OffsetGuitars.com

I hope I have chosen the right category, from the look of this pickup it came from some solid guitar in the past!

I bought this from a guy who ran a guitar shop in the late 60's early 70's, at that time a lot of his customers were looking for that unique sound and swapping out their pickups. Some of them never bothered to take the old ones back, so here we are with a very early 70's look bass pickup, similar to what Bill Lawrence was producing at his time with Gibson (by the way I emailed Becky but she could not identify this pickup)

It is 1.5 inches by 3.5 by 1.00 deep, the cover is Nickel plated, with a center row of four adjustable screws, it is filled with resin but through the resin I can see a coil on it's side with a center rail that looks as if it has been adapted from a six string pickup, on the other side of the rail are two Alnico magnets on their sides ( I know they are Alnico because I scratched the resin down to one of them and metered it).

A some time the fixing lugs have been cut off and the casing shows signs of string marks.

I thought initially it looked Gibson or Epiphone ish but in truth I don't have a clue, I would be very pleased if one of your members could ID it.

Thank you in anticipation

John

Hmmm... I'm not sure. it has a certain "Schaller" vibe.
Kind of reminds me on the old Schaller early to mid 70's pick ups they made for various German guitar manufacturors.

Thanks for the reply, I too thought of Schaller, Klira Basses of that period have a similar 4 pole casing but when I chased it down those pickups had a conventional metal base plate. I cannot find any evidence that Schaller made a tar back. Epiphone also made an ET bass that feature 4 poles cases, but it had an impressed shape on the cover.

Super interesting. It's got a sidewinder style single coil with a horizontally-adjacent bar magnet. It's like a combination of design elements used by Gibson, Valco, and Gretsch.

Edit for massive typos.

Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, it has a Gibson look about it especially if you compare it's construction to the EB mudbucker of the same period as I suspect this one is, it has the same configuration the only thing missing is the second coil. I am sure I have seen the re-drilled center rail 6 to 4 on other pickups, but you know how it is when you are looking for it you cannot find it.

Here is a photo of the Klira Kentucky bass guitar.

The pickup looks remarkably like the one I have but the pole pieces are different and I think this particular pickup has a metal base although I cannot be certain