Removing wood near the neck

[lamed]

Ok, this question is purely theoretical. Well, for now at least...

Imagine I had a cheap BC Rich bronze Warlock, wich I was planning to rewire in the near future. Maybe I would take the opportunity to add something in the vein of GFS Kwikplugs that allows to change pickups without soldering.

But then, swapping piclups would still involve loosening the strings quite a bit and unscrewing the pickup ring, so the plug system would not make much sense.

So, I was asking myself, what if I made the two pickup routes go through the whole body, allowing to access the pickup from the back of the guitar. That would allow to change them very quickly and make the guitar a perfect platform for me to learn how pickup design influence the sound. This would be great.

My concern is off course about reliability of the guitar after such a modification, especially on the neck side. Would not removing so much wood here hurt the body/neck junction, and make the neck somewhat plunge or even break the body where it's bolted?

The guitar is prettu much the same model as this one.

The body is agathis, bolted mapple neck, wraparound bridge and HH pickup configuration. I use 10-46 strings on it.

Tanks in advance for any hint about this mod feasibility. I only own two guitars and both of them are cheap ones, so this warlock is more dear to me than you would think, and I won't do anything if I'm not certain that the risks are very low (I know that there is no such thing as zero risk, though).

[newey]

My concern is off course about reliability of the guitar after such a modification, especially on the neck side. Would not removing so much wood here hurt the body/neck junction, and make the neck somewhat plunge or even break the body where it's bolted?

Your concerns are well-founded. Will it be OK? Who knows? Even if the guitar doesn't deform structurally (or break), you will probably affect the sustain to some extent and perhaps unbalance it as well.

this warlock is more dear to me than you would think, and I won't do anything if I'm not certain that the risks are very low (I know that there is no such thing as zero risk, though).

If that's the case, why do it? What you are describing is a pickup testing "mule", which can certainly be a useful thing to have, but why use a guitar that is dear to you to make it? Granted, these bronze series BC Richs aren't expensive guitars (my stepson had a bronze-series Bich a few years back, very similar to yours but with a different body shape.) But, if you like the guitar and it plays well for you, why start cutting it up?

If you want/need a pickup mule, hit up the pawn shops or internet ads and find a $50 cheapie to modify into your test mule. You'll probably spend more on pickups to swap in/out than you will on the test mule. If it breaks in two, you're only out a few $$ (and you could probably recoup some of that by selling off the hardware from the broken axe). If the harmonics are off or it doesn't play very well, so be it, it's just for testing anyway.

[lamed]

Aug 1, 2019 10:10:43 GMT -5 newey said:

If that's the case, why do it?

Off course, I won't. I was just checking if my worries may have been unfounded. That way I would have had both a test mule and a nice extra feature on one of my guitars. I don't think I'll buy a guitar, even an extra cheap one, just to try that mod. In fact, I'm mainly playing with ideas and trying to decide wich ones are worth trying with the guitars I own.

Thanks for avoiding me having to find for myself and have regrets. I'll stick to wiring mods (it's so much easier to resolder some wires than to make dead wood grow again...) and changing tuners for now.

If anyone here has some idea (be it less more more crazy than mine) to make a cheap 'pickup swapable axe', I'd like to hear about it, though. Having a sweet spot for metal but quite eclectic tastes, the idea of a super versatile guitar has always seduced me. But at the same time, I have a lot of hobbies and tend to swap from one to another often, so I'm bound to stick to cheap guitars and won't buy one of these 5K bucks guitars where you can swap pickups with one hand while programming the pickup switch behaviour via USB with the other... (maybe with an arduino, a first price Epiphone and some magnets... no, forget it).

[sydsbluesky1]

Nutz way?

Set up some guides and use a plunge router to route a few straight channels into the back of the guitar, the exact external dimensions of a carbon fiber truss rod such as are sold many places across the web, just to either side of the intended hole from the neck to the middle of the body a bit past the bridge. Inset rod. Do a clean enough job, and you can clear coat over them and have a pretty industrial looking structural element. You can glue them in with something as simple as a medium weight super glue (thick will trap bubbles and thin will make a mess). That's assuming the body would even move... CA (super glue) has a notoriously weak shear resistance, but as long as you are adding rigidity you may as well do it right. The rods will be mostly resisting a pull along their grain structure in this function. Or use... epoxy. Hard to get smooth, either way.

Carbon fiber is even resonant! Don't use Kevlar. It's an energy sink, say people I tend to believe. Removing that much material is very unlikely to make much appreciable difference in the guitar itself, but the rods... may? That Rob Chapman guy from the Andertons videos might hear it, but I don't think any mere mortal would. We're not talking shaving down a LP to be an SG, or anything.

An acoustic guitar top under 0.100" can hold a set of mediums along the grain for 30 years (the bracing is for cross grain rigidity not long grain rigidity) before it starts to give way to physics. That body is probably two or three pieces...?! If your guitar doesn't have the structural integrity along the grain of that much wood to resist those Drop B# suspension bridge cables all the kids are using these days, then, well... I'll eat my damn hat. xD

You could blast the thing into space and it'll be in tune when the inevitable squid people pluck it from the aether along with Elon Musk's Roadster. On that note, it might be mannerly to send an amp.

But I've been wrong before!

Jesse

EDIT: Oh! You could always get a Kemper! lol