Mickey Mouse pickup questions

teleharmonium

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I've become a Guild devotee recently and now have a couple of T100Ds, a blonde '60 and a lovely '66 in Emerald Green. The latter is a new arrival and I had some lingering questions about the "Mickey Mouse" Guild single coil pickups that I hope are not a total rerun of other threads.

1) I can see that there aren't any adjustment screws, but is there any way I can tweak the height of the low E polepiece by forcing the magnet down a bit ?

2) I've heard and seen some pics that show caps mounted under these pickups. Does the signal pass through these caps, resulting in reduced low end according to the amount of capacitance, or is the cap wired between the output and ground, which I suppose would be like another tone cap which would throw away some highs ? If that's the deal (the caps are to tame the high end), does anybody have experience with removing the cap(s) ? This guitar has an adequate amount of high end, but if I could get a little more output from the guitar and compensate tonally by using the tone knob if I still feel the need to reduce the highs, I would rather do that.
I thought my pre-buy research had turned up an account of removing the cap and getting a hotter and more open sounding output but I would like to substantiate that further before making a decision. Actually I haven't checked under my pickups yet but I noticed the esteemed Mr. Moust posted a pic that shows this pickup ex vitro with the caps underneath so I'm thinking they are probably common.

and a bonus question 3) is there a trick to getting the knobs off the guitar, so I can shoot some contact cleaner into the pots through the top ? They have no set screws but didn't seem to want to come off and I was afraid of breaking them or making them so that they wouldn't stay on after I replaced them.

thanks and cheers
 

teleharmonium

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I've become a Guild devotee recently and now have a couple of T100Ds, a blonde '60 and a lovely '66 in Emerald Green. The latter is a new arrival and I had some lingering questions about the "Mickey Mouse" Guild single coil pickups that I hope are not a total rerun of other threads.

1) I can see that there aren't any adjustment screws, but is there any way I can tweak the height of the low E polepiece by forcing the magnet down a bit ?

2) I've heard and seen some pics that show caps mounted under these pickups. Does the signal pass through these caps, resulting in reduced low end according to the amount of capacitance, or is the cap wired between the output and ground, which I suppose would be like another tone cap which would throw away some highs ? If that's the deal (the caps are to tame the high end), does anybody have experience with removing the cap(s) ? This guitar has an adequate amount of high end, but if I could get a little more output from the guitar and compensate tonally by using the tone knob if I still feel the need to reduce the highs, I would rather do that.
I thought my pre-buy research had turned up an account of removing the cap and getting a hotter and more open sounding output but I would like to substantiate that further before making a decision. Actually I haven't checked under my pickups yet but I noticed the esteemed Mr. Moust posted a pic that shows this pickup ex vitro with the caps underneath so I'm thinking they are probably common.

and a bonus question 3) is there a trick to getting the knobs off the guitar, so I can shoot some contact cleaner into the pots through the top ? They have no set screws but didn't seem to want to come off and I was afraid of breaking them or making them so that they wouldn't stay on after I replaced them.

thanks and cheers
 

jazzman

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Hi,
I can't claim to be an "expert" here, but I recently sold my '66 t-100d and I can tell you what I found out while doing some repair work on it.

"1) I can see that there aren't any adjustment screws, but is there any way I can tweak the height of the low E polepiece by forcing the magnet down a bit ?"
If you take the metal cover off of the pickup you will see that the whole unit is completely encased in the white plastic housing. As far as I could tell it would be VERY tricky to get the housing apart without damaging the entire pickup. With no adjusting pole pieces I'm guessing that, like a fender pickup, the windings may come in contact with the poles (I cannot substantiate this, it's only a speculation) if this is the case you risk breaking the windings if you move the pole piece, or you could damage the bobbin. You might not even be able to move the pole piece if it is cast to the length of the houseing (i.e it goes to the bottom.) In my opinion it might be easier to experiment with some different string sets to come up with a more balanced output on the low "E".



"2) I've heard and seen some pics that show caps mounted under these pickups...."

Yes mine had the caps on there too (big suckers they were) I LOVED the tone of the pickups, but was disappointed that my multimeter told me that they pickups measured about 7.5 Kohms, but the ouput was WAY weak. I bit the bullet and clipped off the cap and WHAM, the ouput shot WAY up there, and the tone was just as sweet if not a little more open and beefy. (neck pickup was still nice and mellow when played soft) but that Bridge pickup was SUCH a dramatic improvment.

In regards to number 3, the black knobs are just a press fit type, but if the pots are scratchy before I would shoot contact cleaner in them I would get some compressed air (if you have a compressor, if you don't just buy a can of compressed air like they use to clean computer keyboards with) and shoot the air in the pot. If you shoot cleaner in the dirty pot, then you're really just making more of a mess. The air should get the dirt out pretty well, if it's still a tiny bit noisy then you could shoot the contact cleaner in there.

Hope this helps!
Bob Nelson
 

teleharmonium

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Thanks very much for the detailed reply Bob. I'll leave the polepiece alone but I think I will go ahead and try removing the cap on the bridge pickup. I'll label and save it so I could put it back if needed. The pickups are incredibly bright, so I doubt the caps are cutting highs... I don't see how you could get any more highs than what I am hearing, given the DC resistance of the pickup. So, I figure they must be cutting lows or mids. I actually already starting to love the tone they have now, but it would also be cool to get a hotter, DeArmond type of output, with snottier lows and mids.
 
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