Random wire and pickup question - Pit Bull Guitars GPB-4B Electric Bass Guitar Kit (A

Hi All,

Got this for my dad for his 60th last year. Now finally getting round to building it with him. We have taken it out of the packaging and we just have a question regarding the electrics!

Attachment 30126

1) One of the pickups has 2 blocks stuck on the underside. These seem to raid the pickup enough, when its in it's place within the body, to be at the right height for when the scratch plate is on. The other pickup you can see does not have these blocks glued to it. Is that a mistake? if so, is there something I should be aware of before I stick some random wood to it to raise it?

2) There is this mysterious black which which doesn't go anywhere. Is this supposed to be there?

Thanks in advance!

Hi and welcome.

1) Yes, both parts of the pickup should have a fairly solid foam rubber block underneath it. You need some springiness in the support for the pickup so you can raise and lower the pickup height so I wouldn't use solid wood to get the height right otherwise there's no adjustment. Just first check that you haven't missed the loose bit of missing foam somewhere in the packaging and if you can't find it, I'd drop an email to adam at PBG and he should sort you out with a new bit of foam asap. adamboyle@pitbullguitars.com

Just FYI, you can buy such foam from Realparts https://www.realparts.com.au/pickups...r-sponges.html

But you can normally get similar thickness foam in larger sheets from eBay which are better value (especially if you ever plan to make more guitar kits).

I don't think that the two pieces of foam on one pickup are supposed to be shared between both pickups, as there doesn't seem to be enough depth to just one of the pieces shown.

2) The spare black wire is a grounding wire for the bridge. You should see an angled hole under where the bridge will sit. During final assembly, you'll want to push the grounding wire up the hole in the control cavity so it pokes out where the bridge goes. Then bare a couple of cm of the wire and splay out the strands. This then gets sandwiched between the body and the bridge to ground it to stop the strings acting as aerials for electrical noise.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to help Simon!

It's not foam stuck to the back of the pickups. It seems to be hard plastic blocks. 2 blocks about 3mm thick. And it looks as if 1 has come unstuck from the other pickup, as there seems to be some glue residue. So I think i'm going to have a bit of fun trying to remove just one of the blocks stuck to the back of the pickup, and will order some foam.

It's normally a hard dense foam, not that compressible; but if it's a very hard block, then its not going to do the job properly.

Ceramic magnets. The pickups look to have been back to back and one magnet has pulled the other away from the pickup when they were separated. You should be able to carefully twist the ‘top’ magnet to separate it and reposition it back on the other pickup. Make sure the same ‘face’ of the magnet goes back on the other pickup, so the polarity is correct for hum cancelling.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by WeirdBits

Ceramic magnets.

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Well that explains the 'density'.

cheers, Mark.

Of course! Forgot they were kit pickups with bar magnets as I'm used to standard pole-piece magnets on the Precisions I've worked on. I was seeing what I wanted to see.

So you are definitely short of the foam and as Wierdy says, you'll need to stick the magnet back on. Any strong glue should be good for that as it only needs to keep the magnet pressed against the 'slug' pole pieces.

Ah that makes sense. Thank you very much. Still need to get hold of some foam to raise it though. Thanks again!

Found this video of a guy playing the guitar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHbqR11j_L0

The cable seems pretty ugly, so i think we'll try to drill through the guitar, then drill back under the bridge so the cable is out of sight

Thanks for your help

He got it very wrong.

There should already be a hole drilled from the top into the control cavity - see mark-up.

Attachment 30136

If you haven't got a hole, then you can drill one; but you'll need a very long bit in order to get the low angle without the drill getting in the way. I'd suggest a 300mm x 4mm dia. drill as it's going to be reasonably sturdy without being too large.