A guitar made specifically for demo'ing bridge pickups

[antigua]

This is the first time I'd seen this, but apparently a pic of this guitar floats around the Internet. I'd love to try it out. I wonder where it can be found.  It looks like a feat of ingenuity and fabrication. I'm guessing it's something Seymour Duncan co created, or had created. 

[newey]

Hmm. This leaves me wondering how the pickups get connected when moved into the bridge position. I'm guessing there must be some sort of "contact pads" wired to each pickup, which then make contact with similar pads going to the wiring when the pickup is rotated into position.

The Dan Armstrong guitar (manufactured by Ampeg back in the early '70s)had interchangeable pickups that slid into position via two grooved channels, one on each side of the pickup, with the channels acting as the contacts. That was a different take on the same problem- how to interchange pickups and their connections.

[col]

I spent some (too much) time trying to track that down when it was posted a couple of days ago. I came up empty. I could not locate the original source. It seems that Seymour Duncan (on their Facebook page) are also trying to track down the original image source or store where the photo was taken.

Some seem to have taken this to be a production (or for sale) guitar - on the contrary, it seems pretty certain that the guitar was built for demonstration purposes.

newey I wondered too about how the pickups might be connected. Given my assumption that it is demonstration instrument, I went with there is probably a stop - no continuous rotation. But only then did I notice that there is no apparent selector switch, so you are probably correct - some kind of 'contact pads' in play. A lot of effort to demonstrate the different pickups. I wonder if it was worth the effort. Seymour Duncan might think so.

[b4nj0]

We can't see the back of the guitar. Clearly the rout doesn't go straight through because otherwise the bridge would indeed be floating! However there could be some switching or a even bug hutch cover. After all, right now we're assuming too much. It's a demo / mock up axe so I don't figure it's that fancy, just a utility job for comparison purposes. What is that blurry chromed blob? I can't make it out.

e&oe...

[newey]

The guitar body seems like a Tele thinline- that's what I assumed anyway, so at least semi-hollow. I assumed that was how the rotation was managed.

[col]

Jul 20, 2017 15:33:34 GMT -5 b4nj0 said:

We can't see the back of the guitar. Clearly the rout doesn't go straight through because otherwise the bridge would indeed be floating! However there could be some switching or a even bug hutch cover. After all, right now we're assuming too much. It's a demo / mock up axe so I don't figure it's that fancy, just a utility job for comparison purposes. What is that blurry chromed blob? I can't make it out.

e&oe...

Re: the blurry chromed blob. I thought it was an out-of-focus switch of some kind, but I've just realised what it is: just the volume control. The detail at the peak/middle is just a reflection of the person taking the picture. He seems to be wearing a cap!

[antigua]

I can think of some interesting A/B tests that would be very easy to pull off with this. For example, same pickup different magnet; or same magnet, different height. Can you hear a difference when the pickups differ by this many henries, or that many henries. You could run it through a compressor to normalize the output so that only genuince tonal differences would be observed. 

It would be interesting to see how average guitarists react to the selections, especially if you asked them beforehand if they prefer high or low output pickups, and then observe whether their stated preference aligns with how they rank the pickups in situ.