Tele neck pickup ring

Hello all,

I’m busy building my first guitar body from scratch. My plan is a tele shape with minor modifications and with black hardware, no pickguard. I’ve been doing all right so far and I have just received the hardware I ordered. This was a black tele hardware kit from pitbull and a neck pickup mounting ring thingy from realtone music in QLD.

The first thing I’ve noticed is how small the pitbull pickups are. The ring is too big but compared to pickups not from pitbull, the ring fits perfectly. Is there anywhere I can get a ring that fits the stock pitbull pickups? Or will I have to find a new pickup? An option I’ve been considering is just cutting the pickguard into a ring shape seeing as it fits already.

Another problem I’ve encountered is I cut the control panel recess just too big. A few mm’s too big. The hole doesn’t stick out the sides but the screw holes of the plate go into nothing. Will big lumps of woodfiller work? What can I do for that?

Thanks,
Dylan

For the control plate problem, you could glue in some dowels, don’t drill a big hole and plug with the dowel or anything, just sit the dowel against the wall of the cavity and trim it so it’s the same height as the depth of the cavity and glue it in place. I hope that makes sense.

I’m not sure that the wood filler idea would work, I feel as if the wood filler will not adequately grip on to the screw. I could be wrong though, I have never tried it.

I wonder if something like J-B Weld would work. Anyway, this sounds like an easy problem to fix. I'm surprised the pickups are a different size. That's strange.

Hey Diggydude,

Regarding the pickup, I just went through the same exercise.
I think you have got a pickup ring for a strat sized single coil, where the Tele neck single is a fair bit smaller.
I have looked everywhere and couldn't find one anywhere except at Guitarfetish. If you click order and forget about the 16.50USD shippingcost you are fine :D.

https://www.guitarfetish.com/Humbuck...RS_p_4351.html

Thanks for the replies

I’ve had a look at the product I ordered and what do you know. It is for strat pickups. The website had tele rings but no black ones to match the rest of the hardware. My plan is to just cut the pickguard for now but I may look for a proper ring.

The dowel idea may work and after looking up j b weld I reckon it may work in combination to the dowel. I’ll drill the dowel as close to the edge as possible and then fill in any gaps with a fibre glass resin. Because I hand chiselled the cavity, the sides are rough so the resin should easily stick.

Is there any glaring issues with those plans?