Terminal Block For Fast PUP Swaps?

OmegaZero

Inspired
This may be a silly question, but are there any issues with using a small terminal block to make pickup changes easier? I'm sure purists will eat their hat at the idea, and I totally get the viewpoint of keeping the signal path as clean and vintage as possible. Considering it objectively though, is there any reason to expect a noticeable impact on the signal? I see Seymour Duncan has a product that does this so maybe it's not a terrible idea. I guess I'm wondering why more people don't do it, considering how often pickup changes are discussed.

In my particular situation, I want to use a small 3 or 4-position screw-down block to make swapping between loaded pickguards on my Strat easier. I'm sure I'll eventually settle on what I like best, but I see many changes in my future before I get there. There's plenty of room in the cavity to fit a block like the little Phoenix ones, so it should be easy enough to do...
 
Yes, it'll be fine. I think the reason more people don't do this is because soldering the connections is only about 5% of the job of swapping pickups. :)
 
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Yes, it'll be fine. I think the reason more people don't do this is because soldering the connections is only about 5% of the job is swapping pickups. :)

There's unwinding the strings, opening up the control cavity, unsoldering the pickups, removing the pickups, removing the pickup screws, the inevitable maddening fight to get the pickup springs to stay in place as you try to fit the pickup screws unto the new pickups, installing the pickups, pulling the wires through, soldering the wires, closing the control cavity and restringing and retuning the guitar. All those hassles increase exponentially when having to deal with a Fender style pickup guard.

Sometimes I think the only reason that people always say that a new set of pickups is bringing their guitar back to life is confirmation bias because of all the effort they had to put in. And because you can't really go back and A/B between the two pickups to do an actual comparison.
 
Seem to remember I did something along these lines in the mid 80's. ..if you do go this route, you might want to tin the end of the pickup wires feeding into any block. Those tiny individual strands of wire are pretty fragile to the forces involved in the screw-clamping them down otherwise.

Best of luck!
 
I did this for quite a while but got tedious for some of the reasons mentioned, like pickguard and string removal. for me anyway, it was not worth it.
 
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