CarrierLost

Decided to try my hand at a pickup swap. I ordered Seymour Duncan Mark Holcomb Alpha and Omega pickups, an adjustable soldering iron, and watched about half a dozen YouTube videos.

I’m fairly handy, but I’ve never soldered anything before. This was an entirely new experience for me, but I figured worst case I could take it to a shop and have them fix it. So let’s get started!

Strings off!

Going to change the strings anyway, so they come off first. It’ll make things way easier to deal with, too.

Pull the back cover and check it out.

I pulled out the tone pot, which is a push/pull unit on the PRS CU24SE, and compared the wiring diagram I downloaded from PRS and the one that came in the package with the new pickups. I had a pretty good idea what I was looking at, so it was time to start taking things apart.

This is the stock wiring. Going to start desoldering things now.

Bridge pickup is out!

Stock pickup came out very easily. Just heated up the solder blob and out she came.

New bridge in.

Took me a few tries to get the new solder blob nice and neat, but it went in very easily as well.

Tested it out, and the coil splitting works! Got it on the first try. The instructions are perfect!

Now for the neck.

First one was easy, so I was more confident with the neck pickup.

All mounted up and tested out. Everything is awesome!

Tidy up the wiring a little and close up the back. Put the new strings on, level and set the pickup height, then let it rip!

That’s it! All done. I was really surprised at how easy it actually was. If your thinking about trying it out, go for it.

The new pickups are phenomenal, and I feel like they’ve elevated the rest of the guitar. The PRS SE lines are really good as is, but I felt like the pickups were a weak link in an otherwise awesome guitar. The Alpha/Omega set are really good. A lot of clarity in the cleans while keeping articulation with distortion. Great addition overall.

2012 PRS 513

The 513 was, to me, one of the most interesting guitars to roll out of the PRS shop. Boasting a unique pickup and wiring arrangement, it allows for incredible diversity in selecting and splitting pickups.

With 5 single coils and unique wiring, the 513 is able to deliver everything from single coil twang to humbucker crunch, in 13 total combinations.

5 coils, with 13 different configurations, the 513 is my personal "do it all" instrument.

This guitar was built by my brother-in-law back in 1999. Third guitar he ever built.

The back and sides are hand scraped rosewood from a stump in his yard while he was living in São Paulo, where he learned to build guitars.

It was originally given to his father, but was passed along to me as one of the only guitar players in the family.