How Eddie Van Halen Killed the Mounting Ring (and Why It Took Everyone 30 Years to Notice)

The first time we saw a direct-mounted humbucker, we didn’t know what we were looking at.

It was the mid-90s, a guitar shop in Freiburg, and someone had brought in an Ibanez RG Prestige for a setup. The pickups just sat there in the body — no plastic rings, no chrome bezels, nothing between the pickup and the wood except two screws and a strip of foam underneath. It looked unfinished. Like someone forgot to put the frames on.

“That’s how they come from the factory,” the tech said, not looking up from the truss rod. “Has been for years.”

We remember thinking: why?

It would take us another decade — and starting a hardware company — to really understand the answer. And it starts, like most good guitar stories do, with a twenty-two-year-old kid in Pasadena who couldn’t afford the guitar he wanted — so he built one out of parts.

The Kid with the Chisel

In 1977, Eddie Van Halen wanted a guitar that didn’t exist.

He wanted the bright snap and vibrato bar of a Fender Stratocaster combined with the thick, punchy roar of a Gibson humbucker. Fender made Strats. Gibson made Les Pauls. Nobody made both. So Eddie bought a factory-second Charvel body — Northern Ash, $50 — and a maple neck for $80, and started building.

The body had a standard Strat route. The humbucker he wanted to install was a Gibson P.A.F. — wider than a single-coil, different screw spacing, completely wrong shape for the cavity. So Eddie did what any twenty-two-year-old with more ambition than patience would do: he grabbed a chisel and started carving.

He widened the bridge pickup cavity by hand. Rough, imprecise, functional. And when it came time to mount the pickup, he made a decision that would quietly reshape the electric guitar industry for the next fifty years.

He threw away the mounting ring.

Why the Ring Existed in the First Place

To understand why this mattered, you have to understand what a mounting ring does — and what it doesn’t do.

When Seth Lover designed the humbucker at Gibson in 1955, he needed a way to suspend the pickup above the guitar body at the correct height. The solution was a plastic or metal frame — the mounting ring, or “bezel” — that screwed into the body. The pickup hung from the ring on springs, floating above the wood.

It was elegant. It was adjustable. The springs let you raise and lower the pickup to dial in the string-to-magnet distance.

But here’s what the mounting ring also did: it isolated the pickup from the body. The humbucker was suspended on springs inside a plastic frame. It moved independently of the wood. Acoustically, it was a microphone mounted on a shock absorber.

Eddie didn’t think about it in those terms. He wasn’t an engineer — he was a player. But he had a theory, and he expressed it the way players do: “I want everything connected. The strings, the pickup, the wood, the bridge — all one piece. That’s where the tone lives.”

Matchbooks and Wood Screws

So Eddie mounted his P.A.F. directly into the wood. No ring, no springs. Just the pickup baseplate resting in the cavity, screwed straight down into the body through the pickup’s threaded mounting tabs — the “ears.”

But there was a problem. Without springs, he had no way to adjust the pickup height. The bottom of the cavity was fixed. The pickup just sat wherever gravity put it.

His solution was beautifully crude: matchbooks. He’d fold up a matchbook cover and wedge it under the pickup to prop it up to the right height. Later he used wood shims. Whatever was lying around.

Then he drove wood screws through the pickup ears into the body to clamp it down.

It was ugly. It was imprecise. And it sounded incredible.

Players who heard that guitar described the tone as “punchy,” “authoritative,” “compressed in the right way.” The pickup wasn’t floating anymore — it was part of the body. When the strings vibrated, the body resonated, and the pickup moved with the wood in perfect synchronization. The mechanical coupling was complete.

Eddie had accidentally discovered something that acoustic engineers could explain but guitarists had never articulated: a rigidly mounted transducer captures more of the body’s resonant behavior than a decoupled one. The pickup wasn’t just hearing the strings — it was hearing the guitar.

The “Ears” Problem

Here’s the part of the story nobody talks about.

When Eddie drilled wood screws through his P.A.F.’s mounting tabs, he had to drill out the threads first. Those tabs — the “ears” — come from the factory with threaded holes designed to accept the screws that hold the pickup in a mounting ring. The threads are too small for a standard wood screw to pass through.

So he destroyed them. Drilled them out, pushed a wood screw through, screwed it into the body. Done.

This meant the pickup could never go back in a mounting ring. It was a one-way modification. Which was fine for Eddie Van Halen — he wasn’t planning to return anything to stock. But for the rest of us, it created a real dilemma.

Want to try direct mounting? Great — but once you drill out those ears, the pickup is permanently modified. Changed your mind? Want to sell it? Want to put it in a different guitar that uses rings? Too bad.

This problem has followed direct mounting for decades. Every forum thread about direct-mounting a humbucker eventually hits the same question: “Do I have to drill out the ears?” And the answer, for most of guitar history, has been yes.

From Garage Mod to Factory Standard

Direct-mounted DiMarzio humbuckers in an Ibanez RG Prestige RG2620 body — no mounting rings, pickups sit flush in routed cavities — Direct-mounted DiMarzio humbuckers in an Ibanez RG Prestige RG2620. Photo by jonXmack, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Eddie built the Frankenstrat in 1977. Within two years, he’d built the Bumblebee — same concept, different paint. By the early 1980s, the “superstrat” movement was in full swing: Jackson, Charvel, Kramer, all building Strat-shaped guitars with humbuckers, Floyd Rose bridges, and the Eddie template.

But the mounting ring didn’t disappear overnight. Most of those 80s superstrats still used rings. It was the Japanese manufacturers who quietly moved the needle.

Ibanez was the first to go all-in. Their RG series — launched in 1987, refined through the Prestige and J-Custom lines — shipped with direct-mounted pickups as standard. No rings. Clean body lines. The pickup sat in a precisely routed cavity with just enough depth for height adjustment.

Why did Ibanez do it? Three reasons:

Tone. The rigid coupling EVH had stumbled onto was real. Direct-mounting produced a tighter, more focused sound — exactly what the late-80s shred and metal community wanted. Less “air” in the low end, more punch in the mids.

Ergonomics. Without a mounting ring, the pickup sits lower relative to the body surface. This matters more than you’d think. For aggressive palm-muting — the foundation of metal rhythm playing — a lower pickup profile means your picking hand rests more naturally on the strings. No plastic ring edge clicking against your pick on fast downstrokes.

Aesthetics. By the late 80s, the “clean machine” look was in. Angular headstocks, no pickguards, no rings — just wood, metal, and strings. Direct mounting was as much a design statement as a tonal one.

The Roster

Steve Vai. Paul Gilbert. Guthrie Govan. Misha Mansoor. Every one of them plays guitars with direct-mounted pickups.

Vai’s Ibanez JEM and RG Prestige guitars have been direct-mount since the late 80s. Gilbert’s Ibanez Fireman — same. Govan’s Charvel San Dimas (and yes, it’s the same Charvel that Eddie bought his original body from) ships with direct-mounted pickups.

Mansoor and the modern “djent” and progressive metal movement took it further. On a Jackson Dinky or Soloist, the direct-mounted pickups aren’t just a preference — they’re essential to the playing style. The tight, articulate low end that defines modern progressive metal? That’s the wood-to-pickup coupling at work. Every note is immediate. No lag, no bloom — just attack.

And here’s the thing: all of these players have moved beyond the original “matchbook and wood screw” approach. Factory direct-mount guitars use precisely routed cavities and controlled foam or spring pressure for height adjustment. But even at the factory level, the pickups still screw into wood — and the fundamental limitations of the EVH method remain.

Because the matchbook fix was always a hack. A brilliant one, but a hack. And the factory method? A polished version of the same hack.

The Problem That Stayed

For fifty years, direct mounting has meant one of two compromises:

Option A: The EVH method. Drill out the pickup ears. Drive wood screws into the body. Use foam or shims for height. Works, but the pickup is permanently modified, the wood screws will eventually strip from repeated height adjustments, and the “adjustment” is more art than science — compress the foam a little more, hope it holds.

Option B: The factory method. Buy a guitar that comes from the factory with direct-mounted pickups. Ibanez, Jackson, Charvel, Kiesel — they all route the cavities precisely and use foam or springs for height control. But even these factory guitars still screw into wood. The cavities are tighter, the foam is better, but the fundamental approach hasn’t changed since 1977. And if you want to convert an existing guitar? You’re back to Option A.

Neither option gives you what you actually want: a way to direct-mount any humbucker into any guitar, adjust the height precisely, and preserve the pickup’s original threading so you can remove it later and mount it in a ring if you change your mind.

That’s the problem that sat unsolved from 1977 to about 2020. Forty-three years.

The Fix (and Why We Built It)

This is where our story meets Eddie’s.

We’d already spent years making threaded inserts for guitar neck joints — solving the stripped-screw problem that plagues every bolt-on guitar. We knew the engineering. We knew how metal-on-metal connections behave in wood. And we kept seeing the same question in every guitar forum: “How do I direct-mount a pickup without destroying the ears?”

So we built the answer. Our direct mount pickup screw and threaded insert kit does something no other solution does cleanly: it lets you direct-mount a humbucker without modifying the pickup.

The concept is simple. A small brass threaded insert goes into the guitar body — drilled into the wood of the pickup cavity, seated permanently. Then a custom machine screw threads into the insert from above. Metal on metal. No wood screws, no stripped holes.

But here’s the clever part: the screw has a smooth, unthreaded section near the head. The pickup ear slides onto this smooth shank. The pickup “floats” on the screw shaft — it can move up and down freely — while the screw itself is anchored rigidly into the insert below.

This means:

The pickup’s threaded ears are preserved. You don’t drill anything out. The pickup stays stock.
Height adjustment is precise. Thread the screw in or out to raise or lower the pickup. No foam, no matchbooks, no guessing.
The body wood never strips. The insert grips the wood permanently. The screw threads into metal, not wood fibers. You can adjust height a thousand times.
It’s reversible. Pull the screws out, and the pickup goes back in a mounting ring like nothing happened.

The kit comes in Imperial (for US-made pickups: Gibson, Seymour Duncan, DiMarzio) and Metric (for import pickups). About €8 a set. Twenty minutes to install.

What Players Tell Us

We hear the same thing over and over from customers who install these.

One guy put a set in his 2004 Epiphone Les Paul — a guitar with mounting rings that he’d been meaning to convert for years but never wanted to commit to drilling out the pickup ears. His words: “The neck pickup — an old Seymour Duncan ’59 — went from warm and vague to warm and defined. The notes have more shape now.”

Another customer, a metal player with a partscaster build, told us the bridge pickup “cleaned up under distortion in a way I didn’t expect. Chords that used to get muddy in the low end became articulate.”

Is it transformative? No. Is it “night and day”? That’s what people always say online, and it’s always an exaggeration. But is there an improvement? Consistently, yes. The guitar feels more responsive — like the pickups are listening harder.

And the part that matters most to players with expensive pickups: pull the screws out, and the pickup goes back in a mounting ring like nothing happened. No drilled ears, no permanent modification.

That’s what forty-three years of the “matchbook method” never gave anyone.

Who This Is Actually For

Not everyone needs to direct-mount their pickups. If you play a Les Paul with mounting rings and you love the sound — leave it alone. Rings aren’t bad. They’re just different. The slightly decoupled, slightly “airier” tone of a spring-mounted pickup in a plastic ring is part of that guitar’s character.

But if you:

Play aggressive styles where palm-muting matters (metal, djent, hardcore)
Want a tighter, more focused pickup response
Are building or modifying a partscaster and want the clean, ringless look
Have a guitar with stripped pickup screw holes (which happens more often than you’d think)
Own expensive pickups that you don’t want to permanently modify

Then direct mounting with proper threaded inserts is the cleanest way to get there. It’s what the concept has always needed — and now you can do it yourself in twenty minutes.

The Circle Closes

It’s been almost fifty years since Eddie Van Halen chiseled out a pickup cavity and stuffed a humbucker into it with matchbooks. The fundamental idea — connect the pickup to the body, eliminate the middleman — was right. The execution was a prototype.

The superstrat builders made direct mounting standard. Ibanez made the aesthetic refined. And now, finally, there’s a way to do it on any guitar, with any pickup, without the irreversible compromises that kept most players watching from the sidelines.

That Ibanez in the Freiburg shop back in the ’90s? The one that looked unfinished? It wasn’t unfinished. It was ahead of the curve.

We just hadn’t built the hardware to do it right yet.

FAQ

Do direct-mounted pickups really sound different from ring-mounted pickups?

Yes — though the difference is subtle, not dramatic. Direct mounting creates a more rigid mechanical coupling between the pickup and the guitar body. Players consistently describe the result as tighter low-end response, more focused midrange, and slightly enhanced sustain. The pickup “hears” more of the body’s resonance because it’s physically connected to it.

Can I direct-mount pickups without permanently modifying them?

Yes — with the right hardware. Traditional direct mounting requires drilling out the pickup’s threaded ears, which is irreversible. Nectite’s direct mount pickup screws and inserts use a smooth-shank screw design that passes through the existing pickup ears without modification. The pickup stays stock and can go back in a mounting ring later.

What guitars benefit most from direct mounting?

Guitars used for aggressive playing styles — metal, djent, hardcore, progressive — benefit most, because the tighter pickup coupling translates directly into more articulate palm-muted tones. Superstrat-style guitars (Ibanez, Jackson, Charvel) often come from the factory with direct-mounted pickups for this reason. But any solid-body guitar with a routed pickup cavity can be converted.

Do I need Imperial or Metric direct mount screws?

It depends on your pickup manufacturer. US-made pickups (Gibson, Seymour Duncan, DiMarzio) use Imperial threading in their mounting ears. Import pickups typically use Metric threading. Check your pickup’s documentation, or simply try threading one of the screws into the ear by hand — it should turn smoothly without resistance if the thread pitch matches.

How long does it take to install direct mount inserts?

About 20 minutes per pickup. You’ll need to drill mounting holes for the threaded inserts in the pickup cavity, seat the inserts using a mounting tool, then thread the screws through the pickup into the inserts. The trickiest part is drilling straight — a mounting tool keeps everything aligned.