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Permalink Reply by darryl kernaghan on January 27, 2015 at 11:52pm

your mag pup can just sit under the plate Paul,if the plate is steel,no need to cut,it will pick up the plates vibes

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Permalink Reply by Bad Finger (Eric) on January 28, 2015 at 2:13am

I'll share this.

In the video below, I have a modern Colorado license plate (sometime around 2001). Seems aluminum-y.  Despite this, I just put a single coil pickup under the plate with a small air space.  The single coil is nowhere near the strings.  And yet, it works.

If you choose to make cut outs and fix them over top of the pickup, you have to consider a couple things:

1. If the plate is steel then the cover has to be in very good contact with the pickup poles or it will act as a shield and lower output, maybe dramatically.
2. If you take care of item 1 or the cover is not strongly magnetic then you have to fix it in place very tightly or not in contact with the pickup poles at all.  If it vibrates you will get a microphonic piezo-like effect and it might not have the tone you desire.

I took a lot of care cutting out the pickup locations on my Rustocaster and learned the lessons above.

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Permalink Reply by Skeesix on January 28, 2015 at 5:48am

Aluminum is non ferrous, so that won't block the magnetic force if you put a pickup under it. Steel will, but like they're saying, if you put in in contact with the steel, it will become part of the magnetic force, and it should work.

Another option, if your pickup has screw polepieces, is to put the pickup under the license plate, but drill holes for the polepieces and extend those above the plate.

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on January 28, 2015 at 6:07am

Or you could try a Flatpup (Elmar's Original) or a ThinTalker (Dan Sleep's licensed version), and install it on top of the plate....

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Permalink Reply by darryl kernaghan on January 28, 2015 at 12:52pm

no credit to me,i got it from a cranky guy on the other side of Australia,knows a bit about this stuff

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Permalink Reply by Paul Said on January 28, 2015 at 7:17pm

Thanks everyone,

                           it look's as though the mag pup under the licence plate is the way forward.

Regards

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Permalink Reply by Wade on January 31, 2015 at 4:28am

I tried a mag pickup under these old license plates and did not like the tinny, hollow tone. I went with a top mount thin mag pickup. Only need to drill one little hole. I started buying plates with no numbers in the areas that I want to put the pickup to make things easier to top mount.

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Permalink Reply by Wade on January 31, 2015 at 11:15am

Thanks. It's a single coil low profile pickup. There's info on my profile if you would like to learn more. There are some seriously wicked pickup builders around here! You really can't go wrong.

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