Kay bass pickup

[David King]

My friend who owns this bass refers to the pickup as "the Iceberg" in that most of it is below the water surface. It does sound very nice.
Anyone have a clue as to what's inside?

[jonson]

Hi David. I am assuming this bass and very probably this is the guts.

[David King]

Jonson, Thanks that's indeed the one.

Looks like it might be an AlNiCo bar running right up through the coil? i'll get some measurements.

[Magnut]

I love how that looks. It seems to me to be a chrome plated piece of steel with the mag underneath. I found this image which is close. The bar underneath from the top just looks like a bar but from under it's much bigger. Or indeed the middle bar is a magnet and the baseplate just directs the field.



Also used for guitar too? I have to say I recently saw something like these on a different guitar and became interested. Interesting that it came up here.

This is very cool!

[jonson]

A lot of these old kay pickups which they called the Jimmy Reed pickup were just a bar magnet welded to a baseplate possibly alnico or cobalt steel and then the coil wound straight onto the magnet. Typical Heath Robinson deal from those days and thus making a good sounding pickup. I would think that Jason would know a lot about these things.

[jason lollar]

There are variations but the jimmy reed is basically a P-90 coil built around an alnico magnet that sticks up something like 1/2 inch above the coil and there is a chrome cover plate that goes over the magnet that makes it look thicker, the entire assembly is attached to a large metal baseplate

[Jason Rodgers]

I found this site a while back with this guitar Guitar Blog: Symphony with strange rail pickups - can't tell more Those blades/rails sticking up from beneath the MOT look to be of a similar design.