Modified C.B. Gitty Teisco Del Rey pickup

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.

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Comment by Rooster on November 24, 2015 at 4:03pm

Great how-to Dave...........opens up a world of possibilities ;-)

Comment by Ben "C. B. Gitty" Baker on November 24, 2015 at 10:30am

Awesome work Dave, thank you for sharing this!

Comment by the anonymous pick on November 24, 2015 at 10:22am

kewl  ;-)

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