This customer was a big fan of Bartolini pickups. He wanted more Bartolini. There’s was available real estate for it right there in the bridge position. Let’s go for it. I’ve carefully traced the contours of the new pickup, marked out exactly where it needs to go, then tapped the corners. I then transferred the outline on the green tape to a plywood blank and created a template for my router. You may be asking yourself “why didn’t he just route an oversized rectangle like they did for the middle pickup?” It’s going to be covered by a pickguard anyway. Surely that would be easier, right?

Well, I almost did. But here was my thinking. Either way i was going to need to make a sturdy template. Once the template was cut, it made more sense to me to use it to route a perfectly sized cavity in the body, just like the cavity for the bridge pickup. Then, I could put the pickguard back on to the bass and use a bottom bearing router bit to trace and cut the shape of the cavity back through the pickguard.

Above we see my template fixed to the body with double stick tape. Blink and you’ll miss it, but I’m periodically checking the depth with a square.

There you have it. There were still some wiring decisions to make. I seem to remember replacing one of the pots with a push/pull pot to engage the new pickup. Happy trails, Mr. Bassman.