Bigsby Tyoe Pickups Help

[alexkirtley]

Hi All

I don't normally do much with the electric side of things, but I developed a slight obsession with Paul Bigsby and decided to try my hand at casting and making a set of Bigsby style pickups, I'm only going to be making the one set for an arch top guitar for myself, now, they look cool, but I cannot get them to sound right, very low to no output, they're about 4.8k and I seemed to be getting magnetism at the poles but still, nearly no output, a crackly sound when I tried tapping the pole pieces and I can't for the life of my figure out why.

Does anyone know how the original Bigsby Pickups went together?, or how I could get these working?, I heard from somewhere Bigsby may have even put the magnets on the outside of the coils, I can't quite imagine how that would work, but there's not much information or photographs of the gubbins that I can find to get my head around it, I've been fooling with them on and off for a while, I'm tempted to buy a set of the Mojo PAB pickups if I can't get these working, but they're a lot of money for me.

Cheers

(They don't have any magnets fitted in the below photos, they're just pretty paperweights)

[yoyopoc]

Marc at mojo pickups uk is making replicas of these he might be able to help you:
www.mojopickups.co.uk/product/p-a-b/

[pete1951]

By the depth and shape I would guess they would have a pair of magnets,similar to a P90. What magnets did you use? Could you have put North to South? Both magnets need to have the same pole in contact with the screws.

They would also work with a pair of magnets glued to the underside of the pickup, again same poles to the centre.
Pete