No Solder

It’s 50 years since man landed on the moon, but when it comes to the electrics in your guitar,we’re still in the dark ages, reckons Dave burrluck

- Dave Burrluck

Aside from its strings, the most commonly changed bits on any modder’s guitar are invariably the pickups. From just a handful of aftermarket choices back in the 70s, the pickup market has mushroomed to such an extent that you honestly wonder how all these brands survive. Have you ever wondered how many pickups you’ve retrofitted over the years? How many hours (days!) you’ve spent wrestling with wires and solder? Then there’s the dismantling and reassembly time: few classic designs make pickup swapping easy, like a Tele’s bridge pickup, or obviously a Thinline semi.

Earlier this year in issue 448 we auditioned a very forward-looking Relish Eucalypt Mary with its pull out/push in pickup system. A great idea… although you have to buy the guitar as well. But it set me thinking, isn’t there a better way for those of us who like to tinker?

More affordable than buying a Relish guitar, and readily more available, is the solderless pickup. In terms of manufacturing, some makers – though still the minority – are using pickups with push connectors so they just plug into the control circuit, which presumably speeds up assembly time in the factory. In the active world, EMG has a very effective solderless system for its pickups and components; Fishman uses push-on plugs to connect its Fluence pickups to the circuit, but the actual controls and so on still need a soldering iron. Back in the passive world, Seymour Duncan has the Liberator, mounted on either a 250k or 500kohm volume pot, which allows you to connect the bare output wires of its (or other makers’) pickups to the circuit with a screw-down solderless interface.