SOLVED: Help Please... physically mounting P bass style PU in a Bronco (strat) hole.

[NCD]

Thanks for checking this. First of, I'm no kid. I'm not intimidated by wiring or a little work. That said, I'm looking at my new Seymour Duncan SPB-3's and totally baffled about how they're supposed to mount.

The old PU is a strat type, with screws going through the pick guard, through a spring and then into the PU itself. As you tighten the screw it pulls the PU up towards the strings and the spring pushes back to allow for adjustment.

The SPB-3's have screws that go through a plastic cover, don't even touch the PU at all and then there are 4 pieces of surgical tubing.

Searching Google for half an hour showed me a gazillion pics of wiring, which I don't need, and pics of parts... but no pics at all about how the PU is supposed to mount.

Any tips here would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[Tommorichards]

First off the pickups are 2 different types.
If you want to fit the P pickup into the bronco, you will need to route a hole, and attach it like you do in a normal P, or get a SCPB type pickup.

 

[NCD]

First off the pickups are 2 different types.
If you want to fit the P pickup into the bronco, you will need to route a hole, and attach it like you do in a normal P, or get a SCPB type pickup.

This I already knew. What I need to know is exactly how the P pickup fits in a P bass physically. Is it a matter of screw holes in the body? If so then I need to build up material in the center to get some height and when I use the router I'll need to go to a specific depth to ensure that the P pickups mount correctly.

Every time I look for a picture on the web to see how it mounts, all I get are pics of the pickups themselves or wiring diagrams... I've got 25 years in troubleshooting and repair of electronics. I can handle a couple of 250k ohm pots wired according to the diagram that came with the SPB-3's... what I don't have is anything showing me how they need to fit on the body of the bass.

 

[Hopkins]

They screw into the body, usually with a piece of high density foam under them for the height adjustment.

 

[Tommorichards]

Here is the body route for them

They simply fall into place on top of a piece of foam, then the screw goes through the top of the pickup, through a spring which sits between the pickup and body and is screwed in.

 

[NCD]

They screw into the body, usually with a piece of high density foam under them for the height adjustment.

That explains the surgical tubing. I'll have to measure the existing cavity and probably get longer screws for the center ones, then router our the far corners. I'm installing them at an angle to line the strings up so there will be some routing involved. Now that I know how the pickups mount, I can determine the depth I'll need to cut to.

Thanks.

 

[NCD]

Thanks to you too Tommy!

 

[NCD]

I used a dremel to carefully, but not neatly, route out enough material to get the pu's in there at an angle to try to keep the stings centered. The pick guard is a mess and I need to fabricate a trim piece to go around the new SPB-3's and I have to solder the connections yet but with my being a tech for a living I had to do a test to make sure it all worked, right?

Oh...

My....

God...

If anyone would have told me a week ago that a Bronco could sound this good I'd have called them a liar. It was a lot of work, but more than worth the effort!

 

[Tommorichards]

Cool. You got any pictures?

 

[NCD]

I'll take some after I have a trim piece to cover the hacked up pick guard. I'm debating on trying to get a blank one and routing it myself but I'm not sure how hard that would be to find for a bronco... the P Bass ones won't fit. I checked when I got the SPB-3.

I'm still playing around with it but the tone is astonishing. I got to thinking about modern electric basses when I was at the store... they had a number of "travel basses" that looked more like sniper rifles than bass guitars, the bodies were about the width of a rifle stock.

That got me to thinking... if those things can command $400-500, then it can't possibly be the density of the wood in the body that's giving them their tone... there isn't much of a body there in the first place. So what is it?

It has to be the PU's.

For the most part I appear to have been on the right track. I have $109 invested in the Bronco and another $60 in the SPB-3's, plus elbow grease. For that I've got a bass with a tone that I can't tell apart from a $1,000 P bass. Maybe a seasoned player would be able to tell, but I can't. Especially once I tossed the foam back in at the bridge.

I wonder if I could sell them for $400 if they were done cleanly and looked good. There really aren't a lot of good sounding options out there for short scale players and there are a lot of people, like me, who have had shoulder injuries and just can't hang their arm way out there on a 34" scale neck all day long.

 

[NCD]

Well, here are a couple shots with the gaping hole. It may be a few days before I build a nice trim piece to cover it, so I figured I can toss a few up before and after she gets trimmed out.