Gibson used various thicknesses of spruce to set the pickup height relative to the strings. Time for pickup surgery.Īfter removing the two phillips screws and the baseplate I am presented with the original spruce spacers. In fact, the pole pieces nearly touch the strings. the bridge cover is too tall and the strings almost make contact with it. The next step was to slap on the original chrome P-90 covers. It fit fine in the existing humbucker-sized rout at the bridge. The other pickup had a lighter color base-plate and round mounting holes. The darker base-plate with the slotted mounting holes fit perfectly at the neck position so I assumed this was its original home. The pickups each have a slightly different color base-plate. I elected to keep it off for the time being but it will eventually make its way back on this guitar. Since the posts were replaced as well as the bridge, the original does not fit very well on the replacements. In the late 60's Gibson used ABR-1 style bridges with threaded posts on these guitars instead of the archtop style bridges of years past. The tuners are newer and will probably be more reliable than the connected, three-on-a-side original tuners. With the strings off and the pickups out I could clean the body and hardware more easily. This would have taken four times as long had it not been for that.
#Gibson es 125 pick up route free
Once the pickups were both free I was able to see that the last modifier of this guitar was smart enough to splice the pickup leads in place so I did not have to remove the pots, input jack and ground wire.
![gibson es 125 pick up route gibson es 125 pick up route](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/2OcAAOSw8ldhp89T/s-l1600.jpg)
I was very careful not to pull any of the finish away and to remove as much of the glue as possible. I grabbed the X-Acto and began whittling away at the clear glue.
![gibson es 125 pick up route gibson es 125 pick up route](http://www.vintagemandolin.com/images/50gibsones125_nsn/front2.jpg)
I grabbed the trusty screwdriver and removed the neck pickup mount but wait. The existing pickups actually sounded really good and the setup suited this guitar well but, none-the-less they do not belong.