Seagull Guitar Conversion

Seagull Acoustic Guitar - Entourage Mini-Jumbo I love this guitar. Solid cedar top, wild cherry laminated sides and back. I got on clearance at Long & McQuade. The great thing is the deep resonance and yet balance of all the strings; none are noticeably louder or quieter than the others. I found the action was too high. The high E and B strings were kind of dull. The first thing I did was replace the factory strings with NanoWeb Elixirs;  then every string sang.

Mods 

Action

I installed a Zerofret and reduced the saddle height. The zerofret is a couple of thousandths higher than the frets; but I can make an Fm7 (1x111x) as easily as an Am7 (5x555x). That's close enough to perfect for me.

Pickup

This guitar had no electrics at all. I installed a telecaster neck pickup, mostly because it was cheap and looks cool. I made up a mounting bracket out of sheet brass, some 4-40 bolts/nuts and some plastic tubing for spring suspension of the pickup. It's screwed to the brace under the neck, so it doesn't pick up vibration from the top.

I added a Fender volume pot, a 1/4" jack and some shielded wire. Now it's an acoustic-electric. No battery needed, which is nice.

It works okay, but the plastic tubing doesn't compress enough to allow adjustment, so the high E and B are much louder than the Low E and A strings. Also makes some hum. The pickup is fairly harsh too. It really needs a tone pot or switch to tame down the harmonics. The knob I have is ugly!

 Pick Guard

I removed the cheap stick-on pick guard to free up the movement of the lightweight cedar top. Maybe it's just my imagination, but the tone seems better without the pick guard.

Later Mods

New tele style chrome knob. I'll need some to add shielding with copper foil. I'll probably swap out the cheap pickup for a better one too. Tone switch or pot needs to be added.

Update July 22

Tone Control and Switch

The telecaster pickup was 10 times louder on the B string than the low E string. I breadboarded a tone control setup using some caps and resistors I had on hand. It helped, but the tele pickup still wouldn't balance. I installed the pots and cap network with tele knobs for both.

Humbucker Pickup 

I replaced the Tele pickup with a chrome LP humbucker.
Now the sound is much more 'jazzbox' sounding,
I adjusted the screws and angled the pickup till the B string stopped overpowering all the other strings. 
One issue I didn't expect. This pickup is HEAVY. I had to replace the brass bracket with steel. Altogether, this has literally doubled the weight of the guitar.
It's also BIG. The pickup and bracket almost fill the sound hole. This is muting the acoustic sound.
As good as it sounds through an amp, I need a different solution.

Mini-Humbucker

I found a set of mini-humbuckers on Amazon that were much smaller. I removed the big humbucker, cut down the steel bracket, and wired in the neck pickup.
MUCH better.