70's humbucker mounting bracket

[James Welsh]

Just curious about this one. I was subbing in on a gig not long ago and one of the guys pickups was help up poorly by tape. He asked me to fix it for the show that night. I assumed it was the typical thing where the height screw and spring came out, but when I opened the guitar I found this mounting bracket had come off. Looks like it was just glued to the magnet.

As I recall it was a 70's SG. Can't narrow it down farther, sorry. But I remember it had a noticeably narrow fingerboard. I don't find I have to swap pickups on 70's Gibsons too often so I'm just curious to know if these brackets were a common way to do things back then. I don't think I've ever seen a humbucker that didn't have the common baseplate we all know.

[the great waldo]

Just curious about this one. I was subbing in on a gig not long ago and one of the guys pickups was help up poorly by tape. He asked me to fix it for the show that night. I assumed it was the typical thing where the height screw and spring came out, but when I opened the guitar I found this mounting bracket had come off. Looks like it was just glued to the magnet.

As I recall it was a 70's SG. Can't narrow it down farther, sorry. But I remember it had a noticeably narrow fingerboard. I don't find I have to swap pickups on 70's Gibsons too often so I'm just curious to know if these brackets were a common way to do things back then. I don't think I've ever seen a humbucker that didn't have the common baseplate we all know.

Not one of gibsons better ideas, but give them time they still have plenty of potential to come up with some pretty stupid ideas, Ask the guitar maker that works in their account/marketing office !!!!

Cheers

Andrew

[Stratz]

Yup, that's a Tar Back or Super Humbucker. A bill Lawrence design.

You can repair it with epoxy since that's what was used to hold the bracket on from the factory.

[James Welsh]

Not one of gibsons better ideas, but give them time they still have plenty of potential to come up with some pretty stupid ideas, Ask the guitar maker that works in their account/marketing office !!!!

Cheers

Andrew

Hahahaha Yeah. I worked at the Canadian distributer/warranty centre for Gibson for about 6 years. All their great ideas seemed to become my problem. Circuit boards. Molex connectors. Robot Guitars. Dark Fire. Dusk Tiger. It was pretty endless. Thankfully I've been away from it for quite a few years now so the whole 2015 model year disaster isn't something I have to deal with.

And as far as the stuff that they shipped us that was expected to go right into a customers hands..... I could write a book on that!!

[James Welsh]

Yup, that's a Tar Back or Super Humbucker. A bill Lawrence design.

You can repair it with epoxy since that's what was used to hold the bracket on from the factory.

Thanks for the info. I did a quick search on them and it sounds like it's a tarback. I found this quote about the Super Humbucker on a different forum:

"There are no adjustable polepieces (which is part of the reason you don't see screws poking through the cover) this is a way to immediately distinguish them from the Gibson tarback pickups."


it looked like any regular humbucker until I took it out of the guitar. And yup, epoxy did the job. I had some 2 part epoxy that said it was good for bonding metal. I used it, put it all back together and he played it at some point during the show with no issues.

Looking back on my pictures I'm wondering if you know how the bobbins attach to this pickup. As I said I've only ever seen and taken apart pickups with the typical baseplate and 4 screws holding the bobbins to it. More curious than anything else I guess

[Stratz]

Looking back on my pictures I'm wondering if you know how the bobbins attach to this pickup.

I believe the bobbins were simply set in the cover then encased in epoxy.

Heres one with the cover removed. Not an easy job.

[the great waldo]

Hahahaha Yeah. I worked at the Canadian distributer/warranty centre for Gibson for about 6 years. All their great ideas seemed to become my problem. Circuit boards. Molex connectors. Robot Guitars. Dark Fire. Dusk Tiger. It was pretty endless. Thankfully I've been away from it for quite a few years now so the whole 2015 model year disaster isn't something I have to deal with.

And as far as the stuff that they shipped us that was expected to go right into a customers hands..... I could write a book on that!!

Hi James

I used to do setups with another guitar maker in London during the Gibson Victory guitar times. The quality control on Gibson was so bad that the distributor in England had us set up pretty much every electric gibson imported by them. I remember one day we got a left hand Les paul custom with the dots on both sides of the fingerboard. I wonder if Gibson issued the quality controllers with white sticks.

Cheers

Andrew