70's Guild Pickup Replacement

[909one]

I just got a 1979 Guild Starfire IV on ebay.
I took a chance with this puchase, the instrument is in great shape but the pickups aren't to my liking.
Can these Guild pickups be replaced with standard Humbuckers?

The humbucker itself is almost the same size as a Gibson style humbucker, but the pickup surrounds are weird. Two screws on top, one on bottom. They look wider than standard humbuckers.

Has anyone swapped out there 70's Guild humbuckers with newer Humbuckers?

 

[matsickma]

In regards to the tone of the Guild HB1 tone...these can be made to sound quite good by careful adjustment of pickup height. If you want a a bit more bite and distortion out of the bridge pickup raise the pickup up close to the strings.

The 2+1 height adjustment setup of the Guild pickups allows you to easily adjust the pickup pitch angle so that it can run parallel to the strings. This allow the pickup to be balanced between the two single coil bobbins of the humbucker and allows the pickup to get very close to the strings without hitting.

If you are going to replace the pickup with something else I recommend you replace the entire pickup AND mounting rings. Drilling a extra hole in the Guild pickup rings is a faupaux and somday will result in an issue if you want to return it as origional. An extra hole in the pickup ring can reduce the value of the pickup set by over $50 and more when on the guitar. Guild pickup bezels are close to impossible to find so pick up a set of new bezels when you get your new pickups. A new set is less than $10 but new Guilds are a big deal to replace (if you can find them).

M

 

[danerectal]

I'm with Mat. Try your best to get the tone you want out of the HB-1s. If you do replace them, replace the rings or even make new ones so you don't have to drill new screw holes. Like you said, the pickups are wider and you would have to drill new holes for a standard size humbucker ring. I don't know if you'll have trouble with string spacing, but if you have the Adjust-o-Matic roller bridge, you could probably compensate. I've bought a couple that had modified pickups. One had a changed ring and a drilled Guild ring; the other had two drilled Guild rings, and nothing could frustrate me more. I would say if you do downgrade the HB-1s to something else, make new rings and sell me the Guild pickups and rings...