Carvin and pickup replacing, can you put duncans in?

[Xeromus]

I've heard that due to the routing in carvin guitars, they won't accept aftermarket pickups like Seymour Duncan. Does this also apply to the front routed Bolt? I'm considering having one made but it's really important that I be able to put a set of cool rails in there.

[Gearjoneser]

Re: Carvin and pickup replacing, can you put duncans in?

I'm not sure if you'd run into a problem with single coils, but I've noticed that the pickup rings are a mm smaller. That means the screws on your new pickup ring won't line up right, and the old one's need to be filled, then redrilled. Luckily, the new ring masks it, but you can't use the original ring because it utilizes two bolts per side for pickup adjustment. I'm not sure about the humbucker cavities. Last time I put Duncans in a Carvin, the pickups fit in the cavity, but the ring didn't line up.

[mjsever]

Re: Carvin and pickup replacing, can you put duncans in?

I have SD's in my Carvin and they seemed to work fine, but when I bought it someone else had already put different pickups in. I didn't notice any new holes that were drilled to accommodate. I know that Carvin sells their pickups aftermarket as well, so I don't think they would want to force people to reroute their guitars.

[badco33]

Re: Carvin and pickup replacing, can you put duncans in?

A standard single coil pickup baseplate won't fit into the Carvin route. Traditional single coils have a little flange on the plate towards the back where the wires come out which makes it too large to fit in the route. Some duncan single coils don't have this flange and the wires come out at the bottom of the pup (I bought a used SSL-5 that doesn't) but I am not sure if they come like that in production models or if you have to order them that way from the custom shop. I had a Carvin TL-60 that had a hum, single, single set up. I had single coils custom wound for it on baseplates without that flange and they fit perfect and sounded good. You may want to check with Carvin customer service and see if they make a cool rails without the flange or if it is a custom shop order.

I put a JB in the bridge of that Carvin. I used the stock pickup ring I just had to drill a single hole between the two screw holes for the Carvin pup. The JB then fit perfect and was good to go.

[Benjy_26]

Re: Carvin and pickup replacing, can you put duncans in?

A standard single coil pickup baseplate won't fit into the Carvin route. Traditional single coils have a little flange on the plate towards the back where the wires come out which makes it too large to fit in the route. Some duncan single coils don't have this flange and the wires come out at the bottom of the pup (I bought a used SSL-5 that doesn't) but I am not sure if they come like that in production models or if you have to order them that way from the custom shop. I had a Carvin TL-60 that had a hum, single, single set up. I had single coils custom wound for it on baseplates without that flange and they fit perfect and sounded good. You may want to check with Carvin customer service and see if they make a cool rails without the flange or if it is a custom shop order.

I put a JB in the bridge of that Carvin. I used the stock pickup ring I just had to drill a single hole between the two screw holes for the Carvin pup. The JB then fit perfect and was good to go.

Hit the nail on the head. Just make sure to order short leg humbuckers and redrill screw holes on the mounting ring. Also, I round off the legs on the SD humbuckers to make mounting a bit easier.