What better story to follow my “How To Solder” article, then an announcement from Seymour Duncan for a new system that allows you to swap pickups in your guitar without needing to do any soldering. Dubbed the Liberator™, it’s essentially a volume potentiometer with a clamping system to attach the pickup wires to.
Initially there will be both 500K and 250K versions for humbuckers and single coils. All the connections are color coded so hooking up your pickups correctly should put a little less stress on brain cells as well. The colors match Seymour Duncan’s pickup wire color scheme but an included color guide card shows wiring diagrams for other brands of pickups as well. For the old school purists, there is also gold-plated soldering pads which you can use and still give you the benefit of the coded locations. This also means you are soldering your ground wires to individual, easy to solder pads, instead of the back of the pot. A chore a lot of DIY guitarists struggle with.
This seems like a great idea and the only down side I could see is that it looks like it could be a tight fit in small control cavities. They are slated to be released in early 2011 for $35. Eventually, an expanded version of the Liberator™ system will be offered as complete wiring harnesses and loaded pickguards.
Watch a video about the Liberator.
You can read the complete press release here.
