Oahu lap steel with pickup trouble.

[Jean-Sebastien Gauthier]

Hi, I just got that nice Oahu lap steel that I really like but the pickup seems to have a little trouble. The 4th and 5th strings, the lower strings, are a lot quieter than the other. The 6th string, the biggest, is strong as the 3 top, plain strings.

Since the pole don’t seems adjustable I really don’t know what to do!

Thanks for the help!

[Jean-Sebastien Gauthier]

[Noah Miller]

It could be that those poles have become demagnetized. If you have a strong magnet around, you could re-mag all of them so they're at the same strength.

[Jean-Sebastien Gauthier]

Hi Noah, that makes sense! The two blocks at each side of the pickup are magnet, they are moderately strong. For the poles, the firsts one is moderately strong but all the other are note magnetic at all!

I will read about how to demagnetized them and buy magnets to recharge them if possible.

Thanks!

[Jean-Sebastien Gauthier]

Do you think this simple method would work?

https://youtu.be/Ig-t5wx3iyw?si=AdHY1MKh54UAl2tW

[Noah Miller]

Hmmm... I didn't notice the side magnets. In that case, those six poles could be magnets or they might just be steel slugs that point the magnetic field toward the strings. If I had to bet, I'd bet on the latter.

It's possible that those poles have lost physical contact with the base plate that connects them to the side magnets, in which case they would effectively cease to function.

It's also possible that they're still contacting the base plate, but that one of the magnets has been inadvertently flipped around and is now out of phase with the other. This happens sometimes on Valco string-through pickups, which also have two magnets on the sides. The magnetic polarity can be checked with a tester, which is not something most people have laying around but is cheap to purchase.

Knowing what I know now about this pickup's structure, I would investigate these two possibilities before trying to magnetize the poles.

[Glenn Wilde]

You might send a email to Tom Brantley, he works on lots of old pickups and might be of some help, I've had a couple pickups redone by him and he does great work.