Info and Opinions Please?

[Inspector #20]

Here's a few more...

My birthdate serial numbers and main cavity detail.

 

[eclecticsynergy]

Thanks, @eclecticsynergy! Yes, I believe it is a magnet (i still really don't know enough about this pup to say whether it's a blade or not) and it does protrude slightly above the center bracket level. If it it turns out it has slugs, they should be underneath that magnet. I guess a way to find out would be to put some steel powder / shavings on the cover and see what pattern they make. But I may be wrong...

Another thought - that could well be a plain steel rail acting in place of slugs for the one coil, charged magnetically by the same ceramic bar (under the bracket) that charges the screws in the other bobbin. Doesn't have to be a magnet itself to carry magnetism to the strings.

Either way, I'd say it means this pickup is not a tarback. However, it still might be awesome. Already by the late 70s/early80s, some guitars the Japanese were building as "copies" of American models were no longer necessarily inferior. IMO the best ones were as good as - perhaps even better than - anything the American companies were producing at the time.