Quote:
Originally Posted by ljguitar
I think it was Doug Young who has reported issues with superglue residue making it hard to install other 'brands' of soundboard transducers after removal of a superglued one. As I recall he reported that superglue wicked into the grain, and made it hard to glue others in. Perhaps he'll wade in on the discussion.
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Gary at Trance tells me that once superglue has been on the bridgeplate, it soaks in, and the Trance tape will no longer adhere properly. This matches my experience when I tried it, after cleaning the bridge thoroughly, and even sanding. The pickups seemed to be well-attached, but sounded razor thin. I also tried using Barge cement over the previously-superglued bridgeplate (that's what Trance used to recommend), and that also failed.
It's not intuitive to me why it didn't work, it sure seems like if the pickup is reasonably attached, it should be ok, picking up vibrations as you'd expect. If I recall, David Enke at PUTW even recommends smearing a little glue over the surface to seal it before sticking his pickups on, to create a smoother surface for adhesion. So it may vary with the pickup. But I certainly have experienced different tones from different tapes on various SBTS I've tried, so I have no doubt the adhesive matters, and apparently the surfaces matter as well.
K&K's sound quite good, and my experience with using tape with them was not great - they needed to be glued in to sound right. So if that's what someone wants to install, I think its a very safe bet, but people should realize it's a pretty invasive option. My experience, combined with the availability of other pickups that also sound good, has me leaning away from ever supergluing anything to my guitars again, but that's just my current bias.