Mounting a pickup above the strings of a bass

[Racc]

Not entirely sure if anyone's done it, but I wanna make an incredibly minimalist lightweight bass. Not buy, but make.

I have a bass that I don't use at all, and I have a bunch of parts. I wanna sand down the bass to the size of the bridge and make a jawed pickup esc thing.

I was planning on making a bracket and mounting the tone pickup towards the strings down by the bridge. Its a bit of a stretch, but I ain't a pickup engineer. If the volume pickup is right below the tone pickup, will it interfere?

Anyways, just thinkin weird here.

[sgosnell]

That's how pickups started out.
Early Electric Guitars
Harder to do that with current production pickups though. The horseshoe type might be available somewhere though. I just don't have the incentive to do the search.

Edit: A quick search shows that horseshoe bass pickups are pretty common, available from several major pickup makers, as well as vintage on ebay if you prefer that. "horseshoe bass pickups" in a search engine gives many hits.

[Racc]

Thanks! This helps a ton. Now all I've gotta do is build it.

[icr]

Horseshoe pickups are still below the strings, only the magnet comes over the strings. Nothing preventing you from mounting any conventional pickup over the strings, other than playability.

[Racc]

Yeah I thought that horseshoe pickups were the idea to go off of for a little bit but now I'm genuinely trying to research. I don't think that the pickups in this sortve design would interfere, but I can only experiment. Imma work with my junky pickups before I actually start using good pickups, just in case I mess em up. Ill have an exposed wire at the top of the bracket I'm making that mounts the pickup over the strings, and I have to try and devise a way to hide it a bit better, but the bracket will be removable with some pins ill stick in place. I can start making it in a few days but it may get a little delayed. Imma try to post some updates regularly, and I hope this works. When I get home I think I'll draw up some crude blueprints and snap a pick for here. From what ive found by searching the web, it doesnt have a name, but if anyone knows any sort of guitar or somethin with the design im making just lemme know. (I think calling it a 'Jawed Pickup' sounds nice, but lemme know what yall think.)