QUICK CHANGE

As Gibson finally adds some Quick Connect pickups to its Pickup Shop line-up, Dave Burrluck revisits this simple no-solder method to mod your Modern guitar

It’s hardly a “Hold the front page!” moment, but latest releases in Gibson’s expansive aftermarket Pickup Shop

collection include a pair of sets – the perennial ’57 Classic and the back-tothe-70s Dirty Fingers hot humbuckers – that come with what many thought were the brand’s ‘forgotten’ Quick Connect plugs. The what? Well, with these connectors attached to the four-conductor pickup lead, they’re a push-fit into the relevant PCBstyle Gibson control circuit that can give you some tricky additional sounds.

We last discussed these quick fixes about five years ago in The Mod Squad (issue 451) and, to be honest, we thought that Gibson – not least under its new management – had abandoned this simple and nifty idea, at least in terms of aftermarket retrofits.

However, chatting last year to Gibson USA’s Jason Davidson, who looks after the Pickup Shop, he explained: “We still manufacture the Quick Connect [QC] stuff for Gibson USA. Gibson was actually using the QC stuff back as far as the late 70s on different models, but we started formalising it into Gibson USA production, on regular production models, around 2007.

It was around 2012 to 2013 that we did start to sell a few models aftermarket with the QC plugs, like ’57 Classics, the Angus Young model, the Dirty Fingers. We offered those with the QC system, but they didn’t actually sell very well and were discontinued shortly after. So, as I said, we still use Quick Connects at the factory, and since Jared Brandon – the Pickup Shop’s product manager and designer – and myself have come onboard with the Pickup Shop we’ve received a lot of requests for the Quick Connect pickups. We haven’t forgotten those customers because there are tens of thousands of guitars out there with the QC system.”