Filling in pickup cavities?

I'm thinking of buying a cheap tele kit or 2 or some individual parts to put together my take on a cabronita.

This means filtertrons, well I'll be using the retrotrons actually. The tele body would have the standard tele pickup route. I'm trying to come up with ways to deal with this. I think the easiest way would be to route it larger to fit the retrotron then use a mounting ring because I think I'd be left with some gaps. I'd rather not use a mounting ring so I was thinking maybe I could plug the cavity and route it from scratch. Not something I've done before.

Any thoughts or experience with this kind of thing?

If you're going to paint it, you can fill in the hole by gluing in a block of wood and filling the rest with bondo. If you want a natural wood finish, typical trim rings (even for a full size humbucker) will NOT cover the hole designed for that slanted tele bridge pickup.

Yeah, I would definitely be painting it. I was thinking something along the lines of what you're saying so I'm glad that seems like a reasonable approach.

After filling it with the block of wood and bondo would it be difficult to route for the new pickup?

TV Savalas Bridge Plate and the TV pups, cost aside, are a good solution maybe...

Easy as pie. Cut out a wood block - pine, walnut, maple, to fit as well as possible. Fill in the gaps with bondo. Make your bondo nice and hard with just enough kicker and smear it in the gaps. Press it in good. Let it sdet for a few hours and sand flat. Any air bubbles or flaws can then be filled with red lead auto body filler. Let that set overnight. Sand flat. Use a sanding block or electric finishiing sander with 100 grit. Then 150 Then 320.

Clamp on your pickup template. (perhaps you will need to make one) Rout new opening.

Thanks for the explanation. Seems pretty easy, but I'm sure I could still mess it up! :lol:

Samato,

Depending on who you plan to buy the body from, you can probably purchase it without the pickup routes.

In my mind, if you are willing and able to cut your own own pickup routes... why not just build the whole body?

You might be right but making a body just seems like too much work when I could just buy one for around $30. Filling in and re-routing seems easier to me but I could be wrong.

I'd like to buy a body without any routing but the that is not an option for the cheap ones I'm looking at.

Honestly, apart from the neck pocket route, the pickup routes are probably the most difficult part of building a body. For a tele, the neck pocket route really isn't all that hard, either.

I think you will have about the same amount of time into it if you build it from scratch or if you plug the hole, then plane it flush with the body, then route the new pickup routes. That might just be me, though.

For a tele, the neck pocket route really isn't all that hard, either.



Let's not forget how much fun the string through holes are to get right... right? :cool:

None of it is difficult, if you have the tools and templates. Where a lack of tools, time, and know-how are key issues, Samato's hypothesis is correct.

Only one template would be req'd to rout a (filled in or otherwise) pickup cavity or two.

Let's not forget how much fun the string through holes are to get right... right? :cool:

I forgot the damn string through holes. That is probably the most difficult part of the build. I stand corrected.