Workshop: Bucker in the Bucket

This is the same Trojan I just worked-on, but its new owner wanted to electrify it with both a K&K acoustic pickup (I use K&K Twin Spots on just about everything -- here, too) mounted on the biscuit bridge and a magnetic, electric-guitar pickup at the neck.

Originally he'd wanted to put a '60s thin-style DeArmond pickup, but it turned-out that the pickup had coil damage. It's pretty common on old DeArmonds as they pickups themselves aren't packed in their housing very well. I fished-around in my bins and pulled-out a cool, faded-gold-plated Japanese humbucker from the '70s. It has a clean, clear voice and was originally bridge-mounted but sounds oh-so-much-better in this neck-mount position.

Now the owner can go from this almost-jazzy retro pickup voice to straight-up acoustic resonator voicing while playing shows. By blending the two at the mixer, this can go all sorts of directions.

To complete the conversion, I added three '30s/'40s radio knobs on the lower bout -- volume/tone for the magnetic pickup and volume for the K&K. I cut a custom black pickup ring for the humbucker from the scraps of an old '70s Strat pickguard. There are two jacks on the lower-bout-side, too -- one for electric and one for acoustic. We decided that was the better route as stereo jacks can sometimes be confusing or annoying if you don't have the right cable on hand.