rwillett Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 I'm reaching out to the community here for some help on what I think should be an easy answer and I'm struggling to find it. I'm 3d printing a bass guitar (build documented here) I'm wanting to put mounting holes in the base of the guitar for mounting pickups. Theer are other types of mounting systems already in play on the printed guitar, but I want to have mounting holes for putting in Fender Jazz pickups, specifically the in line pickups, not the split ones as they require a very wide gap which I can't put into the guitar (easily). So I thought that the Fender jazz pickups would be as standard as anything and that all the people who make jazz pickups would adhere to the standard, e.g. holes are a certain width apart and a certain size, so that it's easy to replace one pickup with another. However searching for "fender jazz pickup dimensions" and checking Images show an range of different dimensions for what I thought would be standard. I know that the bridge and the neck pickups are different lengths as the strings widen as they get to the bridge but there's a plethora of widths and lengthes. The one dimension I couldn't find was a fender website with the dimensions on. Specifically what I'm after are the four holes that mount the pickup to the body. Not that interested in the width of the pickup itself, its the body mounting holes. Any pointers to what would be "standard" or "official" dimensions greatfully received. Thanks Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Huge Hands Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 When I tried to get some custom pickups for my old Squ!er P5 (which had Jazz pickups) - I ran into this problem. It appears (from what I was told) that the different width neck and bridge pickups also have different spacing of the holes, which was a problem for my build as the body was cut with domed notches for the mounting tabs and the first set I got wouldn't fit. The pickup builder was amazed that Squier had used the not-as-wide 4 string neck casing for both 5 string positions. He told me that there wasn't really one standard and that once you add all of the copy manufacturer pickup dimensions there can be a lot of variance. I think you will have to find one you want to use, and measure it, and fit for that. This is all based on my limited experience, and of course could be very wrong! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted March 27 Author Share Posted March 27 Thanks for the reply. I'm just googling for dimensions and building a spreadsheet of what I've found. The length and width aren't a problem as I'm not roiting into wood, but fixing onto a slab, so what I'm after are the "ears" spacing. So far I have the stuff below (this is all ears spacing) which is actually coalessing around 1.5" <spit> neck and 1.56" bridge for the ears spacing and betweem 22.5mm and 23.5mm apart (each side of the pickup). One mm is quite a lot when I print to an accuracy of 0.2mm with no issues. I'm going to keep looking and see if I can find any common ground on this. Its really frustrating that most ›manufacturers don't produce decent information on the ear spacing. Seymour Duncan does produce proper design docs to be fair. I'll keep at it Thanks Rob 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Huge Hands Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 I could be wrong, but it felt like a lot more than a 1mm difference to me. With the first set I got, the "ears" wouldn't fit in the notches on the body. They were catching the edges and I would have probably had to shave about 1mm off the cavities to make them fit, but they wouldn't have been central in the ear cavity and touching the side, if you know what I mean (the correct pickups don't touch the edges in the current holes and there is probably already a 1mm gap all the way around). So in my dodgy maths head - if each ear needs to move further apart and needs at least 1mm - the gap between them should be bigger than 1mm? Apologies if I', being stupid. It was about 10 years ago and someone has that bass on permanent loan from me so I can't check. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted March 27 Author Share Posted March 27 I'm just working from what dimensions I can find on the Internet. The more I read, the more vague it becomes and the assumption that there are "standard measurements" seems to wrong. Fender seems to have changed things as they wanted and whilst many pickups have similarish ears, things like radii of corners, length, width and height are down to people's interpretation I'm going with 40mm x 23.5mm ear spacing for the bridge pickup and 38mm x 23.5mm spacing for the neck pickup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aidan63 Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 just get a set of covers, work to those dimensions and fit the pickups inside the covers - probably best to use the covers with no pole piece holes like these then you can swap pickups inside the covers to your heart's content should you chose Ebay link Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted March 27 Author Share Posted March 27 Thats kinda what I'm doing. I'm working on 40mm x 23.5mm for the ear lugs at the bridge and 38mm x 23.5mm at the neck. Just revising the Fusion 360 so it fits OK. I've manged to break something in the Fusion 360 model so need to fix it <sigh> Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted March 27 Author Share Posted March 27 Thanks for this, I've designed a casing with 38mm ear lugs and printed it off. Looks fine but will need some sanding down and spraying with glossy paint to match the glossy plastic cover of the others OR I could just buy one of eBay Lets see how mine goes first as I already have it printed. yet another thing I didn;t know was sold on ebay. Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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