Important Notes on Dog Ear Sizing
and Casino/Wildkat Model
DOGEAR
The P90 Dog Ear is one of the most problematic pickups to determine which a guitar needs. They also can be difficult to install and adjust.
Some guitars have the strings higher off the body than others, if the neck joint is like a traditional archtop with a fingerboard extension, the guitar will often take a tall Dog Ear (my stock item).
If the guitar has a neck joint like a Gibson ES 335, the fingerboard is at the same level as the top of the guitar so it needs a short Dog Ear.
I make a short version—I don't think anyone else does other than Korea. The short Dog Ear cover is 0.2" tall with pole spacing of 1-7/8". The tall pickup cover is .452" tall with pole spacing of 1-31/32".
ES 5, ES 295's and early ES 175's use tall Dog Ears. ES 330's use a short neck and a tall bridge.
Older ES 125's needs a pickup that is neither short nor tall and needs to be custom made. I do not supply pickup covers for these; you have to re-use the old cover.
I make plastic shims in créme or black that are exactly the shape of the bottom of the dog ear cover. The créme shim is only available in .1" thick. The black is available in .0325," .0625," .1," .125," and .25" thickness. You can stack the shims if they need to be thicker. Sometimes you have to make a riser block out of wood like on the old 295 bridge pickup. There is also a shim that is "oversized" for use when you are installing a dogear style pickup into a guitar that has been routed for a humbucker sized pickup. It spans the extra width of the humbucker route, and adds an extra distance of 3/32" all the way around. It's cut out of 1/32" thick material and it hides any trace of the original humbucker mounting.
CASINO
The Epiphone Casino (also the Wildkat) is a "whole different animal" although it looks a lot like a standard dogear set.
Your first decision is whether or not you want to use the chrome covers. Something to consider is that with plastic covers the pickup will have a little more high end—the metal covers will reduce the top end a little bit. Also, the metal covers have a tendency to feed back microphonically, even if the pickups are potted to an extreme.
If you decide to stay with the chrome covers, you will need to send in the entire unit: cover and chassis. On some versions the lead wire is built with a clip type connector at the end of the lead wire. This connector has two halves: half is attached to the guitar wiring and half is attached to the pickup lead wire. If yours is built with this type of connector, leave the pickup half of the connector attached to the lead wire and send in the entire assembly—pickup, chassis, cover, leadwire with clip. On a Casino set we re-use both the covers and the chassis. We basically "gut" the pickup and build a new p90 into what you send us.
If you want to change to the plastic covers, the process is different. As you know the standard chrome cover/set up on the Casino typically has quite a slant or slope to it, especially on the neck. We prefer the way our replacement pickups fit on the guitar body. They attach to sit parallel to the arched top, and provide a close alignment of the pole pieces and the strings.
For a replacement for Casino neck we use a short neck with a 1/8" shim and an optional 1/32" shim. For a replacement for Casino bridge we use a standard (tall) bridge, no shim.
If you send in your Casino set for re-use of the chrome covers, turnaround time is around a week to 10 days, after we receive them. The re-builds are $210 for a standard set, plus shipping—or $110 for a single pickup. '50's Wind are $235 a set, or $125 for a single pickup.