Floating pickup without pickguard

[Tommaso Poggi]

I found that the pickguard absorbs a huge ammount of sound. if you think about it it's a huge wooden tongue that picks up vibration and dissipates it. it might be helpful to fix it with one of those brackets but if it's smaller, which i like, the bracket should be really long and ugly. i'd like to use a floating pickup without the pickguard, maybe drilling a small hole under the elevated part of the neck extension to pass the wire in and then connect it to the pots placed on the upper bout of the sides. is this a good idea? any other suggestions?

[Patrick Hanna]

I'm not an expert by any means, but the only problems I can anticipate with your concept are that the space will be crowded under the neck extension, and it might be difficult to find a place to put your controls in the side where they are convenient but not in the way. Maybe you can put them close to the neck heel in the upper bout, but away from a neck strap (if you use one.) I suspended a pickup off the end of my neck extension, but it doesn't clear the top by much, so the wiring got very crowded under it. Unlike your concept, I used a finger rest so I was able to lead my wire under that and then drop it into the f-hole through the upper curl--more or less a conventional solution. I used only one control--a volume control. I relied on the amp for tone adjustments. This simplified the wiring slightly. And I used a tailpin / output jack so I'd only have one hole through the side. Again, this was all fairly conventional. I am pretty sure you can make your concepts work, but I recommend trying to dummy up your layout before drilling holes. You want to be sure everything will fit where you choose to place it.