Vintage lapsteels from Finland, strange pickups!

Max Laine · From: Pori, Finland

My recent find, two lapsteels by J.Malmström's workshop, designed by the most famous Finnish steel player, Onni Gideon:

I believe these were made in the early fifties. The other is probably mahogany and the other is alder. Here's Onni pictured with one. He used it through most of his recording career:

The guitars came in fine shape, except for the pickups. The other was dead, the other had very faint signal coming through. I took the dead pickup off the guitar, opened the back plate, scraped out some of the beeswax... and this is what I found!

A friend guessed the coils may be from headphone sets...
Can these be remagged?

[This message was edited by Max Laine on 14 October 2006 at 06:10 PM.]

[This message was edited by Max Laine on 14 October 2006 at 06:11 PM.]

Randy Reeves · From: LaCrosse, Wisconsin, USA

I dont think it unusual for pickups to be coated (potted) in wax like that.

Max Laine · From: Pori, Finland

No, But having eight coils is!

Randy Reeves · From: LaCrosse, Wisconsin, USA

yes. I am of the same mind.
I was about to type that in when my computer crashed.
I wonder if another lap steel sized pickup would be a good replacement?

Gary Stevenson · From: Northern New York,USA

Those two sure are beautiful lap steels!

basilh · From: United Kingdom

They ARE from headphone/handsets (Military number 19 set type). I made my first pick-up the same way.
See this thread.:- http://steelguitarforum.com/Forum15/HTML/006218.html
Baz
To re-magnetise, see this.. http://members.aol.com/oldradjo/repair.htm

http://www.headwize.com/projects/showfile.php?file=provost_prj.htm

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[This message was edited by basilh on 15 October 2006 at 11:53 AM.]

Max Laine · From: Pori, Finland

Basil, thanks for the information! I think the reason for making the pickups was shortage of supply in after-the-war Finland, maybe these coils came from military surplus headsets? Also, there probably weren't any electric guitars in the country so there was no model to research! Maybe there was no wire available - who knows.
Anyway I dismantled the pickup and one coil is dead, one has the lead broken off right at the tape surrounding the windings, so they will need a recoil. I think I'm unable to do it so I will probably need to have new pickups made into existing covers. Or maybe someone has some extra pickups that will fit? The size is 24x81mm, with 16mm depth. That's 15/16" x 3 3/16" and 5/8" depth. String spacing 71mm, or
2 13/16". Please let me know if you can help!

Jussi Huhtakangas · From: Helsinki, Finland

The little solidbody guitar Herbert Katz is holding and the archtop are also Finnish made. That band btw recorded what is considered as the first Finnish rock'n'roll record, incidentally it's a steel guitar instrumental and they named it Hawaiian Rock.

Max Laine · From: Pori, Finland

Jussi, that archtop must be a Noso (altough it looks very close to Epiphone Triumph, even has the Frequensator tailpiece!), but what's the solidbody? Noso or Malmström?

Max Laine · From: Pori, Finland

The pickups are now on their way to Nashville to be restored!
Jussi, could that Noso be the "Immonen" -model, I read that Viljo Immonen had his Epiphone copied by Noso?

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