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Humbucker Mounting Base Plate - Modern
Humbucker Mounting Base Plate - Square Mounts
 
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Main Description

These are what we'd call "normal" humbucker bases, which probably sounds slightly weird considering that they're just pieces of pressed metal sheet intended to hold (seemingly magic!) bobbins and coils and magnets - but, honestly? Humbucker bases are quite complicated - they are one of those parts that come in a huge range of different shapes, styles, heights, materials, pole options and spacings, so, when we say "normal" what do we mean?

In short, these bases are going to fit 95% of guitars, and 95% of "styles" of humbucker

Drilled with 12 "pole holes", so capable of acception a 6 screw/6 slug humbucker, 12 slug and 12 screw pole humbuckers - you can use Modern humbucker bases, to make any style of humbucker (and as such, we carry the modern bases in the widest range of pole spacings)

The "height" (the reach of the legs) is sensible, at just over 7mm, so doesn't require a hugely deep route, which is something VERY few people consider when building humbuckers, but shouldn't limit you when working with guitars with thick tops/over sized humbucker rings.

All in all, they're fairly accomoating parts - which is quite nice in a world of weird and wonderful pickup parts, where everything has a habit of getting quite "demanding" in terms of "what it will fit"

Available in Brass and German Silver, in a range of pole spacings and finishes.

Pole Spacing

I’ve written a “potted history” of Humbucker pole spacings before today, so I’ll spare you the worst of it here, because it’s not really relevant to humbucker covers by themselves, and I’ll keep this to bare bones.

Rule of Thumb

“Officially” humbuckers come in 4 sizes (falling at the first hurdle, considering this product has 6 pole options on it!), and these can be divided into “Metric” and “Imperial” dimensions. That’s a complete lie, because there isn’t a great deal of logic applied to them either way that make them inherently metric or Imperial, so, frankly, your pretty safe in thinking of that distinction more as “What Gibson® did” and “What everyone else did”

Either way, it runs as follows.
The “metric” sizes are 50mm and 52mm – anything far eastern is usually these sizes.
The “Imperial” sizes run at 49.2mm and 52.5mm – slightly trickier because its not limited to USA produced pickups any more, but generally, higher end pickups will use imperial dimensions.

What size do I need?

Measuring your pole spacing, is easy. Don’t trust what a manufacturer tells you, don’t trust my guide below, please, measure your own pickups. Manufacturers do vary their production for various reasons, and no one is keeping track of this as closely as you’d hope!

So – to measure – get your pickup, and measure centre to centre on the pole SLUGS (Not the screws) High E to low E– they’ll have concentric rings printed into them, and you’ll be able to accurately line up a ruler with the centres.

Once you’ve got a measurement, double check it against the pole SCREWS, and you’ll have your spacing.

Check all pickups on the guitar, because its not uncommon to find a neck pickups with a narrower pole spacing then bridge pickups.

Who uses what size?

So as a very rough guide, here goes! A few brands we know about, and what fits what!
DiMarzio®* Standard 48.6mm, F Spacing €“ 51.05mm
Gibson®** Historic - 49.2mm, Modern 52.5mm Bridge, 49.2mm Neck
Seymour Duncan® Standard - 49.2mm, Trembucker® 52.5mm
Artec Sounds - Neck 50mm, Bridge 52mm
G&B - Neck 50mm, Bridge 52mm
Rosewell Pickups® - Neck 50mm, Bridge 52mm
Ibanez ® - Neck 50mm, Bridge 52mm (Excluding models fitted with US made DiMarzio® Humbuckers)
Fender®*** Annoyingly, 49.2mm, 50mm, 52mm and 52.5mm…
Wilkinson® - Neck 50mm, Bridge 52mm
Axesrus® - we do things a bit weird because we don’t work to neck/bridge as a set size, but, generally speaking, we’re working in either 49.2mm, 50mm and 52.5mm.

*DiMarzio use a proprietary spacing system, no one knows why they came up with it to be honest. They probably started making replacement humbuckers before the Gibson standard (49.2mm) was widely known.

**Gibson, despite being the grand daddies of this stuff, can be a bit of a nightmare. They often state their humbuckers as being “50mm” spacing, they are not. They are simply rounding up.  They also, occasionally, fit humbuckers to guitars in spacings that model shouldn’t exist in (I’ve seen a few guitars with 57+ and burst buckers that were 52.5mm before today)

***Fender will drive you to despair, because, lets be honest – they’re making guitars all over the world at this point. Some models will come with far eastern humbuckers, some will come with USA wound, some will even come with Dimarzios as standard. They can use any spacing!

If you tolerate this.

You’ve probably noticed that theres a (+/-0.5mm) in the drop down options for the pole spacing – this is “the tolerance” and frankly, it’s a wonderful thing as far as we’re concerned.

Basically, your pole spacing on your pickup, have a little wiggle room when it comes to their actual spacing in relation to the cover (and the base) – pole screws have a little wobble in their threaded holes, covers aren’t drilled micron perfect, and pole screws aren’t all exactly 3/16” heads with 3mm threads

So, in short – you’ve got about 0.5mm of play in there, which means you can fit a 52mm base onto a 52.5mm set of bobbins, or a 50mm base onto a 49.5mm bobbin (should such a thing exist!)

Its only really helpful with 52 vs. 52.5mm to be honest (and 52.5mm only really exists to account for some weird manufacturers who have come up with 52.8 and 53mm bobbins!)

So don’t sweat it too much. 52mm and 52.5mm, atleast from a base point of view, are the same thing.

Covers and Base Material

This section of the "base" write up, is actually lifted directly from the covers write ups (with a bit of editting), because, honestly, they're interconnected (or, more accurately, they're believed to be) tonally - so, its worth having here too.

I think I’ve covered pole spacing pretty well under the “pole spacing” header, so, whilst bases and covers are impacted by that aspect of humbucker “design”, I’ll gloss over it in this section and concentrate a little more on the impact covers and bases actually have on the signal being produced by the coils.

Its one of those weird things with humbuckers, I wont say its overlooked as such, but its certainly not widely embraced as you’d think.

So, with humbuckers – you’ve usually got 2 options of material when it comes to covers and base plates, either Brass or German Silver (sometimes called Nickel Silver, or just Nickel) and its commonly believed that “brass is ‘bad’ because it sucks out top end” and “German Silver is ‘good’ because it doesn’t effect the tone” – and, broadly speaking, that’s actually correct! But, as with most things, its not as clear cut as we’d like as engineers, so, I’m going to try to drag this topic well and truly into the light!

Ace of Base
So lets start at the bottom, and deal with “base plate material” – Brass vs. Nickel!

Swap Graphs?

Base #1 (Purple)

Base #2 (Blue)

We can see from the above, that, really? There isn’t a great deal of difference between the two options (I’ve included “no base” too, for completeness’ sake). If anything, a brass base plate, compared to German Silver, isn’t actually sucking out any top end, its sucking out a little of everything up to the resonant peak, but past that, its comparable to German silver – so we’d perceive that, not as “sucking out top end”, in fact, the complete opposite, we’d hear that as the pickup gaining a little definition, and likely, being a shade brighter! However, it’s a fairly small change in that regard, its certainly not as drastic as we’d be lead to believe in the old “Brass bad/Nickel good” argument.


And, we can see that both German Silver and Brass, and both having an effect on the signal compared to the “no base” version of the pickup (and this is telling, because the same happens on a Telecaster® bridge pickup, or a P90) – without a base, we’re actually retaining a little more of the signal above the resonant peak. Its an unrealistic dream to say “humbuckers without bases sound better”, simply because the mounting system for the pickups is pretty reliant on a metal base, but we can certainly see that the base material, whilst only a minimal change, is always losing “something”. They’re always going to cause a loss of something.

Real world, we’re probably going to “hear” a German silver base as being a little warmer, a little smoother, a little more forgiving (evident in the wider peak) and we’re going to “hear” a brass base as being a little brighter, a little more cutting, a little crisper.

So, with that in mind, it does beg the question – is brass as bad as we’ve all been led to believe?

Well? Probably not, at least from a tonal point of view – we’re not seeing any enormous impact on the signal, we’ve not seeing a huge change to the shape of the plot, frankly (with uncovered pickups!) Brass vs. German silver bases is little more then an extra option for “seasoning”, and I suppose, that’s to be expected, the base is on the bottom, it’s a long way away from the strings, and with all of this stuff, the bigger impacts are things that sit between the coils and strings, not beneath!

However, there are one huge point of note here.
Soldering to Brass!
Brass is an absolute pig to solder to! Its far more conductive than German Silver, so it wicks the heat away from the point you want to solder to, making it difficult to make a good, solid joint. This isn’t a massive issue when the only solder joint you need to make to the base is the ground wire for the hookup, but it can be a real pain if you’re fitting a cover, where you’re making a couple of small spot weld to hold the thing in place. German Silver, by comparison, is a poor(er) conductor, it doesn’t wick the heat as effectively, so soldering to it is much easier.

Frankly, when the humbucker was invented, chances are, German silver wasn’t chosen as the preferred material because it had some wonderful, musically adjacent alloy that left the humbucker sounding closer to the “ideal” – it was probably chosen because it was easier to solder to. It costs more to produce then brass, but, frankly, its quicker to work with, introduces less risk during pickup assembly (better to make your spot welds with a solder iron then with a small gas torch!) meaning less tools required, meaning less training, and less fire risk! (a weirdly big deal in guitar manufacturing!)

Bases – a conclusion
If you’re building an uncovered humbucker, and your happy soldering the ground connection onto the base, brass is as good as German silver! Its slightly cheaper, and it’s brightening the pickup ever so slightly. It’s probably so small a change that its below our comprehension, but at least you know now, what’s happening. You can lean into it if you want to, or don’t. Just be aware, brass isn’t bad! (And that’s likely going to be the last time I type that, because things are about to get interesting!)

Covers
I know this is purely a personal taste thing, but I don’t think they’ve ever invented anything that looks as good as a covered humbucker in a Gibson® (and I’m a Fender® man!) so I certainly won’t be using this section of the write up as a stick to beat anyone who feels the same way! Covered humbuckers are beautiful! However, they’re one of those things where, the “truth” about their impact on pickups has become lost along the way, so, just like bases, let’s see if I can bring a bit of perspective to the whole thing.

So, just like base plates, you’re dealing with 2 different materials when it comes to covers – either Brass or German silver again (the “no cover” option is at least viable here though, where with the base plate, its more of a hypothetical, and, technically speaking, Stainless steel covers did exist, but it was short lived, and I don’t believe it ever went past the prototype stage of the initial humbuckers!)

And, we’re back to the old trope! “Brass sucks out top end, German silver doesn’t affect the sound” – so lets get straight into the graphs.

Swap Graphs?

Base #1 (Purple)

Cover #1 (Purple)

Base #2 (Blue)

Cover #1 (Blue)


Now, that graphs actually REALLY unfair, but, real world? Its true I’m afraid. If I go grab you a Classic 50s, slap a Chrome plated German Silver cover on it, that’s what’s going to happen to your signal. I think we’d all agree, that that is definitely “an affected sound” right?
Now, before we get into what’s going on with German Silver, lets agree too, that brass is doing EXACTLY what we thought it would do too. Its sucking out a huge amount of voltage from the resonant peak, and its making the pickup sound very woolly. We’d definitely perceive that as “top end has been sucked out”.

So, the weird thing here, is that German silver is actually sucking out a lot of top end too! Not as much as brass, but its still having a big impact! Now, the reason as to why, is quite interesting.

To explain this well, is going to get pretty boring, but, considering your entertaining the idea of winding a humbucker, presumably for fun, this might be right up your street, and its worth knowing, so bare with.

However, whats interesting in the above graphs (and where the focus of this write up has to differ from the "cover" version), is that we can see a difference between the same covers, fitted to brass and German silver bases - and the "overall theme" of the base, carrys over when its covered. Brass bases lose a little body, but gain a little top end.

Modern vs. Vintage vs. Trad

Probably more information then you ever thought you'd need to know, but, if your going down the rabbit hole of humbuckers, knowing your bases will save your skin eventually.

In the "normal" styles, there exists 3 styles. (thats a woeful over simplication, but base with me)

Modern, Vintage and traditional.

Modern bases, have 12 poles for the poles to pole through - they allow you to make any kind of humbucker you want, and the legs are relatively short, so they're idea for guitars that are "shallow routed"

Vintage bases, have 6 threaded holes on the screw side, and no holes on the slug side, and only come in "long leg" (about 15mm), allowing you to lower them further into the guitar, but, requiring deeper routes as a trade off.

Traditional bases are the half way house between the two - "medium legs" (10mm) 6 holes on screw side, none on the slug, but the holes for the poles aren'y tapped (so pole thread is less of a consideration)


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