Double Bass What EUB is Kevin Axt playing in this picture?

[dylanjohnson]

@Kevin Axt It sounds like a Rick Turner pickup that he made for a while. He passed away, so no more of those.

 

[DoubleMIDI]

No, these were hand-wound piezos. They were maybe maybe 1/2” square and 1/8th” thick, roughly. They were installed parallel to each string at the top of the bridge into a diagonal slot. Kind of like little 1/2 size Underwood pickups, but there are 4 of them next to the strings as described, rather than the legs of the bridge.

If you want to use a commercially available pickup with (basically) the same (mechanical) function I would close the slots with glued-in wood and drill holes for a Wilson K4 into the bridge, probably into the filling wood at the bottom or middle. If the wood would be slightly softer than the bridge wood, the bridge wood triangles above the slots can still vibrate a bit and transfer the same kind of vibration to the Wilson pickup.

On the other hand the pickups might be repairable if only the shield contact is broken. I repaired a Shadow SH950 two times over the years because the shield wires were broken in front of the solder point at the pickup element.

The Underwood and Shadow bridge wing pickups have circular piezoceramic elements inside the brass U. One side in contact with the brass, the other isolated against the brass and wired to the hot center of the cable.

The piezoceramic can break as any ceramic (but a bit easier) and soldering time to the silver coated surfaces (repair with liquid silver powder if needed) should be as short as possible otherwise the piezo effect might get permanently damaged.