Neck position P90 has dropped into the cavity--before I dig in,

[morglan]

Fixed it--with pics below.

It's a Gibson SG Classic. Earlier today, I was working around my guitars, and the Classic happened to fall forward off the stand to the floor (talk about a scare!)

As I was busy, I just picked it up, immediately checked the neck/headstock (ok) and gave it a quick look--all seemeed fine.

I just went to plug it in, and noticed that the neck P90 mounting screw on the treble side was sticking out, and wouldn't catch anything when I tried screwing it in (and the pup had dropped into the cavity somewhat.)

I've been inside strats before, but never a P90 equipped set-up. Is it pretty straightforward in there? Anything I should be prepared for? Also, I just put on new strings--will I be able to fix this without replacing the strings?

Thanks!

[tfunster]

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure you're gonna have to take off the strings and pickguard. I have a Classic and this has happened a couple of times.

If you can do it without removing anything, let me know!

[John Coloccia]

Is the other screw still attached? Is the spring still on the bad screw, or visible at least (often times, it'll stick to the side of the pickup when it falls off....remember, it's magnetic

If so, just put the spring back on the screw, use a piece of metal (like a screwdriver, maybe) and touch it to the pickup. The pickup will stick to the metal, you'll be able to pull it back up and stick the screw back in.

A flat piece of metal will work better than a screwdriver. I'm sure I have something kicking around that works well for this...I just can't think of anything common off the top of my head at the moment.

edit: I'm assuming you can push the pickup in enough to seen the spring. I forget, now, if you can do that with SG's. Regardless, I'd try it first, and it'll be obvious if it's working right.

[Mike9]

The routs on these can be tight - The soapbar Gibsons I've owned all had threaded brass inserts in the body and the P-90's rode on springs and attached/adjusted via with machine screws. Best case scenario - You may have jammed the cover in the rout on impact. Get some new strings, roll up your sleaves and take it apart - it's the only real way to see what's going on. Good luck with it - :AOK

[morglan]

Well I found the time to make the fix today--here it is before surgery:


Here's a close-up of the neck pick up which had fallen into the rout:


Hoping to salvage the new strings that I put on the day before yesterday, I loosened them up to see if I could simply lift the guard enough to fix the trouble. Luckily, I tend to put a lot of winds around the tuning pegs, so I realized I could simply loosen the strings enough to pull the stop tailpiece off the studs and set them aside--intact:



Here's a peek under the guard--I was trying to see if I could now fix it without removing the bridge screws so I wouldn't need to reset the bridge height (you can see that the spring remained on the screw, but I couldn't get the screw back into the mounting hole):



So, I took off the bridge screws and pulled up the whole guard:




After putting the screw back into place (it's threaded through a flat "U" clamp, which slides over the ear of the pickup, rather than threading through the ear itself), I cleaned up the body and took a look into the cavities and at the wiring. The wiring is nice and neat, with good quality wire. The cavities had writing in them--"HC" in the neck pocket:



And "SGCS" in the bridge pickup rout:



When putting the guard back on, I noticed that the bridge ferrule holes in the guard didn't line up exactly with the holes in the guitar (everything else lined up perfectly, so I'm positive it came from the factory this way) I was surprised, but it isn't a big deal:




And here it is all back together:



Not a difficult or even tedious job, but a pain to have to undertake none the less. It'll probably take me a month to get the bridge adjusted right where I want it (although I eyeballed it pretty close) and even longer to get the pickup heights adjusted to where I like their relationship, but it was cool to see exactly what was under the hood. I hope these pics can help someone else...

[John Coloccia]

If you need to take the bridge height nuts off again, you can easily reset the height with nothing but a couple of sheets of paper.

Next time, take a couple of sheets of paper, and rip it into little squares. Use the squares to judge the height of thread protruding out the top of the bridge. If the bridge is higher than the studs, use something to gauge the height of the nuts, and paper for fine adjustment. When you put it back together, you just set it back to something like "bass side = 10 sheets, treble side = 5 sheets".

You don't have to use paper. Feeler gauges work well....anything, really.