How can I work on tones on a guitar?

Guitar pickup answer/ solution, please help?

• I know this probably sounds stupid, but my husband wants to find a way to add a 3rd or even a 4th pickup to a les Paul type guitar without routing any new holes, so I guess what I'm asking is are there any surface mounted pickups out there? He wants to add some acoustic tones to it, he was thinking of maybe a tune o matic bridge with a piezo rod or 2 attached to the bottom of it. But he isn't quite sure if that will work with a steel bridge? He wants something like the Shadow NanoMag pickup, but he doesn't want the preamp and equalizer system that comes with it. Is there a place where he can get the pickup itself online? Or something similar? A very small magnetic pickup would be ideal. Gracias

• Answer:

  Your husband has some ambitious goals. But what he's wanting aint' gonna happen. To paraphrase an old saying, you've gotta break some eggs to make an omlet. Magnetic pickups are going to have to be routed into the body...period. Any magnetic pickup with a low enought profile to fit between the body and the strings will have next to no output. The Shadow NanoMag has to be routed into the end of the neck...at least, that's where it's engineered to go. Attaching piezos to the existing bridge is useless. Piezos rely on a pressure gradiant to work...and again the output would be extremely weak just sticking them on the existing bridge. If he's looking for more tones, but not do any additional routing maybe he should look at coil tapping the pickups and adding some additional switching. Coil tap, phase, and series/parallel switching add a lot of tonal variations to a 2 humbucker guitar. Replacing the standard pots with ones that have push-pull switching in them means no additional holes. One more bit of advice. Be aware that a lot of times taking a less expensive guitar and adding a ton of upgrades to it will usually cost you more than just buying the guitar you want in the first place. Good luck. Greetings from Austin, TX Ken