Music Man JP-7 neck routing won't fit Black Hawk 7 - what can I do?

[cdondoros]

Hi all.

Upon the recommendations of some of the folks on this forum, I have as set of Black Hawk 7's on the way for my Music Man JP-7, but I have a bit of a problem: the Black Hawk 7 is around two millimeters too thick to fit in the guitar's neck position.

In these particular models, the neck pickup cavity - where the pickup ears screw in to the body - is much more short than the bridge, only accommodating John Petrucci's signature line of pickups. From experience, pickups with a depth of 16.6 mm will fit, but NOT your standard-sized Duncan/DiMarzio humbuckers, which typically have a depth of around 18.4 mm.

The Black Hawk 7 is 18.2 mm deep, so I'm in for a fight with this guitar. I don't want to take the time or spend the money to bring it to a tech; the pandemic is still bad where we live that it's a cr@pshoot knowing when anything will be ready. I also am not a fan of buying a router for $100 and using it once or twice, so I'm trying to avoid going that route.

Anybody have tips or experience in a similar situation? Does BKP or any other company make base plates that are flat (as opposed to the 3 mm gap between BKP base plates and where the pickup screws into the body)? Does anybody recommend tampering with the pickup to flatten the metal and create a more flat surface?

Appreciate any advice!

[Dave Sloven]

I have a six string Black Hawk neck pickup in a cavity that was made without the side leg cavities.  I can get it flat with the pickguard after making a couple of small holes either side (I calculated how much wood I had there first) using a Tamiya Handy Drill and Handy Router. You could use something else if it is controllable (some Dremels etc are a bit powerful and fast, these just run on AA batteries).

I'll find some photos and post them.  The cavity is pretty shallow, so maybe it will help.

[Dave Sloven]

Okay, here they are.

Before mods:



Humbucker cavity routed in:



Bridge cavity modified to fit Gotoh GE1996T tremolo and then painted:



Later modified when fitting Black Hawks and new pickguard to fit microtoggles of coil split on each pickup:



Here you see where the height adjustment screws were hitting the bottom, causing the pickup to tilt:



First of all I drilled the holes deeper with the Handy Drill so that the screws went down into them a bit:



Then I opened those up a bit with the ball router bit that comes in the Handy Router:



As you can see here this allowed me to drop the pickup right down to sit on its legs square.  I don't actually have the pickup this low.



You will still need to cut some length off of the screws if they are full length.  Good luck!

[cdondoros]

Thanks for all of the pics, Dave!

I've been doing some research today and the options seem to be either shaving ~2mm of wood on each side of the pickup (where the mounting ear meets the wood) or replace the base plate - I reached out to Tim at BKP and he mentioned it might be possible using a flat soapbar mounting plate.

Not sure which way I'm going to go with it yet as I'm waiting to hear back from Tim.

Incidentally, Tim also recommended a C-Bomb/Cold Sweat combo for this particular axe...