No pickup hot swap socket system yet?

arcana

New member
Hey all,

I am really surprised that (to my knowledge) there is no pickup plug and play system. I think you should be able to buy a flat socket with the standard wires which you screw in to the guitar pickup cavity and solder as required, then simply push click your desired pickup in to the socket. Quick release to swap pickup. Seems like a no brainer to me, but maybe I haven't fully thought it through.

From Seymour Duncans perspective, if this was available, I would immediately buy 2 x sockets and 4 x pickups for my guitar, right now, so I can enjoy messing around with different pickups at my leisure.

Re-soldering to change pickup just seems very primitive in 2015. The only other option I can think of is cut the wires between the pickup and the connected POT, and buy some sort of tiny cylindrical connectors for each wire. Solder these connectors on to each one of your pickups. I might just have a look for something like this right now.

Anyone else think this or am I being stupid :-)

Arc
 
Re: No pickup hot swap socket system yet?

Not that I have given this concept any kind of thought really, but that does sound pretty nice.

I am so used to soldering it feels as normal as eating, sleeping or taking a dookie at this point.
 
Re: No pickup hot swap socket system yet?

Quik Connect™ block connectors are already commonplace on active guitar and bass pickup systems.

Where they are offered on passive instruments, they are often met with derision. e.g. Gibson/Epiphone PCB control assemblies.
 
Re: No pickup hot swap socket system yet?

Arguments against a connector based system:
1) Quick connectors work fine for pickguard based electronics, but what about non-pickguard guitars? Are the channels for wiring big enough to accommodate the connectors?
2) Quick connectors are fine for standardized guitars like Les Pauls or Strats, but what about an Ibanez or an ESP? Is the control layout the same? Are the dimensions the same?
3) Quick connector systems are semi-proprietary. Each manufacturers connectors are slightly different, so how do you connect components from different manufacturers together?
4) No two pickup manufacturers use the same color code for their pickups. So how do mix pickups from different manufacturers together?
5) Quick connector systems aren't easily modified. What happens when you want to change the volume pot from a 250K pot to a 500K pot? What happens when you want to change the capacitor for the neck tone control? What happens when you want to incorporate a treble bleed? How do you incorporate a coil-split or parallel-series option?
 
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Re: No pickup hot swap socket system yet?

I love the idea here. Snowdog has a bunch of good questions, but if this would somehow become available, even in a limited market, I'd be first in line to grab some
 
Re: No pickup hot swap socket system yet?

maybe something like the duncan liberator, but without the pot, just a PCB where you screw the pickup terminals, and then has soldering sockets specially for pots, caps, switches and finally a preformatted pcb part where you can actually wire non-standar things..........
 
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