I considered two coil placement options. One is the back plate (hiding the vibrato springs) as used by Suhr and Ilitch for their cancelling coils. A picture with measurements is shown below. The plate area is about 18 square inches, but it's not easy to actually use that space due to the minimal clearances from the hardware and the routed recess for the plate. I don't know how Suhr can get a coil into that space unless they use very fine wire, which will alter the pickup tone. (See discussion on the
tele page about minimizing coil resistance and inductance.) I want to use relatively heavy wire (30 gauge) for my coil to minimize its resistance and impact on pickup tone. I estimated that I need about 1/4 inch clearance for my coil and this back plate area just doesn't provide that much room.