MIMF

I have a collection of "vintage" single coil pickups that date from the 1960's to the 1990's that I recently bought in bulk through a local auction. These are all used pickups that were replaced and discarded for various reasons. There are a number of them that are electronically good, the only issue is that the plastic bottom plates have degraded to the point that they no longer hold the treads of the spring loaded adjustment screws. I've tried to re-tap them to a larger diameter screw but that has failed. Is there any repair techniques or options that might put these pickups back into service? I'm intending to use them in my Cigar Box Guitar builds.

Not really a fix, but as an alternative, you could mount the pickups to the body instead of the pickguard. Then the holes would not need to be threaded.

I would like to be able to adjust the height of the pickup in relation to the string course, using the tension springs. Of course having alternatives is always nice. These old veteran coils should produce some very nice grungy blues.

You could still use the springs, but you'd have to take the pickguard off to adjust the height.
I prefer mounting directly to the body, and use shims under the pickup if the cavity is too deep, but you could use springs between the pickup and body.

If I recall properly, Lawrence pick ups used to come with a threaded insert that accepted the height adjustment screw. If the pick up forms are too crumbly to accept an insert (or you can't find small enough inserts) you could glue nuts below the existing holes. This would give you height adjustment and strengthen the area in question.

Or, you could get some thin metal sheet stock like the stuff used for humbucker frames, cut, glue, drill and tap and you're in business.

Joshua

You can get weldable threaded fastners, such as:

http://www.grainger.com/category/weld-n ... alog/N-8lv

that can be spot welded over where the holes for the bolts on the pickup are. I use these frequently on light weight steel, along with a spot welder I bought at Harbor Freight, They are available in lots of different thead sizes.

Many machine shops, auto body repair businesses or places that do welding will have a spot welder and probably won't charge much for attaching them for you.

You might try some CA in the hole until it fits. It should hold the threads ok.

If it's forbon (vulcanized fiber) i.e. strat pickup you can stuff some cotton ball fiber into the holes with the CA and then re drill and re-tap. If it's nitrocellulose than I think it best to replace the untenable parts of the base plate with something like phenolic or forbon of a similar thickness. Hot glue is good for these types of repairs because it's usually reversible.