I’ve measured up a few P90s and covers. I’m guessing they’ll be imperial measurements (because America) and the corner radii look like 1/4" or 3/16".
Bare Knuckle use 1/4". Tonerider use 3/16".
Even DiMarzio have varied the shape depending on which P90. My vintage style Soapbar DP167S is 3/16" (current site looks like 1/4") . The modern P90 humbuckers are all 1/4".
So the big question is: which corner radius is on the Bailey P90 template? And what are the chances of an option in the shop?
I have reasons: I’m planning to use mini-humbuckers on my archtop build - I’ve already bought them, although I’ve never used their like before. Gibson used to fit minis into P90 routs when they had more of one than the other. I could always rout for P90s and fit minis with a mounting ring. And if the minis suck, I don’t need to re-rout.
Jack of all trades and master of my own destiny. It’s only a small destiny.
Forgive me - I can’t do Imperial.
I worked in a signs and exhibitions workshop for years. I was the guy in the wee room in the back who worked the AppleMac (as everyone called it at the time). I was working to incredibly fine mm tolerances on an SE30 9 inch screen, zooming in and in and in again, drawing up lettering and logos which might be machine-cut out of vinyl metres high.
Meanwhile, out in the ’shop, the carpenter was building frames for these displays and working with arcane, esoteric units of measurement like a bee’s bollock or a gnat’s tadger.
As in 2 ’n’ 3/8ths and a bee’s bollock or 5ft 8 ’n’ 3/4in and a gnat’s tadger.
It was like cold science confronting an ancient, intuitive system passed down from the fairies.
Needless to say, he was a brilliant joiner and I was forever corrupted with the assumption that I knew what a bee’s bollock was. It ruins my attempts to measure things even today.
Hmmm... looks like around 36mm - and a wee bit. That’ll do.
Jack of all trades and master of my own destiny. It’s only a small destiny.
The internal radius on all corners is 5mm
OK. 1/4" is 6.35mm. So that’s gonna be too tight. 3/16" is 4.76mm (and a bee’s bollock). So 5mm sounds pretty much perfect for that ‘sharper’ P90 profile.
Top cover is a Bare Knuckle ‘bone white’ celluloid P90 cover which they sent me a few years ago when I was struggling to match the white paint job on one of my Yamaha RGX A2s. Always helpful people (it didn’t match though).
Bottom cover is a generic P90 plastic cover from goodness know where. My guess is, it’s going to be a fashion thing. P90 profiles will drift from one to the other as current styles prevail.
But my point still stands - we need options! 😛 *
*Not even sure what that emoji means
Jack of all trades and master of my own destiny. It’s only a small destiny.
@jamesbisset The SE30! I was working at an AppleCentre in London when that machine was launched. We thought computing had reached its pinnacle! I mean, it came with a 40Mb hard drive and (I think) 4mb of RAM as standard and you could upgrade to 8Mb for only an additional £1235+VAT. It was just ridiculous to think that anybody could ever need more power or memory than the SE30 and even 8 bit colour (all 256 of them) was seen as just an unnecessary and very expensive luxury so the fact that the SE30 had a B&W screen didn’t matter. This was about the time that the BBC ran an April fool feature on the program that took over from SwapShop featuring a device the size of a box of matches that could digitally store several entire music albums. I think it was called the Chippie. It sounded entirely plausible to me but I got the piss taken out of me something rotten at work for believing it. Not my biggest mistake though. If, at the time, I’d invested £1000 in Apple and £1000 in Microsoft it would worth upwards of £40million now! Hey ho!!
My Epiphone humbuckers have got tight corners and didn't fit into the standard humbucker cavity. My smallest bit with a guide bearing is 12mm ( three bee's bollocks and a gnats whisker below 1/2"). I chiselled the cavity corners square and any untidyness is covered by the plastic surround.
