I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

K

krm27

New member
So, I posted a while back about a project I had to put a pair of P-Rails and Tripleshot rings in an old LP style guitar, and I got help here for diagramming how to wire it, then I dove in only to be "de-railed" near the finish line when the ribbon wires on one of my Tripleshot rings tore away from the ring. I googled this and found a lot of people complaining of this -- it's a weakness of the design (or cheap materials). I guess if you can guarantee you won't put any stress on the connections, you can get away with these, but when you get around to jamming everything into a pickup cavity that may be just barely big enough for the pickup, it gets dicey.

Anyway, I used the online comment / inquire on the Seymour Duncan site to ask for assistance with this -- a replacement, or advice on a fix or even just an apology. My online inquiry was totally ignored. I thought at the least they'd respond to say that they can't help me with this problem, who has an online inquiry system and does not send any kind of response at all?! Customer service? Not.

However, I do understand that maybe I could have been more delicate with the wiring (wish I'd known I needed to be, beforehand), so I take some of the blame for THAT problem. But there was a second, perhaps bigger, problem: The rings did not fit my old ring holes! After the one ring broke, I finished wiring up the unbroken Tripleshot so I could at least try out THAT P-Rail, but I could not affix the ring to the guitar because it was too small to fit the existing holes in the body. Hmm, I thought, is there any way my old pickup rings were oversized? It was an odd guitar in some ways, and quite old, so I did not rule that out. Well, today I took out two brand new, totally "standard" pickup rings and put one of them side-by-side with my Tripleshot ring -- the Tripleshot is noticeable smaller!

This means they will not fit standard holes. Even worse, the "new" holes you need will be basically right next to the old holes, so I don't think you can ignore the old holes. I think you need to do something with wood glue, toothpicks or wood splinters, to fill the old holes before drilling the new ones and then cross your fingers. But, really, I'm thinking WTF?!!! Why are these pickup rings not standard size?!! Why is there no disclosure about this? Why have I not read about this pretty glaring issue before? I mean, even if it's an easy fix (and to me, it's NOT an easy fix), I personally hate to modify the body of my guitars, particularly older, vintage-like ones.

Anyway, see pic, judge for yourself, and think twice before using Tripleshot rings. (Cannot comment on quality of P-Rails since I still have not been able to use them, now I have to switch to push-pull pots to wire these up since the Tripleshots suck so bad, and that's going to take a bit of time.)

Ken
 

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Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

wich triple shot version you bought?, 'cause for what i know there is a LP ring and a Trembucker ring, also is the guitar an import? i'm pretty much shure the duncan rings are made to perfectly retrofit standar USA rings sizes, import rings are sometimes oversized
 
Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

It happened to me, on both issues, and I treated everything with kid gloves second time out. Some have repaired a detached ribbon, though it might be a bit fiddly. I didn't, in fear of screwing it up further, so sorted with the shop I bought it from. I think in most cases, the end user is referred to the place they purchased the item from anyway etc.

I'm building replacements to go into the original rings, after tracking down similar tiny switches. Not so much because I'm not keen on filling, and re-drilling the mounting holes, but due to the scratch plate having pickups on either side. There's a thread in here somewhere, that details the circuit, complete with pictures.
 
Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

These were not "trembucker" size, whatever that may be. Here's the exact description from receipt e-mail: "Seymour Duncan TS-1s Triple Shot Flat Pickup Mounting Ring Set Regular Cream." Key word is "regular" I think.

Ken
 
Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

krm27 said:
These were not "trembucker" size, whatever that may be. Here's the exact description from receipt e-mail: "Seymour Duncan TS-1s Triple Shot Flat Pickup Mounting Ring Set Regular Cream." Key word is "regular" I think.

Ken
Click to expand...

A trembucker is a humbucker with wider string spacing. Trembucker and "F spaced" or "fender spaced" mean the same thing. You may require trembucker triple shots instead of standard spaced triple shots.
 
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Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

No, because the pickup ring next to the Tripleshot is marketed as a standard Les Paul style replacement ring. The bottom line is that the existing pickup ring holes in my guitar are standard for an LP style guitar with two humbuckers, and the Tripleshot is too small.

Ken
 
Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

krm27 said:
No, because the pickup ring next to the Tripleshot is marketed as a standard Les Paul style replacement ring.
Click to expand...
" Marketed" is the key word here. Reality is that the Triple Shot would fit EXACTLY to a Gibson M-69 ring.

From the picture I can clearly see that your p'up ring is a METRIC one, used on IMPORTS, *not* on american instruments. And as you've learned the hard way, they're NOT the same size.

Looks like you didn't do enough "due diligence" to be able to take on this job. Consider it a learning experience. Next time you'll do better! ;)

HTH,
 
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Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

as i said import rings are oversized, drilling new holes isn't much hard, and since the screws wouldn't had to support a lot of pressure you can even skip the filling step and directly drill the new holes right next to the old ones
 
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Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

I would NOT trust drilling new holes RIGHT NEXT to old holes, regardless of the pressure load the screws have to bear. How do you even do that? If you try to screw right next to an existing hole, the drill will naturally slide into the existing hole. Also, in this case you'd be frequently pushing on the rings (to flip the switches), so I would think you'd want these affixed very securely.

Also, I went back to the online listing where I bought my Tripleshot rings, looking for any reference to them being historic/Imperial/Gibson size or whatever, or actually saying what the distance b/w the screw holes is, and there is NOTHING. Also checked the Seymour Duncan product description for Tripleshot rings, again nothing. So I don't know what "due diligence" I could have used to expect these would not fit my guitar which, to my knowledge, had just the "common" size pickup ring spacing, since any other rings I had lying around are the same size (I guess, though, I don't happen to own a USA-made Gibson, so my bad).

The marketing does say these fit virtually any humbucker, I think it falls on Seymour Duncan to note the size of these rings so people will know if they'll need to drill new holes to make them fit before buying. I picture some brainy person at Seymour Duncan marketing saying, "Gee if we tell people the sizes, we'll lose a lot of sales to the huge number of folks (the majority?) who own Asian made guitars that have different screw-hole dimensions for their pickup rings..." so non-disclosure was seen as a money making proposition. But I can be pretty cynical of corporate America.

Ken
 
Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

on the duncan site, when you see the triple shots right down the product pic, there are some blue letters, in some of them it's possible to read "dimensions for Gibson® bridge | dimensions for Gibson® neck | dimensions flat-style |"

and drilling holes isn't so hard, if you don't fill confident, just fill the old holes with glue and tooth pics, nothing from another world, nor rocket science
 
Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

krm27 said:
The marketing does say these fit virtually any humbucker, I think it falls on Seymour Duncan to note the size of these rings so people will know if they'll need to drill new holes to make them fit before buying.
Click to expand...

WTH are you talking about? It is true they fit virtually any HUMBUCKER! this line refers to the pickup not the guitar. 2nd there are 4 bright blue links marked "dimensions for etc" they give you a diagram with every dimension marked out to .001 of an inch. You could have very easily clicked one of these and verified before purchase what the dimensions were.

So your little fantasy about them thinking they could pad sales by not giving the dimensions to unwitting customers is a bunch of malarky.
 
Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

krm27 said:
I don't know what "due diligence" I could have used to expect these would not fit my guitar which, to my knowledge, had just the "common" size pickup ring spacing, since any other rings I had lying around are the same size (I guess, though, I don't happen to own a USA-made Gibson, so my bad)
Click to expand...

http://www.seymourduncan.com/products/dimensionpages/triple-shot_b.shtml

http://www.seymourduncan.com/products/dimensionpages/triple-shot_n.shtml

http://www.seymourduncan.com/products/dimensionpages/triple-shot_t.shtml

http://www.seymourduncan.com/images/products/electric/humbuckers/triple_shot_diagram.pdf

http://www.seymourduncan.com/movie/Triple_Shot/352/228

That's your "due diligence", right there!

Your Honor, I rest my case! :cool2:
 
Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

krm27 said:
No, because the pickup ring next to the Tripleshot is marketed as a standard Les Paul style replacement ring. The bottom line is that the existing pickup ring holes in my guitar are standard for an LP style guitar with two humbuckers, and the Tripleshot is too small.

Ken
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Really? You are single handedly the arbiter of what is standard? Maybe I missed it but you keep saying "LP style guitar". Please disclose your exact brand, model number, and year so we can be sure it's a standard size.

Second, you need to calm down. Triple shots have been available for over 5 years and I was there when they were designed. There are a zillion different mounting ring sizes out there, and Asian made LP style guitars are all over the place. Many Epiphones seem to be very oversized.
 
Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

Frank, the guitar he is putting these pickups in is an old Harmony that he described in his previous thread as unique and possibly having been a short run in Japan.

Seymour Duncan is always up front with their customers about sizes of things. Pick any product in their lineup, with the exception of their potentiometers, and they will very clearly give you the dimensions for the product. You just gotta click on the light blue link.

I think you're frustrated and, for some reason, never learned that some things, such as not researching a product carefully, can be your fault.
 
Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

krm27...

Why are you even posting this?!! Just to whine some more? I thought you did plenty of whining/and "poor me"/and SD is to blame, in your other post.

You think SD (or any legit company) can make more money by fooling their client/customers?!!!
("I picture some brainy person at Seymour Duncan marketing saying, "Gee if we tell people the sizes, we'll lose a lot of sales to the huge number of folks (the majority?) who own Asian made guitars that have different screw-hole dimensions for their pickup rings..." so non-disclosure was seen as a money making proposition. But I can be pretty cynical of corporate America").

I can tell you it is WAY more expensive to exchange a "defective" product, or to deal with complainers like you than it is to do it right the first time.

SD did it right.

YOU did it wrong!

Quit whining and complaining and take responsibility for your own actions or lack of actions (your "due dilligence" that everyone is telling you, because you didn't check first).

And quit filling our forum with hateful spam.

If you had a legitimate complaint, that's one thing and we will do what we can to help. But your complaint is NOT legit. And no one can help a whiner.

So, go to your room and think about it for a while. When you've figured out your problem with your dogmatic attitude, come back and join us.
 
Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

Well, I see I was wrong about Seymour Duncan not giving dimensions, I thought I'd checked their site, now I have no idea what page I actually was looking at, but it's my bad on that.
I still see no dimensions, links to dimensions, or anything useful on the product listing at the online store where I bought these.

It's basically a situation of "you don't know what you don't know." I have owned probably about two dozen guitars, none USA-made Gibson, all but a couple were Asian-made. I never noticed any difference in humbucker pickup ring sizes, but only started working on my own guitars recently, so I'm a rookie at this. Honestly, I never even knew, till this very thread, that there were different humbucker ring sizes, or that measuring the distance between pickup ring screws was "a thing to do" when selecting rings and such.

Yet I did a lot of googling and reading on Tripleshots in forums and stuff before buying, never saw anyone mentions size issues, Imperial versus Metric, or whatever. When I bought these, if I'd seen anything on the online store's listing about these being "imperial" size or whatever, that would have tipped me off that there are different humbucker ring sizes and I would have checked into this, but there's nothing there to tip a person off if they don't already know about this. So the point is I did not search for ring dimensions before buying because I had no idea there was more than one standard. After these did not fit, I hopped onto Ebay and bought the first flat humbucker size I saw from China, they came and fit my guitar perfectly, so that reinforced my thought there was something wrong with the Tripleshot sizing. But it's not "wrong," just different. So I apologize for jumping to the wrong conclusion and getting pissy in this thread, now I know better. But hopefully this thread will clue in others like me, who might be searching the internet for Tripleshot info, that this size issue exists, so they can avoid my mistake.

Notwithstanding that, I still stand by the criticism re: (1) weakness of the ribbon-wiring which many others have commented on, (2) lack of customer service when they don't respond to an inquiry made through their own online inquiry form (why even have it, really?). But the main point of this thread was not to repeat those criticisms raised in another thread, but to elaborate on the sizing issue now that I had these new China-made rings to show a pic illustrating what I thought was a "problem." Again, I was wrong. It was not a sizing problem, it's just a sizing "issue" about which I was ignorant, so my bad.

Ken
 
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Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

Ouch.

Glad I missed this one.

Just to chime in, it would be nice to see more products from American companies aligned to metric and Asian manufacturing size standards, especially as imports make up more of the market. This would be really helpful for guys like me who like to mod relatively inexpensive import guitars for personal use as opposed to working on expensive American made guitars that we collect, hope to maintain their value, and then resell at a profit. More alignment to at least Japanese standards (if not Indian, Korean, or Chinese) would be helpful, as they've made quality import guitars for decades now.

An example might be push pull pots. I use a hand taper reamer to enlarge my pot holes from 5/16" to 3/8" for these Bournes push pulls I have. It's not a big deal, but being able to buy a push pull pot from an American manufacturer in metric instead of paying $10 to import a single pot from Japan would be nice. The MIJ pots I use are quick, but they're so smooth that a glance from the picking hand will dial them up or down a great deal.

So, having a choice between metric and standard for the same item would be nice.

It's a small quibble, but it would be welcome from those of us who do not prefer messing with wood and/or paint, especially on American made guitars.

To be fair and critique the other side, it would be lovely if Japanese manufacturers would stop using set screw knobs with split shaft pots. They get them on there straight somehow but I never can.
 
Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

An argument could be made that if any company is at fault with the sizing issue, it would be the company that you bought them from. But SD is always upfront with their customers about things like that.
 
Re: I'M NOT CRAZY! Problem with Tripleshot Rings! (See Pic)

krm27 said:
Well, I see I was wrong about Seymour Duncan not giving dimensions, I thought I'd checked their site, now I have no idea what page I actually was looking at, but it's my bad on that.
I still see no dimensions, links to dimensions, or anything useful on the product listing at the online store where I bought these.

It's basically a situation of "you don't know what you don't know." I have owned probably about two dozen guitars, none USA-made Gibson, all but a couple were Asian-made. I never noticed any difference in humbucker pickup ring sizes, but only started working on my own guitars recently, so I'm a rookie at this. Honestly, I never even knew, till this very thread, that there were different humbucker ring sizes, or that measuring the distance between pickup ring screws was "a thing to do" when selecting rings and such.

Yet I did a lot of googling and reading on Tripleshots in forums and stuff before buying, never saw anyone mentions size issues, Imperial versus Metric, or whatever. When I bought these, if I'd seen anything on the online store's listing about these being "imperial" size or whatever, that would have tipped me off that there are different humbucker ring sizes and I would have checked into this, but there's nothing there to tip a person off if they don't already know about this. So the point is I did not search for ring dimensions before buying because I had no idea there was more than one standard. After these did not fit, I hopped onto Ebay and bought the first flat humbucker size I saw from China, they came and fit my guitar perfectly, so that reinforced my thought there was something wrong with the Tripleshot sizing. But it's not "wrong," just different. So I apologize for jumping to the wrong conclusion and getting pissy in this thread, now I know better. But hopefully this thread will clue in others like me, who might be searching the internet for Tripleshot info, that this size issue exists, so they can avoid my mistake.

Notwithstanding that, I still stand by the criticism re: (1) weakness of the ribbon-wiring which many others have commented on, (2) lack of customer service when they don't respond to an inquiry made through their own online inquiry form (why even have it, really?). But the main point of this thread was not to repeat those criticisms raised in another thread, but to elaborate on the sizing issue now that I had these new China-made rings to show a pic illustrating what I thought was a "problem." Again, I was wrong. It was not a sizing problem, it's just a sizing "issue" about which I was ignorant, so my bad.

Ken
Click to expand...

I still don't get why you started this thread. In your other thread, all of your complaints/misconceptions/lack of knowledge/questions were addressed/answered. You've brought nothing new to the table in this thread except additional whining.
 
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