{"id":4817,"date":"2011-11-25T12:15:29","date_gmt":"2011-11-25T16:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gad.net\/Blog\/?p=4817"},"modified":"2021-03-08T13:45:20","modified_gmt":"2021-03-08T18:45:20","slug":"guild-full-sized-hb1-and-sd1-pickup-variations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gad.net\/Blog\/2011\/11\/25\/guild-full-sized-hb1-and-sd1-pickup-variations\/","title":{"rendered":"Guild Full-Sized HB1 and SD1 Pickup Variations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>One of the questions I see on the guitar forums quite a bit is, “What kind of pickups does this Guild guitar have?” Since I’ve posted in many of these threads, I seem to get a lot of emails with the same question. I thought that I might write up a quick summary of the differences as I know them. I originally wrote this article in 2011, and have updated it in 2014.<\/p>\n

For Guild AntiHum and LB1 Little Bucker mini-humbucker pickup information, check out my article on them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

First, let me say that I am by no means the expert on Guild guitars. That honor goes to Hans Moust<\/a>, author of the excellent book entitled The Guild Guitar Book<\/a>. Much of what I’ve learned about Guild pickups, I attribute to Hans helping me via email and through forum posts. If you’d like to learn more about Guild guitars, I heartily recommend that you pick up a copy of his book.<\/p>\n

To the best of my knowledge, there are two types of Guild HB1 pickups – the mini humbuckers (affectionately called “mini-hums”), and the full-sized humbuckers. This article focuses on the full-sized pickups, which, for reasons that should soon be clear, are often confused.\u00a0We’ll be looking at three different pickups, all of which look very similar from a distance, and some of which look identical from the front. I’m not entirely sure of the correct names, but for the sake of this article, I will call them Guild HB1s, Seymour Duncan SD1s, and Fender HB1s. There are some others in there as well. Read on to learn more.<\/p>\n

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Guild HB1<\/h2>\n

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First, let’s take a look at the original full-sized HB1. This is the pickup that Guild guys lust for, because though they don’t quite sound like anything else, they sound amazingly good. I’ve not played an original Gibson PAF pickup since the 70s, but I’ve heard the Guild HB1 compared to that iconic pickup.\u00a0I’ve seen these pickups on Guild guitars from the ’70s, ’80s, and early ’90s.<\/p>\n

These pickups define what a full-sized HB1s look like. There are two raised areas on the pickup, one containing the pole pieces, and the other blank. The later SD1 and Fender HB1 pickups look the same at quick glance, but as we’ll see, there are important differences. I call this the “double hump” cover.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Vintage Guid HB1 pickups are the same length as “regular” Gibson-style humbuckers, but they are wider so they don’t easily fit into other guitars. In the original article, I had written that HB1s are longer and<\/em> wider than regular humbuckers, but that is incorrect. I discovered this by trying a very simple test; I tried to mash an HB1 into a Gibson ring. As you can see in the picture to the right, the HB1 fits lengthwise, but the width is too great for the ring. The odd size of the HB1 pickups causes the following problems:<\/p>\n