Headless Kit Build: Pickup Problems

Last weekend it was finally time to wire up the electronics for this thing and give it a try. Unfortunately in the first few minutes this happened.

From what I could tell, the ends of the coils were never really attached to the wire at all. I tried for a few minutes to see if I could find the end of the wind of the pickup to re-attach, but decided that for this pickup, it probably isn't worth the effort. I've put in an order for a cheap, but not as cheap pair of rails for the neck and middle position until I spot something better used.

Luckily there was still a little more work to do. I had to drill a hole to connect the grounding wire to the bridge. This kit, like many kits, left that out.

And I drilled holes for a pickup ring at the bridge.

Unfortunately while the pickup ring is standard size for a humbucker, the actual pickup that shipped with the kit does not fit into the bridge route! I didn't plan on doing more than testing with it anyway. But still, you don't expect the pickup that ships with the kit to not fit at all.

I have a Duncan Alternative 8 bridge that I'm excited to dry out so I went to make sure it fits in the bridge. And that's when I discovered yet another problem: the bridge pickup route is too shallow for the pickup mounting screws and springs! Luckily a creative solution here was just to drill a few mm deep under the screws with a large bit with allows the pickup to to be installed.

For now I'm going to wait for the new pickups to come in and work on some other projects.