Full Shred Modifications

[hooly_booly]

Hey everybody, long time lurker, this is my first post.

I have a baritone explorer style guitar that came stock with the SD Full Shred neck and bridge. Mahogany neck through, mahogany wings, maple top/veneer, ebony fretboard. I'm happy with the neck pickup but the bridge pickup does not have nearly enough low end/low mids for me. I've done magnet swaps on a Gibson 490R/498T sets before and was pretty happy with the results. I happen to have a dead Gibson Dirty Fingers reissue lying around which has a double thick ceramic and 2 thick ceramic spacers with double screw poles which has me thinking of modding the Full Shred, I have a couple questions though.

​​First question is what tonal difference would it make if I just swapped the main magnet by itself vs also putting in the spacer magnets?

Second question is would there be a practical way to swap in the spacer magnets but keep the A5? The spacers are double thick so there would be a gap either above or below the A5. What would the spacers do tonally in this example?

Third question is how should I orient the spacers if I use them? The Dirty Fingers has the spacers mags set up to repel the main magnet. If I use them in the FS should I put them in the same way or set them up to be attracted to the main magnet?

Final questions is what would be the tonal difference for swapping out some or all of short hex screws for regular fillister heads, perhaps a single row like on the Screamin' Demon?

Thanks in advance for any insight!

 

[Masta' C]

Swapping the A5 for the triple ceramics will increase the output and give you more of those low mids you're looking for.

You can certainly keep the stock A5 and just add the spacer mags. To fill in the gap, you could use a thin piece of wood or plastic (stacked strips of a cut-up gift card could do this also). Alternatively, you could do the "DiMarzio" thing and just apply a little hot glue or caulk to hold the magnet in place.

Swapping the pole pieces from hex to fillister will typically reduce the harshness a little, depending on the length and alloy of the pole pieces. The difference is subtle, but it's a cheap and fully reversible mod, so might be worth trying. To maximize the effect, change all of the hex poles out for fillisters.

If it were me, I'd start with the full mag swap (triple ceramic) and go from there. I had a version of the Custom that was very similar to this and it had plenty of low end and midrange punch!