Absolutely. I totally get the point. While I've been waiting for the Stick order I placed in September 2021 I've been fortunate to pick up something to be playing in the meantime. The price of one of those Sticks was roughly based on the price of the nearest equivalent current offering. I weighed up the options & went for it.

As a result I had a newish (~14 years old) fully adjustable, Stick over a year ago.

Earlier this week Jeff's guesstimate was that I might get that September 2021 order Stick in as little as a couple of months time...

All that said, my point remains. The price of an item is not what is asked for, it's what is accepted.

I actually did that, built my own stickup. I 3D printed the housing, wound my own coils using screws as pole pieces, and did all the wiring and soldering. I was not 100% happy with the sound, but pretty cool that it worked as a first attempt.

I was trying to keep it low budget, so everything was DIY. So if anyone has the means or parts, we can totally 3D a housing that accommodates any pickups in any position!

AFAIK, SD's rails and (some) EMG do have pole pieces, so alignment is not paramount, still I'm pretty anal about this I would probably try to position them as symetric as possible. And if anyone want to use single coils, humbuckers, or any other type with pole piece it can be done. Now I'm thinking dual "p-bass" split humbuckers for my SB8...

I'm pretty handy with CAD, so we could make a few standard "blank" housings and then add whatever combination of pickups and switches are needed.

I had some spare time at work and decided to do this. Basically I measured "The Block" from my SB8 and made the housing, took standard EMG "strat" single coils, a 1/4" stereo jack, and a few rotary knobs for effect.

What do you think?

Keep in mind that the original TheBlock pickup has front "tele" pickups, not "strat". I just used what I could find on the 3D for this version to show what could be done. In the end we can try to fit any pickup and electronics we want

I read somewhere that the Stick pickup housings had some special material added to their injection moldings to block outside interference from reaching the pickup modules. (Like a Faraday cage) Some guitar manufacturers use pickup modules with a metal cover that essentially does the same thing.

Instruments and amplifiers can sometimes have an isolated hot ground that effects the pickups in an undesirable way. My JC-120 amp has a dual throw power switch. If I select power one way, I get lots of floor noise on the amp. When I flip the power switch the other way, almost no floor noise at all.

Musicians who use a lot of effects pedals can sometimes create a ground loop that causes similar issues. I prefer to use the one box, one amp system. I use the Helix Floor on my Railboard and either the Tonex pedal or Kemper Stage on my PRS Custom 24.

True! You can cover inside of the housing with aluminum tape, I do this with the cavities pf my guitars/basses and works like a charm.


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I think EMG is the way to go here…

I just spend some time in their website. All dimensions for pickups is available (easy to make a housing), they have active and passive pickups, all electronics are included, and they have pickups with and without poles. They also have a variety of pickups/sizes, single coils, humbuckers, soapbars, jazz, precision. So you can gos small pickups for split tunings, or long pickups for straight tunings.

I’ll try to make a dummy just to see how it works and if things fit.


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I just ordered a set of Gibson Burstbuckers out of Australia from eBay, for a Les Paul project that I'm working on. I wonder how different guitar pickups would work on a Chapman Stick. The real problem would be to get the string spacing right.

As mentioned before stick ent. Uses EMG active front tele’s for the actv 2 module they offer. They sound great


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