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Topic: Identification and wiring lap steel pickup |
Thomas Green
From:
Michigan, USA
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Posted 11 Nov 2018 4:11 pm |
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I am trying to fix a lap steel pickup and there are some strange things (to me at least) that I don't quite know how to navigate. The pickup appears to be mounted with some old rivets and I do not see a positive and negative wire coming of the pickup. It looks like a home tinker job and I am wondering if anyone has seen this pickup and has some advice about how to wire it back up. I was trying to replace the pots and it looks like the hot wire from the pickup was glued together not soldered.
Any advice about how detach this pickup and figure out there the positive and negative are coming from the pickup?
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Thomas Green
From:
Michigan, USA
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Posted 11 Nov 2018 4:37 pm
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Also any help identifying this thing would be appreciated. It has a metal plate that says Gibson, but I don't think it is. I cannot find any gibson lap steel that does not have an inlay on the headstock.
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Thomas Green
From:
Michigan, USA
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Bill Sinclair
From:
Waynesboro, PA, USA
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Posted 11 Nov 2018 7:25 pm
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Looks like a Kalamazoo lap steel but I've never seen one with that pickup. Usually they're the "speed bump" metal covered pickup or a split bobbin oval pickup, both of which were used in other Gibson guitars. I suspect your pickup and possibly the pickup mounting plate is non-original. Another unusual (and probably non-original) aspect of your guitar is that it has a bridge from a professional Gibson guitar instead of the cruder version usually seen on these student models. Perhaps some of the earlier ones did use the same bridge as the Gibsons.
I had one of those masonite Silvertone electric guitars when I was in high school that had two pickups just like yours. Both pickups were dead though. Seems like there was some kind of ceramic potting in them that prevented me from digging any deeper.
Oh, and the Gibson badge looks like it came from a guitar case. |
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Jack Hanson
From:
San Luis Valley, USA
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Posted 11 Nov 2018 7:41 pm
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The bridge, pentagonal mounting plate, and tag on the headstock are common Gibson parts.
The bridge is one of Gibson's standard prewar 6-string lap steel units.
The plate was used on late prewar EH-125s, EH-150s, and Kalamazoos, among others. Both components were sold to other manufacturers such as Jackson Guldan and Harmony after the war, when Gibson decided to go in a different direction.
The tag on the headstock is from a Gibson case, likely manufactured by Geib in Chicago. It could be from any number of different Gibson string instrument cases.
I would agree that the pickup looks like a DeArmond. Some of the Epitome guitars from Jackson Guldan used a similar pickup. The pickup appears to be original to the plate, but the pots, wiring, and tone cap look to have been replaced somewhere down the line.
My guess is that your instrument is either a Jackson Guldan out of Columbus, Ohio, or from one of the big Chicago builders -- Harmony, Kay, Regal, etc. Have you looked under the metal tag on the headstock for a decal or stencil? |
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Thomas Green
From:
Michigan, USA
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Posted 12 Nov 2018 5:32 am
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| I did peak under the badge, but did not see any markings. |
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Thomas Green
From:
Michigan, USA
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Posted 12 Nov 2018 5:33 am
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| Any thoughts on how to remove that pickup? I was considering drilling through those rivets in order to reattach the positive lead. |
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Jack Hanson
From:
San Luis Valley, USA
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Posted 12 Nov 2018 6:06 pm
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| Thomas Green wrote: |
| Any thoughts on how to remove that pickup? I was considering drilling through those rivets in order to reattach the positive lead. |
I would stop short and hesitate before advising how to remove the pickup. But I would likely attempt exactly what you suggest if the instrument was mine. |
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Jim Sliff
From:
Lawndale California, USA
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Posted 12 Nov 2018 6:34 pm
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Take it to a qualified guitar tech. Do not drill through rivets - something is odd about the rivet attachment, as I know of no makers that riveted pickups into place - especially so unevenly.
It looks both heavily modified (the capacitor is not original) and every other Gibson I've seen with that control plate had a D'Armond or Harmony (even a Harmony actually imported from Japan) pickup.
Any tech can test the existing contacts and see whether or not you even have a working pickup That will take 2 minutes if the control plate isn't screwed down.
Regardless, there can't be much in the way of output if that tiny housing. contains the magnet and coil. It does not look stock, and you definitely do not want to drill through rivets unless you *absolutely* know you have a working pickup AND there's no other way to access the leads.
_________________
No chops, but great tone
1930's/40's Rickenbacher/Rickenbacker 6&8 string lap steels
1921 Weissenborn Style 2; Hilo&Schireson hollownecks
Appalachian, Regal & Dobro squarenecks
1959 Fender 400 9+2 B6;1960's Fender 800 3+3+2; 1948 Fender Dual-8 Professional |
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Bill Creller
From:
Saginaw, Michigan, USA (deceased)
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Posted 12 Nov 2018 7:04 pm
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| Maybe the pickup winding is grounded to the plate, internally, like on the end of the winding. Early Rick frypans were done that way.. Using an ohm meter may tell you if the winding has continuity from the one wire, and the metal plate.. |
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Thomas Green
From:
Michigan, USA
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Posted 12 Nov 2018 8:12 pm
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I probably should have said the reason I started down this path. The pots were bad so I wanted to replace them. When I took off the plate, I saw that the positive pickup lead was hot glued to the plate and that was hanging by a thread, which obviously did not hold. I wanted to replace the pots but thought first to resolder the positive terminal of the pickup, but alas, it looks like it broke inside the pickup on the other side of the plate. So I then wanted to try to figure out how this was attached as it definitely looked like a homemade job (even the hole in the plate looks like it was chiseled with some brute force). I figured that if I could identify it, perhaps I could find something about the pickup and either reattach the lead or buy a replacement. Not having seen something attached like this, I figured I would reach out to some folks who may have seen this kind of thing before.
So I do know that the pickup works as I played it just before I took off the plate. Also I will do like was suggested and see if the pickup is grounded to the plate as I suspect it must be. |
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Thomas Green
From:
Michigan, USA
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Posted 18 Nov 2018 6:55 pm
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So I ended up drilling out the rivets. It came off pretty easy. Reattached the end of the winding to some wire and its good to go. Here is what it looked like inside, in case anyone is interested:
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