Any Franz PUPs on Solid or Semihollow body guitars?

matsickma

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Hi All,

This most likely can only be answered by Hans but input from all is welcomed.

My question: Did Guild ever mount Franz PUPs on a semihollow or solid body guitar?

I am of the opnion that Franz PUPs would excel on a NON hollow body guitar. I could not think of any guitar that Guild made with Franz that was not a hollow body.

I had a plan to install a set of Franz PUPs on a Blues 90 type guitar (i.e., my P90 "Nightingale"). I was able to pickup a set with dogears so now I am considering mounting them on a semi-hollow archtop.

Does anyone have any knowledge or experiance with Franz PUPs on a non hollow-body guitar? Any comments on my plans?

M
 

hansmoust

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matsickma said:
My question: Did Guild ever mount Franz PUPs on a semihollow or solid body guitar?

Does anyone have any knowledge or experiance with Franz PUPs on a non hollow-body guitar? Any comments on my plans?

M

By the time Guild got into solid bodies and semi-hollowbody guitars (1963) the Franz pickup with the creme cover was already on the way out.
It is very well possible that some experiments that involved Franz pickups were done, but they were never offered on a production model solid body or semi-hollowbody guitar.

As far as putting your dogear Franz pickups on a Bluesbird/Blues 90 type guitar, you might run into problems with the height of the units.
That type of pickup was designed to mount on the top surface of the guitar, so you may not be able to fit them under the strings, unless you want to dig into the body.

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
http://www.guitarsgalore.nl
 

matsickma

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Hi Hans,

Thanks for the info. I didn't expect to get a set with dog-ears as they seem more rare to come by. Based on my limited experiance with these PUPs it looks like the pickup is the same for either dog-ear or recessed configuration. The differing factor seems to be in the cover. From examining the covers on an Aristocrat it appeared to me that Franz or Guild simply cut the ears off of the cover and added a center hole to secure the cover for the recessed model . I say this because the covers on the Aristocrat were slightly irregula. It appeared like they were sliced.

Do you agree and could my slicing idea work?

TNX,

Mike
 

hansmoust

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matsickma said:
From examining the covers on an Aristocrat it appeared to me that Franz or Guild simply cut the ears off of the cover and added a center hole to secure the cover for the recessed model . I say this because the covers on the Aristocrat were slightly irregula. It appeared like they were sliced.

Do you agree and could my slicing idea work?

TNX,

Mike

Mike,

I've seen examples where M-75/M-65 covers were made from the 'dog-ear' type covers by cutting them down. However that was not the regular way of doing it, since the height of a 'normal' M-75 cover is higher than what's left when you take of the part that usually mounts on top of the guitar. With other words it looks like they did it in case where the pickup went deep enough into the body, so you wouldn't see that much of the cover anyway.

So you can do what you described but keep in mind that the P-90 rout is a little bigger than the 'cut off' dog-ear cover, so depending on the neck angle (which dictates how deep you need to mount the pickups) you may not have enough cover left to 'cover up' the bobbin completely. You don't want to cover up the original P-90 rout in the same way that Gibson did on it's late '60s and early '70s Les Paul Deluxe. That would look awfull.

Good luck!

Hans Moust
http://www.guitarsgalore.nl
 
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