Oil City Pickups: 68 Tele pickup restoration

OilCityPickups

Here's another old Fender pickup in for a rewind:

In this case a 68 Tele bridge pickup ... showing bugger all output.

It is interesting that late sixties Fender pickups suffer far more from 'banana bobbin' syndrome than pre CBS ones ... note the curl up at the ends of the top flatwork. This seems to be largely due to much slacker manufacturing tolerances making the magnets a looser fit in the fibre flatwork. The constant pressure of the windings against the thinner top plate ... plus the ingress of corrosion causes this alarming bowing.

Anyway ... the pickup is as dead as a dodo ... so I suspect that corrosion has eaten the inner coils against the magnets.

 

What a mess!

Thats better. This pickup ... in common with many late sixties ones seems to escaped any form of potting. Lacquer dipping was usual ... but this is another one totally untouched! The base-plate was only held on by the soldered earth connection ... bet that squealed!

Off with the wire ... and indeed ... no potting!

Now we can see what has killed this venerable old pickup ... 

A truck load of corrosion from sweat finding it's way past the top flatwork ... It stunk of mold!

Well after gently removing as much of  the rust as I was able ... I stabilized the bobbin construction with fillets of cyanoacrylate around the magnet/flatwork join ... then coated the whole inner bobbin assembly with lacquer to prevent corrosion from ever getting at the windings again.

The original string was re used ... and some nice new hookup wire ... distressed with a little of my patent 'gunk' to add a little mojo ...

And job's a good un!

Baseplate was secured with a double stick pad before soldering ... as this pickup was to be left as un-potted as the day it left the Fullerton factory.

Ready to carry on rocking ...

ThePrettyDamned

So cool! Never seen a 'banana bobbin' before. 

OilCityPickups

Very common on old Fender pickups. In extreme cases I've seen the whole top flatwork 'blown' off!

ThorpyFX

I love these threads. Nice to see old stuff restored

Richardj

If you didn't re-pot it isn't there a chance it will still be prone to microphonics/squeal?

jpfamps

Re the potting, from what I understood Fender changed the pickup wire in the mid 60's and the insulation was unable to withstand the heat of potting process they used at the time.

Is there any truth in this, or was this another CBS cost saving exercise?

Adam_MD

thorpy6;741787" said:

I love these threads. Nice to see old stuff restored

Me too some of my favourite and the main reason I visit this forum to learn stuff and talk about guitars... and I guess indulge my pickup fetish

OilCityPickups

jpfamps said: Re the potting, from what I understood Fender changed the pickup wire in the mid 60's and the insulation was unable to withstand the heat of potting process they used at the time.
Is there any truth in this, or was this another CBS cost saving exercise? Nah ... they went to PVA coated 'plain enamel' and that will take standard potting temperatures no problem. They were pinching pennies by lacquer dipping, but when things got busy even that stage got missed out!

Richardj said:

If you didn't re-pot it isn't there a chance it will still be prone to microphonics/squeal?

Won't be too drastic as the base plate is now properly fixed!

streethawk

I agree with keeping it as original as possible, even if there is a bit of squealing retained - it's part of the pickup's character now. Like a grumpy old dog.