selective unwinding of a pickup....

[-CB-]

Well folks... call me nuts, call me crazy, call me that whackjob from the deepest part of the swamp.....

But, I'm gonna try and unwind some of my factory Gibson P90 on the amber tele, in order to brighten it up and reduce its power all in one fell swoop.

The backstory - I have a BFG Les Paul, which uses the excellent BurstBucker 3 at the bridge and a P90 at the neck.  The balance of those two is ok, and I like it.  So I built up two thinline Telecasters.  One for moi, on for Vic.  His came out really nice with the same combination of pickups, and he had a mahogany neck and body.  My thinline has an ash body and a goncalo neck.  Very dark on the P90.  Very.  And also very loud on the P90.  Gibson is running these hotter than they used to, I suspect for the BFG production.  I forget what Vic's is, but this one is about 8.5k - moderately hot for a P90.

What I'm thinking of doing, is taking off the cover, using a strong magnifier to see which wire is the outer wire, and then slowly unwinding it - maybe using a hair dryer to heat any potting wax thats present.  Measure it every so often and quit when its about 7.25k

Ok, so shoot me down!

 

[Dan025]

im all for it, do what ya got to. if all else fails buy another one.

 

[whyachi]

I was looking for a witty graphic to express my feelings here, wishing you good luck and saying that is a ballsy move all at once, but I couldn't find anything in English that was appropriate for the forum. . . .so,

:rock-on:

 

[-CB-]

if all else fails buy another one.

No, if all else fails, rewind it from scratch.  Its a P90... not all that hard to wind from the bottom up, ya know?

 

[Dan025]

yeah, true. if you can wait for 42 or 43 ga. magnet wire. you'll need to mail order that. unless you happen to have a local source. at that point i'd just go to the music store and buy a pup. but then again they don't often have a p-90 on the shelf so i guess it makes no difference. sure wind it up from scratch, it would be fun.

i know they sometimes use some way to bind the windings together not just wax but depending on the insulation the wire might stick to the adjacent coils so careful you dont break a strand or cause a short. 42-43 gage wire shouldn't be bad but i once tried to fix a rails type pup that showed an open circuit and just made a mess. i don't know what gage that stuff was but it wasn't worth even trying.

 

[tfarny]

Do it, with pics please! And make a quick before-and-after sound clip if you can!

 

[Alfang]

as long as its wax potted it should be easy.  the start of the winding should be easy to find, it's the wire that almost points to one of the end magnets.

If its laquer potted, it will be a tough go,  and frankly, I don't know why all pup makers don't laquer pot their pups. it makes them very hard to revearse engineer. And also makes the pups very squeel resistant. that's my 3 cents ( used to be 2 but Obama ran it up to 3)

 

[-CB-]

There are some technical problems with the lacquer on small gauge wire... Wax is technically much easier to do.

 

[rockskate4x]

:icon_thumright:

Sounds good to me, it seems like you've thought it through. I wouldn't know where on earth to start if i wanted to do that (until reading this that is) but the methods you've proposed make all sorts of sense.

oh yeah.... big +1 to before/after clips.

 

[Alfang]

Wax is easier as far as, storing it, it's fairly green I guess, doesn't piss off the wife with oders, but laquer is very thin and penetrates well and dries rock hard, plus you can use colors

both have good points, probably more good points with wax.

I think what you are doing is basically what EVH did back in the day, contrary to many, EVH's pups are not powerhouse pups, very open and bright, I have a couple replicas and I love em.

 

[-CB-]

Lacquer, being dissolved in a solvent, is incompatible with many of the insulation materials used on the magnet wire, and can lead to shorting of the coil to itself or to the poles.

 

[Dan025]

CB i like the new signature on your posts but as im sure you already know, harleys do not leak. just like dogs they mark their territory.

 

[Nando Vallart]

It takes some guts to do this job! I'm watching, smiling!

 

[-CB-]

I am thinking... Friday night is the night to do it, or maybe Saturday AM if Friday is a lousy day (it might be)

There will be pictures.

 

[Cagey]

Back about 100 years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, before DiMarzio, Duncan, Lawrence et all were even thinking about offering aftermarket pickups, we used to disassemble perfectly good Gibson 'buckers to "balance" them. Lord only knows how many "vintage" units we screwed up that people would give their left nut for today <grin>

But, back then, they weren't "vintage" pickups. They were new, and we thought they sucked. Or, at least that they needed attention. Whether we improved them or not will never be known, as I'm quite confident they're all gone, or at least unidentified, and "improved" is a highly subjective quality anyway.

Basically, all we did was open them up and measure the individual coil resistance. If one was larger than the other (guaranteed), we unwrapped windings, taking measurements every few hundred wraps until they were close to being the same. Put it back together, install it, and bask in the tonal glory born of our own hands.

In retrospect, I'm not sure we ever improved anything, but we certainly thought we did, and that counts for a lot, inspiration being 99% bullshit and all <grin>

I tell you all that to tell you this: pickup wire is as fine as frog's hair. Of course, you probably know that already, but the reality of working with it is going to make you mint new swear words. I don't know how these guys who wind their own pickups do it. They must have lifetime supplies of a valium/prozac cocktail they mix with their booze. In my day, we had Columbian Gold <grin>

If you have trouble seeing very small things, you might want to employ help. Make sure everything breakable is put up. But, patience is the key. If the wire doesn't want to move, there's a reason. Don't force it - it wants to break. Don't help it do that. Find out why it doesn't want to move. Is it hung up on a coilform burr, or is it stuck in wax/lacquer? Or, are you just going too fast? Thing is, if you break it at the coil, you may never find that end again and you're all done. You have to start over with a new pickup.

Assuming you get to where you want to be, then it's just a matter of stripping and soldering. Fine sandpaper, and don't be aggressive about it. Terminate the wire, and it's all downhill from there.