Room for pickups

I decided to put one or two good pickups in the testbed guitar. My original idea was that it should be kept playable at all time. But I was too busy trying out my flat pickups to get a proper pickup mounted. I hoped that I would make a pickup that sounded great, but I'm not sure if I'm satisfied with their sound (more on that later).

I needed a good pickup for the guitar to sound decent, but also to have a sort of reference: something to compare with when trying out the various pickups. I decided to go for a couple of Seymour Duncan pickups, I bought for my first T-beam project, but later put in my strat.

The pickups are wider than the T-beam, so in order to fit them in, I had to cut through the sides of the steel box profile. That was easily done with an angle grinder (my favourite tool these days, with cutting disc as well as flapdisc for shaping wood).

So far, so good. Unfortunately, that put quite a bow in the box profile. I didn't count on that (only thought wood behaved that way), but I suppose that's part of learning.

That's put rather a halt to my progress. I'll make some brackets and beams to straighten and support the box profile in its weakened state. I was going to make pickup holders anyway, but now they're also going to add strength.

Btw, I'm condidering this oil bluing process for the box profile. And, I'm making some mahogany forearm and thight supports (and a strap horn), so I can ditch the acrylic body, that I've grown a bit tired of.