#pickupring

When I was looking for a couple of transparent pickup mounting rings for my new guitar project I was surprised to find out that none are available on the market. So I decided to build them myself.

Here we go!

Step 1. Buy some transparent plastic. 

Step 2. Cut rectangles out of it and put them together

Step 3. Drill a hole

Step 4. Put a screw into the hole

Step 5. Drill another hole

Step 6. Put a screw in the new hole

Step 7. Put the soon-to-be-a-cool-pickup-ring together with a standard pickup ring and shape it with a file

Step 8. More holes, more screws

Step 9. Use sand paper to flatten edges

Step 10. Use a drill and a file to make a slot for a pickup

Step 11. Buy some hex socket head cap screws. These are DIN912 M3x22. I follow the ‘tools minimization’ concept. Which means you should be able to set anything on the guitar with a minimal set of tools. It’s like if you’re on stage in the middle of a gig, you don’t have all your screwdrivers and keys in the pocket but only two standard hex keys fixed on the headstock (you must have them!). So all important screws on the guitar must fit one of those keys, otherwise you’re screwed!

Step 12. Take the ring apart and make bigger holes in the top layer. This is to let screws go a bit deeper into the mounting ring such as they don’t bother you when you play guitar

Step 13. Buy some micro switches to get all from humbucker and make the guitar really versatile. These are MMP 221R and MMP 231R from Knitter-switch

Step 14. It’s time to make some space for micro switches inside of the mounting ring. Use drill

Step 15. Super glue totally works to put all layers together

Step 16. This is optional and it makes the whole design a little better. Take a blank PCB and cut these little parts out of it

Step 17. Finally it is time to put it all together. Use this wiring diagram when soldering and super glue to fix it inside of the mounting ring

Step 18. Don’t forget hex screws

Step 19. Done! Now install some LEDs under your pickup and enjoy