Nickel covers for my Burny Thunderbird

TBird1958 · July 12, 2012, 07:31:05 PM

Daunting to post here amongst you guys that do such great work....

This is just a simple upgrade of the pickup covers on my Burny Thunderbird, stock the hardware is all polished nickel except for the the black plastic pup covers, I like the tone of the pickups - just didn't want black or the mix with nickel. So after some preliminary measuring I found that Mike Lull's covers would likely fit with some easy modification. So as the pics show I stripped the black plastic casing off of the pickups using a Xuron cutter - each pup took about two minutes, very easy! The pickup then needed a new mounting hole on one side and the exsisting got enlarged slightly as it didn't line up with the new cover's holes. Again very easy, I marked the locations and drilled, that done I also made new holes in the body for the repositioned screws. The covers were attached to the pickups with Titebond Industrial adhesive and after drying, screwed back into place with springs providing some tension along with the foam. The rings were added by marking drill locations and making a small pilot hole first then using a larger bit, these were done by hand using a Pin Vise to hold the smaller bits. The bridge pup also got a black spacer made of PG material to hide the sides of the pickup that the cover leaves exposed.
A fun project that didn't take too long

The stock bass