pickup rings won't work unfortunately as you can see below.

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[BigRedX]

How about sanding the body flat in the middle?

[JPJ]

Ah! That explains why a pickup ring wouldn't work :-)