Guild S-70D pickup covers

breogan

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I've recently acquired a Guild S-70D. It came with non-stock strat type pickups, with rod magnets. The pickup covers are smaller than the original and doesn't let the pickups get much close to the strings. Do you know if there are any pickup covers that I can buy similar to the original ones?

May be Rio Grande Tallboy's cover will be adequate as this pickups are quite tall, I dunno.

Any recommendation?

Can any S-70 owner measure the height of the original pickup covers? This would help me in my search...

Thanks!
 

hansmoust

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breogan said:
I've recently acquired a Guild S-70D. It came with non-stock strat type pickups, with rod magnets. The pickup covers are smaller than the original and doesn't let the pickups get much close to the strings. Do you know if there are any pickup covers that I can buy similar to the original ones?

May be Rio Grande Tallboy's cover will be adequate as this pickups are quite tall, I dunno.

Any recommendation?

Can any S-70 owner measure the height of the original pickup covers? This would help me in my search...

Thanks!

Hello breogan,

The original pickups on your S-70D were 3 DiMarzio SDS-1 units.
The Di Marzio SDS-1 pickup is quite different from a regular Stratocaster type pickup.
The plastic cover of the pickup was also much higher to allow for the bigger coil.

The height of an SDS-1 pickups cover (including the thickness of the ears) is 5/8"; a regular stratocaster pickup cover is about 1/2"

The difference in height between the SDS-1 and a regular Strat cover is a little less than 1/8" but even if you had the higher covers, you still would not be able to get the pickups any closer to the strings, unless you were going to cut off the 'ears' from the bottom plate of the pickup and mount (glue) the entire bobbin into the cover. I hope I'm making myself clear.

Maybe it would be easier to look for 3 original SDS-1 pickups. It should not be too hard to find those.

Good luck!

Hans Moust
http://www.guitarsgalore.nl
 

breogan

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You explained it very clear! :D Even with taller pickup covers it won't make any difference.

I was quite surprised to discover that S70 came with DiMarzio SDS-1 stock. I don't think this pickups will have a very nice clean tone, they look very heavy-rock orientated. I guess this guitar was oriented to a heavy audience.

I am liking the strat pickcups this guitar has. I don't have any idea where they came from, as they are old but bridge pickup has a bottom plate like the new twangbanger from SD. The positions 2 & 4 are very very nice... Anyway, I am going to try removing the covers. This will allow to set the pickups, may be, 3/32'' or even 1/8'' higher. And I have pickup covering tape to protect the coils.
 

Default

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IIRC, clean tone wasn't what the average guitar player was looking for when that guitar was in production.

Just my memories of the time. :)
 

breogan

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Default said:
IIRC, clean tone wasn't what the average guitar player was looking for when that guitar was in production.

Just my memories of the time. :)

Ha ha, you are right Default!! :mrgreen:

It's just me, I like clean pickups for distorted tones, IMHO the have a richer tone when you put overdrive over them.
 

balzakjeff

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Before I bought my SD70 the previous owner had replaced the neck pup with a Texas special (and pulled out the phase switches). I wasn't happy with with the setup - lots of noise we couldn't get rid of, I didn't really like the sound, and I discovered it wasn't wired correctly (the tone knob had no affect on the bridge pup). I replaced all three with Reverend pups and have been happy with them (they are billed as sounding 80% single coil/20 % P90). I also rewired it so that the tone works for all the settings, but did not bother to put the phase switches back in. Although the Reverend pups came with new, very white, covers, I reused the yellowed "vintage" looking originals. The poles are set in a bit, but I don't have any problem setting them at the hight I wanted.
 

breogan

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News from my S-70... There was another problem with the strat pickups on the S-70! Strat pickups have a protuberance on the baseplate where the cables are solded. This protuberance was hitting the wood of the pool and didn't let the pickup go as high as it should. I think I am going to remove some wood to allow the pickup move freely up and down.
 
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