For soldering very small components, you need the proper equipment.
I use a T12 soldering station. It's very impressive.
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07Q1B1Q5N/
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07FYY64MX/

I also have a Makita battery version that uses the same tips.
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B0BZCRWD3Z/

I have one of these
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07RY ... UTF8&psc=1

I don't do any SMT at all and, admittedly, I use the hot air mainly for shrink tubing and working seams on drysuits

good thing is, since it's.1 thruhole ready already
Might be good to get my soldering skills back anyway.

Then again, when I want it clean, I use the Victor method of soldering !

hmmm, don't know where automated custom PCBs are these days,but
just farting around I plugged some numbers into one of the order system and it came out at like $7 per at 10 QTY for FR-4 (and abt a third of that was shipping) and like $5 per for Al so maybe there's hope for doing more exact sizing on the various string spacings on a nice clean piece of FR-4 or aluminum core ...if others are interested

Thanks guys for doing the legwork on opening them up (I was afraid they were super potted inside)

I'll see if we can get the convo moved over

I'm just now seeing this post and this is awesome news. It's nice to know that I have the option of creating my own Stick GK pickup if necessary.

I'm a huge GK user and a big fan of the original 13 pin system. I need to do a bit more research but from what I've read the new GK-5 seems to be simplified in some areas.

For example, I don't see a guitar to midi converter for the GK-5. The Boss GM-800 does guitar to midi conversion but it will not separate the strings into individual midi channels.

This means you can no longer assign external synths to individual strings. All strings now are in omni mode only.
For me this limitation is a huge disappointment.

Kevin