Quick Disconnects on a Guitar?

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Inspired

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I'm often upgrading my Strat; experimenting with pickups and whatnot. As most of you probably know, this requires taking off the pickguard in order to get to all of the electronics. Many times I've thought how much easier these kinds of jobs could be if all the wires that are attached to the pickguard had Quick Disconnects on them. This would allow you to freely take the whole pickguard assembly away from the guitar in order to work on it. Is this a bad idea?
 
It's a cool idea. Making it work on a gigging guitar will be a fun challenge.

I used to work at a music store. We sold tons of pickups. I routed a junker strat-style guitar so you could swap out pickups in about a minute. No pickguard at all. Just pickups, volume controls, switch, and jack. I used little speaker wire connectors from Radio Shack, the little springy ones like on home stereos, so we didn't have to solder the pickups in. The guy who owns the guitar repair shop really liked it, so I made one for him. We put a breadboard on his, so he could try different wiring and components without soldering anything. It was butt-ugly, and not giggable, but it worked.
 
boingoman said:
It's a cool idea. Making it work on a gigging guitar will be a fun challenge.

I used to work at a music store. We sold tons of pickups. I routed a junker strat-style guitar so you could swap out pickups in about a minute. No pickguard at all. Just pickups, volume controls, switch, and jack. I used little speaker wire connectors from Radio Shack, the little springy ones like on home stereos, so we didn't have to solder the pickups in. The guy who owns the guitar repair shop really liked it, so I made one for him. We put a breadboard on his, so he could try different wiring and components without soldering anything. It was butt-ugly, and not giggable, but it worked.
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Yeah, I'm doing all my mods on my main electric, so I like everything to be done perfect and neat. I was just curious if the quick disconnects would harm anything as far as tone or connection. I imagine not.

By the way, what's the "breadboard" that you speak of? I've never heard that term...
 
http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&product%5Fid=276-169

It's a little dealie you can plug things into to design and test circuits without soldering. The holes are all connected going the short way if you know what I mean, and you connect rows with little jumper cables or components. Pretty handy.

This is the one we used. It's about 3X6 inches. It has inputs for power, so he could work with active pickups and electronics as well.
 
boingoman said:
http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&product%5Fid=276-169

It's a little dealie you can plug things into to design and test circuits without soldering. The holes are all connected going the short way if you know what I mean, and you connect rows with little jumper cables or components. Pretty handy.

This is the one we used. It's about 3X6 inches. It has inputs for power, so he could work with active pickups and electronics as well.
Click to expand...

Wow! I can see how you could have a blast with that. A great way to test something before installing in your main guitar.
 
as far as i recall, GRETSCH had some quick connect pickups in the 60ies-70ies ... sorta plug and play :-)
 
for a strat, you just need one for the ground to bridge and for the ouput jack and the pickguard will come right off. I don't think there would be any problems unless you use sloppy connects that could come loose. I thought about doing the same thing for my knock off strat for trying out pickups.
 
TravisinFlorida said:
for a strat, you just need one for the ground to bridge and for the ouput jack and the pickguard will come right off. I don't think there would be any problems unless you use sloppy connects that could come loose. I thought about doing the same thing for my knock off strat for trying out pickups.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I didn't think there were that many wires to deal with. It's been awhile since I've been inside of it, but 2 or 3 wires sounds about right. Like you said. I think I'll go ahead and try it out. Guitar electronics is so much fun!
 
I dunno if this is exactly what you're talking about... but EMG makes pickups with a single cable connector so you can swap out pickups while keeping the wiring intact.
 
Inspired said:
Yeah, I didn't think there were that many wires to deal with. It's been awhile since I've been inside of it, but 2 or 3 wires sounds about right. Like you said. I think I'll go ahead and try it out. Guitar electronics is so much fun!
Click to expand...


I just shielded and star grounded my knock off strat using foil, spray adhesive, a capacitor, and a small wood screw. It did'nt kill the buzz from my old pc monitor but I think it helped some. I think I'm gonna wire up a couple of pickup switches to play with next.
 
TravisinFlorida said:
I just shielded and star grounded my knock off strat using foil, spray adhesive, a capacitor, and a small wood screw. It did'nt kill the buzz from my old pc monitor but I think it helped some. I think I'm gonna wire up a couple of pickup switches to play with next.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the dreaded hum from old monitors. When recording a take, I have to shut my monitor off in order to avoid the hum! At least until I get around to purchasing a flat-screen LCD monitor. I've been told that these don't have the hum problem with guitars...
 
AlfredB said:
as far as i recall, GRETSCH had some quick connect pickups in the 60ies-70ies ... sorta plug and play :-)
Click to expand...


Ampeg. On some of the clear acrylic bodied Dan Armstrong models, there were slots in the body where you could slide the pickup blocks in and out from under the strings. Each block had a jack installed that would engage a plug in the slot when you slid it in. It was pretty slick; you could swap out pickups in seconds without loosening the strings.

Here's a picture:
http://guitargeek.com/gearview/873/

If you look right above the pickup you'll see the slot where it slides out. Ampeg has reissued these guitars and basses.
 
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