First simple rebuild/tweak: Stagg M50

[Andolin]

Hey guys, newbie here

I took a liking to the red Stagg M50 (mostly the colour) which happened to have a electric-guitar style pickup.



Given the low price of this instrument I pretty much assumed the set up, strings and electrics would be junk So this is what I came up with!



First I ripped out all the electrics and stuck in a hot rail dual humbucker, ceramic magnet type.



At the same time I redid all the internal stuff and noted that the original earth strap from the tailpiece wasn't even attached to anything!

I think these chrome knobs look a lot better. The top one here has a pull-push switch to change the humbucker between series and parallel.



Errrr, the only problem with using a guitar pickup is the height is too shallow (the original is at least twice the height.) So I came up with a novel solution



Bonus, before the pick guard was bolted flat over the f-hole.

The less obvious mods are dropping the nut action down slightly, fitting some flatwound D'Addario strings and shifting the bridge slightly to improve intonation.

Talking of bridges, I have this odd thing:



From what I can tell it just utilises 6mm chunks of fret wire. Be curious if anyone's actually tried one.

[Marty Jacobson]

I don't think the intonation will be right on that odd bridge. But the hot rails pickup should be a good improvement. Nice job.