Is it ok to snip the back of pole screws?

[Spengler]

Fitting a Nailbomb into my Ibanez and the pole screws protrude beyond the screw plate at the back. Rather than route the pickup hole would I be ok just to snip the ends of the pole screws so it fits in or would this knacker the pickup/affect the tone?

Cheers!

[ToneMonkey]

I think you'd proably be alright but I couldn't tell you for definate on this one.  Personally I'd get the info for this straight from the horses mouth and give Tim at BKP a call.  He might even have some smaller ones, either way he's a very helpful bloke.

Welcome to the forums  :D

[HTH AMPS]

DON'T SNIP THE EXCESS ON THE POLEPIECES  PDT_023

Doing so changes the tone, it was a common mod a couple of years back to 'open up' the tone of pickups, though I'd imagine it wasn't that great of a mod since it doesn't appear to have caught on in a big way.

[jibidy]

Once snipped you wouldn't be able to go back. I PM'd Tim a while back about pole-pieces and he was more than helpful.

A little bit of routing can be to bad can it?

[WezV]

Once snipped you wouldn't be able to go back

although obviously you can still replace the polepieces alltogether if you need to so 'going back' is quite possible

the ideal solution is to make the guitar route right for the pickup but in some cases it makes sense to make the pickup fit the guitar

it will have an affect on the sound but everything does - balance it out with proper set-up

[jibidy]

Ummmm... Yer well still routing seems the best option :)  :lol:

[WezV]

depends on the guitar really... there are many guitars where i would rather snip the back off a screw than make any permenant alterations to the guitar!!

[jibidy]

Just raise everything and play slide man......

[Fikealox]

My understanding was that snipping the excess off the polepieces will result in less of the magnetic field being directed away from the strings, so you'll get slightly more output and a more focussed sound (as opposed to opening it up). I'd go for it. You might actually prefer the slightly different tone; and it'd cost you all of a few dollars to replace the screws if you regret the mod.

[Jaekae]

i have the same problem, i cant fit mine in my ibanez rga321, its a very expensive guitar so its pretty bad to drill big holes on the body...

[FELINEGUITARS]

It is a problem - especially on guitars where they have direct mounted pickups (and those pickups were Dimarzios before)
On some guitars you just don't want to rout a channel for the row of screws (guitar is too precious or there is a risk of going through to the tremolo spring cavity.

We had to do this last week on an really posh J Custom Ibanez
There was no way we wanted to cut into the guitar.
We actually marked the new length on the screw itself & took the screws out to grind on a belt sander/grinding wheel
However we did re-wax-dip the pickup once all he screws were back in to make it all solid again

It will decrease a bit of low end perhaps but not that much as the screws still go through the plate
I would order another set of screws to keep safe, and carefully trim the existing screws to length if you dont want to cut into the guitar

[nfe]

I just drilled holes to accomodate on my Fly freehand with a power drill. Bugger it.  :lol:

[Tim]

So long as we know at point of order we can fit shorter pole screws.