'62 Strat pickup repair

This morning I had in my shop a bridge pickup from a 1962 Fender Stratocaster.  The pickup was not producing any sound when installed in the guitar and when hooked up to a mulitmeter, showed no resistance.  This means that there is an open circuit somewhere between the positive and the negative lead wires.  It is important to be very careful when working on this type of vintage gear in order to preserve the original tones of the guitar, so a number of steps were taken to carefully diagnose the source of the problem.

First, upon removing the cover I could see that this pickup uses Formvar wire, a common wire of the period, which gives it that coppery look.  There is a thin layer of wax on the pickup meaning it was at some point wax potted.

I could see that the wire leading to the black, negative wire is leading to the center of the bobbin and the wire leading to the white, positive, wire is coming from the outside.  This means that the wire was wound onto the pickup in a clockwise direction. If you point your finger at the left eyelet where the black lead wire is connected and then follow the wire on a path around the magnetized poles about 8,000 times and then end at the right eyelet you can see that this pickup was indeed wound in a clockwise direction.

When I oriented a magnetometer over the poles I could see that this pickup is South up with an average of 27 gauss.  A bit too much magnetism for a bridge pickup for my taste, but in the interest of preserving originality I left the magnets alone.

Next I inspected the condition of the actual Formvar wire and I could see that there was no visible damage.  My next step was to heat up the solder on the eyelets and add a little bit more solder.  This connection can get dirty over the years and cause a bad connection.

Eureka!!  After doing that I tested the resistance again and sure enough this pickup is reading about 5.44 thousand ohms of resistance, just right.  I am done and the original tone of the pickup is preserved.

If heating up the eyelets had not worked my next step would have been to disconnect the finish and unwind a few coils to try to find a break.  As a last resort I would have removed all of the old wire and solder, rewound the pickup with vintage-spec wire and waxed it.

Custom Pickups!

build pickups to your personal specs!

Pickups have a lot to do with the sound of an electric guitar and how it behaves through an amp and they are usually one of the first places guitar makers cut costs when they are designing entry-level guitars.  That's why pickups are the first thing you upgrade when you're searching for better tone, and they are usually much cheaper than buying a better guitar.

They simply consist of magnetic polepieces wrapped in thousands of winds of copper wire.  The type of magnets and wire obviously have a lot to do with the tone, but so do the winding style, number of winds, and type of material used to pot them (see: wax potting).  Below you will find a short list of what goes into building a pickup and the effect it has on the tone.  All of these components are ones that were used on early Gibson and Fender pickups to produce the legendary tones that they are famous for today.  I tested all of these different materials and methods myself with the pickups I built as well as consulted the fine people at SF Guitarworks and Mojotone to come to the conclusions that I made.  Read through this short list before ordering your new set of pickups through our website and you'll be a pickup expert too. 

Magnets

Alnico V-  by far the most popular magnet for vintage-style pickups.  Drives your amp harder to break up sooner, lowers headroom.  Tight punchy lows, low to moderate mids, singing highs.

Alnico III-  the brightest of the alnico magnets.  Lower output than Alnico V.  Used in very early Teles and Strats from the 50's.  Nice round highs and a strong midrange with good bite.

Alnico II-  spongy attack.  Smooth highs and strong mids. Lower output than Alnico V.  Used in Gibson PAF humbuckers and some P-90's.


Wire

Formvar- common in vintage Fender pickups.  Warm and smooth sounding.

Single Build Plain Enamel- also used in many vintage Fender pickups, useful when squeezing a maximum number of winds on the coil.  Aggressive and sharper on the bass and treble response.

Polycoated- darker sounding overall.  Great when used in high output pickups for smoothing out harshness.

Construction Techniques

Scatterwinding- All of our single coil pickups are scatterwound, it is widely known in the pickup building world that scatterwinding is the best technique for building pickups because of the increased clarity and response to subtle details.  It really opens up the sound.  For more information see my blog entry on Scatterwinding.

Overwinding by 5%- some blues and rock players prefer pickups that drive their amp harder for more breakup through the amp.  Overwound pickups also produce 5% more bass and 5% less treble.  The high strings will sound fuller and sweeter but the wound strings will sound darker.

Underwinding by 5%- If clarity is your goal then underwinding is ideal.  It produces 5% less bass and 5% more treble and makes your wound strings sound clearer.  

Wax Potting-  If you are using gain or excessive volume in your rig it is highly recommended that you order your pickups with wax potting.  The hardened wax holds the windings together to keep them from vibrating against each other and causing feedback and microphonics.  On the contrary, early Fender pickups were not wax potted and some are regarded as being some of the best sounding in the world, pickups without wax are generally more open sounding.  For more information please see my blog entry on wax potting.  All of our pickups are wax potted unless otherwise stated.

Staggered/Flat polepieces-  Most modern pickups are staggered to compensate for fretboard radius and varying string-to-string balance in volume.  You may opt for flat polepieces in your setup.  Most Telecaster bridge pickups have flat polepieces and they sound just fine.  All of our pickups have staggered polepieces unless otherwise stated.

Beveled Polepieces-  beveling the edge of the polepiece makes them look a little nicer.  Some say that it smooths out the tone of the pickup as well.  All of our Stratocaster, Jazzmaster, Jaguar, P-Bass, and Jazz Bass pickups have beveled polepieces unless otherwise stated.