Single-coil Pickup Routing Templates

It gets a F for durability, as for the cut and finish of the product it was great. I used the plastic single coil pickup routing jig and it melted using the plunge 0583 routing bit with doubled up bearings and messed up a guitar that I'm building. I am very upset to say the least. I was going to leave open pickup cavities with no pick guard but that is now changed. I normally use wood templates for plunging that I have made for the basses I build. My suggestion is to use the plastic template to make a template out of some leftover hardwood laying around to use on your guitar. I have another suggestion for Stew Mac is to have them CNC'ed in aluminum, hardwood or something that isn't going to melt.

I have the full set foe strats and humbucker. i use these to make thicker templates and keep these as masters. but the work great by themselves if you use shims.

I've got, and used a few of these templates now and all except the P-Bass are excellent. Be careful to check against your bridge though, as this template suits the Vintage bridge but not the later Am Std; the thru-holes are in a different position. The actual pickup route is acurate just check for the holes.

A little thin, but well made. Will work.

C'est un outil indispensable pour effectuer un travail propre et soigné.
Je ne pourrais plus m'en passer !

I haven't used them yet, but have used other stew-mac templates. They are all great, you just need to take your time, and learn how to use them properly. It is also a great idea to make thicker templates out of MDF first, because if you mess up your master templates, you'll have to order new ones.

I bought these upon reading reviews with the idea that I would use them as master templates. I successfully cut a second larger based template out of 6mm thick MDF material which is perfect for pickup routing templates and this means I can keep these SM templates safe for when the MDF templates have done enough.

I would only use these as master templates as they would probably get scuffed/scratched through every day use.

Well worth the price, and made cutting pickup templates very easy.

I just tried using the 1096 template on scrap wood and my router chewed the template up. The bearing on the SM 3/8 router bit is on the shaft, forcing you to expose a minimum of 5/8" of bit into the wood. This is way too deep a cut and the router can go out of control. Either mount the template on a piece of 3/8 plywood, or use the template to first trace out the cavity, then remove the template and use chisels to remove nearly all the wood before doing the final cut with your router.

I agree with the other reviewer about the thickness. When using a template bushing, the bushing comes into contact with the wood.

For this price, these are probably just barely worth it, better than making your own from scratch. But with a material this thin, it doesn't work well as a final router jig; I'd recommend using it as a starting template to make your own jig out of 1/2" - 3/4" plywood. You need that much wall surface for enough flexibility on your bit's roller bearing(s); this thin 1/8" wall won't even hold 1 roller bearing's width, so you'll constantly be resetting your router bit in the collet to work around the adjustment limitations for successive pass depths, and that's very time consuming and frustrating. Better to do that once, get a clean jig, not risk your bit jumping off the template wall and ruining your guitar. If you accidentally ruin the jig you can always make another one cheap.

Also, they seem to have some problem with their center line laser etching; mine was about 1-2 mm off, and although that doesn't sound like much, it was obvious to the eye when I did a test tracing that the pickup outline was slightly off center to the right (the Strat tremolo template had the same problem, which is why I wonder if it's systemic and not just 1 was goofed).

Final verdict, for this low price it was worth it just to have a decent template without having to make it myself, but triple check your center lines and make a 3/4" jig from it, then rout your guitar!