I'm building a 2x4 lapsteel this week and I wanted to use a C.B. Gitty Teisco Del Rey pickup on it.
Shane Speal has given these pickups a good review and the way they are made gives a lot of different mounting possibilities with the "wings".
I folded the wings over and the pickup was going to fit nicely over the body of the 2x4 - I had trimmed it down just a bit, removing the rounded over edges.
As I sat and looked at this pickup I thought I'd try something. The cover of the pickup is held on by just two small screws, so I removed them and took it all apart.
There really isn't much to it and there was only a little bit of glue on the inside. A coil, bar magnet and the wires are all that is inside the metal case.
The gold foil look comes from a piece of gold foil pattern paper underneath the holes.
Everything came apart easily. One note - if you do use one of these pickups and cut the main cable - the yellow lead is the Ground. You can see in this picture and I did check it with my Ohmmeter.
The coil is just over 1/4 inch thick, 1 inch wide and 2 7/8 long.
Next I grabbed a scrap of pine that is just over 1/4 thick, marked and cut out a hole for the pickup coil.
I didn't worry too much about precise cuts on this, you really just need to get the coil in the cavity and squared up - but it won't be too critical I don't think - and this one is a test. I will tighten up my work on the next one if I like this design.
For the top I used a piece of the 2x4 lapsteel body scrap I had trimmed off. It is about 1/16th thick - maybe a hair over that.
Glued up the wooden casing.
After the glue setup I did a little fitting and sanding.
Haven't applied a finish yet.
Total depth when finished is just a hair over 3/8 inch. Not exactly a flatpup, but I can make it work on this lapsteel and possibly other builds. I will hold the pickup inside the case with a couple dabs of hot glue or Goop (Goop is an all purpose glue I use, it works very well for a lot of applications)
And here's what it looks like on the lapsteel body. I'll have to sand it a bit more and use mounting screws along the edges, keep the string height low to the pickup, but I think it will work. I may give it a contrasting color finish so it stands out a bit more.
This gives this pickup a different look without a lot of effort.
Comment
Great how-to Dave...........opens up a world of possibilities ;-)
Awesome work Dave, thank you for sharing this!
kewl ;-)
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