Re: POLL: "Perfect' or "Complete" guitar
+1. So PU's can be direct-mounted to wood; better tone from full contact across the base plate, and a more intact body adds to sustain. This is easier in a Gibson-type design, where the neck is on an angle to the body. The bridge PU is fairly elevated to begin with. The neck wound need to be wound on a shorter coil. The PU wires could be hid by the pickguard, with one hole under there to run to the pots, toggle, and jack. I'm sure something could be figured out for basic PU height adjustments; if nothing else, maybe a set of wooden spacers? (we put a man on the moon, we can do this). This is an interesting concept and the bugs could be worked out with a little creativity.
Are some companies doing this already, and producing unrouted guitars & direct-mount PU's?
I haven't seen unrouted guitars or flat pickups for electrics. I don't think it would be difficult and may be workable already. The typical humbucker pickup has a height that is perhaps 50% materials other than the coil winds. It varies. Maybe 30% is just leg section used for mounting. A flat pancake pickup would not be necessary; taking about 50%-60% off what we currently have, with a new way to mount them, would do it. I would imagine that the closer the pickup was to being vintage, with fewer winds, the easier to make this work. Lace's Alumitone is one such design that is smaller now, and even that is still about 50% the end legs used for mounting! Not representative of most pickups, but what the hey, it's a perfect example of a pickup ready for adaption into a new mounting strategy to prevent routing.
As you point out, the bridge pickups on guitars with tilted necks make this just that much easier, with the elevated bridge end. Why not start angling the necks on Strats and Tele's to help that situation out? Pickup directly on wood, the only routing would be a tiny channel drilled off to the side to carry wires over to the control area, which being off the line from neck to bridge, can afford to be routed out quite a bit.
If a tremolo system was still used, such as the typical Strat type, just assure that routing depth and width was absolutely minimized. Having the big drilled out area just behind the bridge would work wonders, instead of having it so directly under the bridge. How about putting the springs towards the ass end of the guitar instead of under the strings? That would allow that whole section to avoid being routed, bringing back loads of tone wood in a critical area; underneath the pickups, an area already routed out from above, leaving just a sliver of tone wood. Essentially, in a current Strat design, the body vibration goes from the neck, out into the sides of the guitar body, and then some small percentage will be transferred into the bridge. That's quite a loss of potential sustain and tone!
I ramble. I like the idea. I can hear it already.
