Changing the pickup cover on a MM5 pup

[martthebass]

Was looking at changing the pup cover on my 1998 Ray5 (fancied white for some reason....yeah I know). Contacted EBMM - very helpful, gave me the direct contact at Strings and Things. S&T equally helpful and more than happy to send me a cover but said that replacement was verrrry difficult on a MM5 pup (unlike the MM4) as it's epoxied in and removal can result in damage/destruction of the windings.

Anybody any experience?

Thanks, MTB

[icastle]

[quote name='martthebass' post='1021373' date='Nov 12 2010, 01:25 PM']Was looking at changing the pup cover on my 1998 Ray5 (fancied white for some reason....yeah I know). Contacted EBMM - very helpful, gave me the direct contact at Strings and Things. S&T equally helpful and more than happy to send me a cover but said that replacement was verrrry difficult on a MM5 pup (unlike the MM4) as it's epoxied in and removal can result in damage/destruction of the windings.

Anybody any experience?

Thanks, MTB[/quote]

Not on an MM5 but the good news is that the pickup is placed inside the cover and then epoxy is poured in.
This means that the pickup itself is encased in a block of resin and uses the pickup cover as a mould - so there is some protection there.

You won't be able to just lift out the pickup though - you'll need to take a pair of side cutters to an exposed piece of rear edge casing, nibble away at it until you have something you can grip with the cutters and peel the cover away like you are peeling an orange.

It would be a very good idea to completely remove the pickup from the guitar if you are going to attempt to do this.

HTH