Adding gold foil neck pickup to a La Cab Especial style partscaster Tele

damm73

I've been getting into building partscasters a lot lately and this is my latest creation...or abomination, depending where you stand on the whole relicing thing.



I'm a fan of the art of relicing...not going for historical accuracy here...obviously no Cabronita teles have been about long enough to sustain this level of wear naturally! Looks aside though and maybe more importantly, I prefer the feel of an aged guitar compared to a shiny new one and I don't have to worry about dings. If you don't like it, I get it, that's ok. Let's move on!

I've acquired a Mojo gold foil neck pickup that I'm considering installing on this guitar.  I gather that they don't normally need much routing, if any.  My plan is to drill a wiring channel diagonally from the neck pocket through to the control cavity. Then drill a hole through the top of the guitar to intersect this underneath the pickup where the wire protrudes and basically mount the pickup directly to the top of the guitar. I think there should be just about enough string clearance and the pickguard should hide the hole even if I were to remove the pickup later. 



I foresee a couple of problems...I won't be able to adjust pickup height and I'm not sure what to do about control options. 
I could simply replace the tone control with a three way switch like on most 2 pickup Cabronita models but I really like the way both controls interact with the TV jones. The tone behaves almost like an extra clean up control in addition to normal volume knob clean up. 

So given that the controls are evenly spaced in the control cavity, what's the best location for a switch? It would have to be crammed in at either end or in between the 2 knobs which is going to look a bit naff either way. Suppose I could make the control cavity bigger but that seems a bit unnecessary. Or I could just use a control plate on top of the guitar and drill 3 new holes. What would you do? Just leave it as it is?   

I'd also be grateful for any tips on drilling/routing. Would it be more advisable to drill wiring channel through to bridge pickup cavity? I suspect there might be less chance of me screwing it up that way!

Funkfingers

In the interests of reversibility, I would drill the cable tunnel through from the neck pocket to the control cavity.

Assuming that the gold foil pickup requires a cavity beneath to accommodate polepiece screw ends, it might be worth routing a 'Tron sized cavity. That way, you give yourself other options.

Ultimately, whatever wood removal you perform, it could be hidden under an Esquire/Thinline hybrid pickguard.

WezV

if you are not used to drilling long holes through guitars i would go from neck pocket to bridge pickup cavity.

I would rather have the pickup recessed slightly too, if only for height adjustment.

I would also consider a foiltron, since mojo make a pickup that matches the bridge format