The Electra Forums

Just like the title says. Would like a solution to repair or a part that could make a direct replacement. I'm not afraid to dive in and modify parts. I just need a good starting point.

Thanks,

Matt

nothing. I'm sorry to bring the bad news, but so far as I can see no pickup is as small as that lipstick bridge pickup on an Electra (or related) tele.

So first I'd suggest you try to repair what you have. Is it a dead pickup? Some people have good luck unwinding pickup coils until they get down to a break.

The other way to go- it isn't pretty, but this is what I did on my old telerez, which is a 2248 with the finish sanded off. The bridge pickup was dead, fallen into pieces and some lost. So I took a mexican tele bridge pickup and with a pair of tin snips cut down the top coil cover as much as I could without nicking the windings- then I shoved it into the old lipstick chrome cover, which wasn't easy- oh yeah, I had to cut down the plastic baseplate as well. It was a hack job, as tight as I could get without hitting windings or leads. I seem to recall drilling or notching new holes to accomodate the adjuster screws- it was a hassle. I don't recall for sure, but I may have had to notch the lipstick cover too. It all fit back in, and now it has a working bridge pickup, but that's the ugly facts about options for replacing the bridge pickup.

Because as you've noticed, since the bridge pickup is extra small, the hole for it in the bridgeplate is small too, no pickup will fit in it, not with a cover. Enlarging the hole would turn into ugly butchery too easily, and otherwise you'd be looking at changing the bridgeplate, and that's a lot of modification from original, it would be nice to keep the original bridgeplate with its unique shape.

chopping a modern tele pickup enough to fit without any chrome cover is also doable, easier but harder to hide the evidence.