Oil City/ Fender 'trapezoid' lap steel pickup rewind.

Back around 1950 Leo Fender designed a pickup that became his personal favorite. This was the 'trapiziod' lap steel pickup.
This pickup shared a lot in common with early Rickenbacker lap steel (and even bass) pickups. -  in that the strings ... in this pickup's case eight of them, go through the centre of the coil, and the coil is charged by huge flanking (or in Rickenbacker's case horseshoe magnets. 
These things are part miricle of enginearing and part crude as f**k ... oh and this one was dead as a dodo with no output wires either. 


Off with the lid and here's this pickup's big secret ...

The lacquered cardboard bobbin was allegedly made from scrap Fender factory clocking in cards and the unevenly sized magnets are HUGE and super powerful. 


So off came the old wire .... which was unusual in that it was 43awg Heavy Formvar ... not something every pickup winder has on his wire stock shelves. I was lucky in that I regularly use 43awg Heavy Formvar on pickups I wind for Doug Campbell at Blackmachine. 

Mounting the trapezoid bobbin in the winding machine requires a custom made jig ... comme ça ... 

And the coil mounts thus-wise 

Now these card bobbins can't be 'dip potted' or they will go soggy and fall apart ... I have to do it exactly as it was done in 1950 in the Fender factory.


A few hundred turns are laid up ... all hand guided ... then the coil is brushed with nitro lacquer on both sides to soak the coil ... then a few hundred more turns are added ... and the whole process is repeated. As this pickup takes around 9000 turns that takes a long time! 


Finally the hardened core has its output leads added 

And I add a layer of paper tape to physically protect the coil for another 70 years or so :-)

A lovely bit of kit brought back to life :-)

Great you are doing this stuff and lovely work was it from or going back into a Lap steel?

Jez6345789 said:

Great you are doing this stuff and lovely work was it from or going back into a Lap steel?

Yep it was from an early 50s lap steel very much  like this 

Interestingly the pickup incorporates the bridge saddle too ... 

Wow... what a wonky but wonderful thing! Interesting that it also has the bridge saddle as part of it too... with no intonation adjustment. ;-)

Thanks for sharing, Ash. 

impmann said:

Wow... what a wonky but wonderful thing! Interesting that it also has the bridge saddle as part of it too... with no intonation adjustment. ;-)

Thanks for sharing, Ash. 

I love this sort of repair ... something way out of our normal realm, but a wonderful old instrument that deserves a voice again. 

That was fascinating, thanks for posting the article.

I know it takes a huge amount of time and effort but the work you do would be a great basis for a very popular YT channel. 

Chris.B said:

That was fascinating, thanks for posting the article.

I know it takes a huge amount of time and effort but the work you do would be a great basis for a very popular YT channel. 

If folks want that I'll certainly consider it. I have a YT photographic channel so I know the work needed lol.