Toaster covers on HiGains W/ adj. pole pieces
Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:08 am
For newer Higains with threaded pole pieces this can be acheived quite easily.
All you'll need is a few tools:
regular #2 Phillips, a #1 Phillips, a couple Allen head wrenches (3/32) one straight, one "L" shape for tight pole pieces,
and a fine tip flat head to put the modified pole piece back in.
Take your pickguard off and remove pickups. Remove pickup rings. No need to unsolder the PU's from the wiring harness.
You just want to remove the pole pieces with a 3/32 Allen head wrench:
After removing a set of pole pieces, go to a bench vise and clamp the head of the screw right near
the end of the vise and cut head off with hack saw. Cut right at the head and don't miss up your pole piece threads.
The pole pieces are quite hard but will cut fast with a sharp hack saw. Like this:
I used a bench grinder for a second to smooth the cut before proceeding. Now I clamped the threads of the headless pole piece between 2 hard plastic doners
(My Mustang spark wire organizer clips) in the vise to protect the threads and cut straight down the center of my original cut about a 1/16th of and inch, so I can
use a fine 1/8" screw driver to screw pole piece back in the bobbin from below instead of from above.
Now the pole piece looks like this:
Now I'm screwing in the pole piece from below (NOTE these are adjustable now from below the pickup, to balance your string to string relationship for the given PU)
Pretty cool - And it works. I did several tests to verify this. If say your bass string, on your Neck pickup is too strong then just remove the pickup and unscrew the pole
piece a bit for that given string. I started with all pole pieces up flush to the Toaster cover and then dropped down pole pieces as necesary. Since the original pole piece tops
were above the original HiGain chrome frame you simply raise your modified Toaster top HiGain PU closer to the strings until you find your sweet spot then adjust from below to suit. After you've gone through this process - it's a set and forget deal. But you can always adjust at some later time.
Install pole pieces from the back now and install Toaster top cover:
Heres the neck pickup done:
So I did the bridge pickup and put her back together. Since I just finished a Vintage Tuner conversion from stock Schallers the guitar looks really vintage now.
I get the HiGain and ability to not only adjust height of pickup but adjust the pole pieces to suit the response of the individual strings. BUT I get the vintage look
What's it sound like? Awesome, just like before - which I was entirely happy with. Me buddy couldn't tell the difference. It certainly still sounds like a HiGain.
I think it was well worth it for me. I enjoyed the project and hope you guys got a kick out of it. I'm back and forth on the vintage knobs as I haven't really
found this particular model with the vintage knobs on them. They all seem to have the chrome top knobs since it's redesign of the rounded top body of 1964.
So here it is - a pretty much correct in appearance vintage 360 in JG ( actually a modded 07 360 JG)
All you'll need is a few tools:
regular #2 Phillips, a #1 Phillips, a couple Allen head wrenches (3/32) one straight, one "L" shape for tight pole pieces,
and a fine tip flat head to put the modified pole piece back in.
Take your pickguard off and remove pickups. Remove pickup rings. No need to unsolder the PU's from the wiring harness.
You just want to remove the pole pieces with a 3/32 Allen head wrench:
After removing a set of pole pieces, go to a bench vise and clamp the head of the screw right near
the end of the vise and cut head off with hack saw. Cut right at the head and don't miss up your pole piece threads.
The pole pieces are quite hard but will cut fast with a sharp hack saw. Like this:
I used a bench grinder for a second to smooth the cut before proceeding. Now I clamped the threads of the headless pole piece between 2 hard plastic doners
(My Mustang spark wire organizer clips) in the vise to protect the threads and cut straight down the center of my original cut about a 1/16th of and inch, so I can
use a fine 1/8" screw driver to screw pole piece back in the bobbin from below instead of from above.
Now the pole piece looks like this:
Now I'm screwing in the pole piece from below (NOTE these are adjustable now from below the pickup, to balance your string to string relationship for the given PU)
Pretty cool - And it works. I did several tests to verify this. If say your bass string, on your Neck pickup is too strong then just remove the pickup and unscrew the pole
piece a bit for that given string. I started with all pole pieces up flush to the Toaster cover and then dropped down pole pieces as necesary. Since the original pole piece tops
were above the original HiGain chrome frame you simply raise your modified Toaster top HiGain PU closer to the strings until you find your sweet spot then adjust from below to suit. After you've gone through this process - it's a set and forget deal. But you can always adjust at some later time.
Install pole pieces from the back now and install Toaster top cover:
Heres the neck pickup done:
So I did the bridge pickup and put her back together. Since I just finished a Vintage Tuner conversion from stock Schallers the guitar looks really vintage now.
I get the HiGain and ability to not only adjust height of pickup but adjust the pole pieces to suit the response of the individual strings. BUT I get the vintage look
What's it sound like? Awesome, just like before - which I was entirely happy with. Me buddy couldn't tell the difference. It certainly still sounds like a HiGain.
I think it was well worth it for me. I enjoyed the project and hope you guys got a kick out of it. I'm back and forth on the vintage knobs as I haven't really
found this particular model with the vintage knobs on them. They all seem to have the chrome top knobs since it's redesign of the rounded top body of 1964.
So here it is - a pretty much correct in appearance vintage 360 in JG ( actually a modded 07 360 JG)