SB S-500 Project Pickup Start
This is the starting point with 3 S-500 pickups removed from the pickguard.
Date: 09/06/22
This is the starting point with 3 S-500 pickups removed from the pickguard.
Prying off ceramic magnet with baseplate after heating the baseplate with a soldering gun.
Heat the baseplate with a soldering gun to remove the ground lead and to heat the ceramic magnet sufficiently to pry the magnet and baseplate from the coil. The pickup cover stays on the coil section and does not have to be removed.
Date: 09/06/22
Heat the baseplate with a soldering gun to remove the ground lead and to heat the ceramic magnet sufficiently to pry the magnet and baseplate from the coil. The pickup cover stays on the coil section and does not have to be removed.
S-500 pickups with magnet and baseplate removed from each pickup.
Bottom view, the magnet and baseplate has been removed from each pickup. The middle pickup is RWRP, since I'll be aligning all the new magnets as N up I'll have to reverse the connections for the middle pickups (2).
Date: 09/06/22
Bottom view, the magnet and baseplate has been removed from each pickup. The middle pickup is RWRP, since I'll be aligning all the new magnets as N up I'll have to reverse the connections for the middle pickups (2), shown above with the green and yellow leads. I'll use the green lead as Hot vs the yellow lead as was originally wired by G&L.
S-500 pickup top view
Top view, the magnet and baseplate have been removed as well as the adjustable polepieces. Clean out the holes where the threaded polepieces were with a 1/8" dowel to get the excess glue out. I'll be using 1/8" diameter neodyium magnets to rep
Date: 09/06/22
Top view, the magnet and baseplate have been removed as well as the adjustable polepieces. Clean out the holes where the threaded polepieces were with a 1/8" dowel to get the excess glue out. I'll be using 1/8" diameter neodyium magnets to replace the removed bits.
S-500 magnets
These are the magnet/baseplates removed from the 3 S-500 pickups. Looking carefully at the magnets you'll see the center one has a reveresed polarity, that's the RWRP pickup with the green/yellow leads. When I install the replacement neodyium string mag
Date: 09/06/22
These are the magnet/baseplates removed from the 3 S-500 pickups. Looking carefully at the magnets you'll see the center one has a reveresed polarity, that's the RWRP pickup with the green/yellow leads. When I install the replacement neodyium string magnets I'll set all of them to be N up, using the same polarity for all the pickups. This will require that I reverse the leads of the green/yellow lead pickup to be in phase with the other pickups. So instead of green being ground the yellow will be grounded.
S-500 6 Pickups Modified
The black colored pickups are from my "07" S-500 Tribute (which became my Comanche VI+), the gray colored pickups are from my 09 S-500 Tribute (which will become my Sunburst S-500+. The impedances left to right are:
5.49k, 5.19k, 5.48k, 5.14k, Date: 09/07/22 The black colored pickups are from my "07" S-500 Tribute (which became my Comanche VI+), the gray colored pickups are from my 09 S-500 Tribute (which will become my Sunburst S-500+. The impedances left to right are:
5.49k, 5.19k, 5.48k, 5.14k, 5.16k, 5.26k. Between the high and the low thats almost a 7% difference in DC resistance. The "09" pickups have very consistent DC resistance readings.
5.49k, 5.19k, 5.48k, 5.14k, Date: 09/07/22 The black colored pickups are from my "07" S-500 Tribute (which became my Comanche VI+), the gray colored pickups are from my 09 S-500 Tribute (which will become my Sunburst S-500+. The impedances left to right are:
5.49k, 5.19k, 5.48k, 5.14k, 5.16k, 5.26k. Between the high and the low thats almost a 7% difference in DC resistance. The "09" pickups have very consistent DC resistance readings.
07 & 09 Pickguards S-500
"07" and "09" Tribute S-500 pickguards. Same shape but different shielding. The "09" also had a ground lug screwed into the wood underneath the pickguard with no conductive coating or metal shielding foil applied
Date: 09/07/22
"07" and "09" Tribute S-500 pickguards. Same shape but different shielding. The "09" also had a ground lug screwed into the wood underneath the pickguard with no conductive coating or metal shielding foil applied. The good news is the pickguards are an exact match (other than shielding) so a Chandler 6204 Comanche VI pickguard will fit on the S-500+ needing only some new screw holes drilled and some old holes filled. I will have to modify that pickguard to work with these full sized pickups.