The Steel Guitar Forum

Hello everyone,

I'm Mark from Nebraska and am excited to learn from y'all. I'm a custom cabinet maker and spent 25 years in Nashville working in the music biz. I'm a singer, but never a player, so this is my first endeavor into the stringed world.

I purchased plans from JAG for the Gretsch model pictured below. Things were progressing really well until my Seymour Duncan Antiquity lap steel pickup arrived.
Now I'm in a corner because I don't know anything about pickups or how to install them.
My web search efforts over the past week have taught me quite a bit about single coil guitar pickups, but very little about the SDA I have. Seymours web page gave me no help as well.

I may be over analyzing this, which I do when I'm unsure, so any help would be very welcome.

Do I have all the pieces necessary to install this ?

Thank you so much for your support.

Mark
Well, it appears I have to do something different in order to get pics to show.
I'll add them when I get this resolved.

What I know about electronics would fit in a thimble and there would still be plenty of room for my finger. I have rescued lotsa lap steel carcasses and installed new electrical components with great success, however. For a single pickup with only two controls (volume and tone), my favorite wiring scheme is this one, similar to the old Gibson Les Paul Juniors:



It's vitally important to run a ground wire to the bridge, or an annoying 60-cycle hum will likely result. It's also important to shield the pickup and control cavities. Stewart MacDonald is one place that has the stuff to accomplish this. I generally use a combo of both the conductive copper tape and shielding paint:

https://www.stewmac.com/SiteSearch/?search=shielding

Thank you. That is helpful. My main concern is, how deep do I make the cavity for the pickup, how does the pickup stay mounted in the cavity, do I need a cover around the pickup after it's installed ? All I received with my pickup was two screws with spacers on them. I suppose it's more of a luthier based question since the body of the lap steel was made by me and there are no cavities bored yet. I'm in too deep !! Lol!

The strings have to clear the pickup, with room to spare for some adjustment. Therefore, how deep the cavity should be depends on two things: how thick the pickup is, and how high the bridge is (how high the strings will be above the body and installed pickup, allowing some room for adjustment). Pickups are usually mounted so they can be adjusted, and the adjustment is allowed by having a spring or sponge rubber under the pickup, or pickup mounting, so that screws can be tightened or loosened to raise or lower the pickup - to get the proper clearance and response.

Yes you need a cover around the pickup. it's called a pickup ring it has small screws in each corner which mount it to the body and a hole in the middle of each end which is used to mount the pickup with a screw and spring (or sometimes rubber tubing) You need one dimensioned for your SD antiquity or a Gibson they are a little different than the imports. And get a flat one not one with the underside shaped for an arched body.
Depth depends on how high you want the pickup. You probably want the top to be about level with the top of the fretboard.Measure the pickup thickness and work this out. Allow about 4 mm extra for wiring.
The end tabs will need to be deeper and only as wide as necessary (remember you are screwing the rings to the body)
Google humbucker routing template

The depth of the cavity would depend on how high the strings are off the top of the guitar's body. I would reach out to SD and ask them what distance they recommend between the top of the pickup and the strings, and start measuring down from there.

The SD website says that the pickup is mounted directly to the cavity with two wood screws. I assume the spacers go between the pickup and the bottom of the cavity. You could put springs in there instead of spacers so that you have the ability to adjust the height somewhat.

No need for a cover. Not sure there would be one available that would fit that pickup anyway.

Jeff Highland wrote:Yes you need a cover around the pickup. it's called a pickup ring it has small screws in each corner which mount it to the body and a hole in the middle of each end which is used to mount the pickup with a screw and spring (or sometimes rubber tubing) You need one dimensioned for your SD antiquity or a Gibson they are a little different than the imports. And get a flat one not one with the underside shaped for an arched body.
Depth depends on how high you want the pickup. You probably want the top to be about level with the top of the fretboard.Measure the pickup thickness and work this out. Allow about 4 mm extra for wiring.
The end tabs will need to be deeper and only as wide as necessary (remember you are screwing the rings to the body)
Google humbucker routing template

I don't think that's going to work with this pickup. It's similar to a Tele lead pickup.

Yes you are right I saw antiquity and assumed it was their humbucker model

Gentlemen,

Thank you so much for the help. Your direction in this confirmed a few hunches I had and I feel I can tackle this now.

Regarding pics, do you need to have a separate app for the importing into here ?

Once I get the picture issue solved, I'll show my progress.

Again, thank you for the help.

Mark

No. You don't need any outside app or program to post ictures. It's actually very easy to do. Here is a link to the instructions.

https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=108265

Maybe this helps, maybe too much info: everything that can go wrong wiring a pickup: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-many ... agram.html

If you email me pix, i can post them for you.

Ok. I didn’t realize that I was trying to send too large a photo.

Work out your string height off the body of the guitar
If you are using a fixed height bridge you can measure it
If not then thickness of fretboard plus 9.5mm 3/8" for string height over fretboard.
Deduct 1/8" for string clearance over top of pickup this gives you the height of the top of the pickup over the body.
Measure the pickup thickness, add 1/8' for the compressed thickness of the tubing and then deduct the previously calculated height over the body.
this will be the necessary rout depth

Double sided tape can help with getting everything to the right height and holding things in place. I sometimes use a padded double sided tape that is about 1/16th “ thick. It can also help isolate unwanted vibrations.