Reverbdrips wrote:
If you look at a guitar as a whole, we all know swapping parts changes how they sound. That happens because wood, metal, and various other materials have different weight and vibrate differently.
Here is an extreme example -
The guitar neck mates perfectly with the body and all four screws are well mounted, add string tension and strum a chord. Let’s call this the perfect sound we can expect this neck and body can achieve without adding the variable of swapping bridges or other parts.
Now take a piece of cardboard, rubber, etc and put it between the neck and body. The tone or sound of that guitar will fundamentally change.
The same concept applies to pickups and how they are mounted. Because a pickup has characteristics of a microphone they can behave in a similar way. Direct mounting a pickup to wood sounds different than it suspended in the air with springs or under foam.
The first time I’d heard of this was watching a video on G.E. Smith talking about his favorite tele that was the base of his signature model produced by Fender. He preferred the tone of the pickups in old lap steels from Fender which were very similar to Tele bridge pickups. He would take those pickups and mount them in the bridge of a tele and not get the tone he was after. It wasn’t until he cut his bridge in half and then direct mounted the pickup to the body did he get the sound closer to the lap steel tone. This is why his signature model has the half bridge and pickup direct mounted.
This happens in other guitar manufacturers as well, Anderson and MotorAve to name a few.
Sorry if my snarky comment of “tone sucking” was taken the wrong way. Plenty of guitars have foam mounted under the pickups and that has its own sound, neither good or bad.
I hear what you are saying and agree.
Hollow body jazz boxes need to resonate tone and not allow the pickup mounting to interfere with the wood top, so the pickup is suspended and "floats'
For that Telecaster example, it makes sense that for sustain on the bridge to mount direct into the wood better than suspended below the bridge plate.
I really have no idea how a standard Jaguar pickup is attached other than screwed to the wood.
There has to be some kind of height adjustment so there must be a rubber tube similar to a Telecaster neck.
Or is the body cavity the perfect depth that the screwed connections of PU bottoms out?
I ordered those Stew Mac foam springs because I think if this refit is going to work I need adjustment.
Heck if after the height is determined why not epoxy wood shims to screw into more solid?
Seeing as I believe most PU are adjustable height I don't think there is going to be much of an issue.