Douglas V/S monoprice

Howdy Beamer,  Like the rails a lot as pickups go..... But then again I was also a fan of the classic Lace pickups too. 

A couple of things to ponder, and not having modded any LPs perhaps someone will know for sure.... Les Pauls don't have much in the way of access to the inner workings for things like routing wiring from your center PUP.  Something to consider when you are just about to sink your plunge router into it's face..... let's see..... bondo, primer/filler, paint.... we CAN fix anything!!!

Take Care;
Doug

Just my 2 cents, Beamer my Douglass totally screams in the treble position the tone is sharp and clean with tons of sustain in my honest opinion no third pickup is needed I am running it through my Boss ME-50 if I want a strat sound I use one of my strats

Beamer Buddy, you're giving me nightmares!  Seriously..... my little grey cells were grinding on your project the better part of last night.  My conclusion is.... yes it can be done!

I actually figured out two ways but both require cojones grandes.  The first is to get up against the largest band saw any of your friends owns.  It needs to have at least 13" of cutting height.  Slab off about 3/8" from the back and route in a channel for your wiring. Cut out the face for the additional pickup, Glue the back on after all your wires are run, and plan on refinishing the edges to match after you are done.

The second is to gut all the components out of the body and with a long 1/8" (like 18" worth) drill bit shoot a hole across the body diagonally through the jack hole, across the pot recess, and into the switch recess.  Increase sizes until you are comfortable that everything you need to run through it will fit, and then cutout for your third pickup and (hopefully you will hit your hole somewhere in that opening) AND YOU ARE GOOD TO GO!

Then again maybe I'm over thinking this.... they had to go from point A to point B, and just might have left you a passage.  Have to pull the pickups out and have a look.

As for switches, you are going to have to be a little bit creative, but this might be a good place to consider push-pull pots or at least one to tap and untap that center pickup, or drop it out of the chain completely.  Stewmac has all that stuff and lots of wiring diagrams, tutorials etc. that might be helpful.

Take Care;
Doug

If you decide to go with 3 you will need a 5 positon switch unless you plan on having a 3 way switch and only using one pickup at a time the 5 way switch lets you split the coils just like a strat but you would need to either know how to wire the pots or buy a pre wired harness in other words wire it like a strat instead of 4 control pots by pass one and use three 2 for tone and one for master volume GF sells them for around 24 dollars all you would need to do is wire the ground and input plug and your good to go