Oil City Pickups: rewinding a very scummy 1972 Jazz bass PU

OilCityPickups

Here we have a very scummy 1972 Fender J Bass pickup sent to me for a rewind. The pictures don't do justice to the level of 'mank' here! Sweat reusted poles, enamel

 insulation breaking down, the whole thing smelling of mildew ... bleeerrrrk. 

The rubber cushion seems to have been stuck on with a compound similar to bitumen, and with age it has mixed its self up with the solder joints. Damn it smelt bad when I un-soldered the hookup wires!

Right, wire removed to show no tape on the bobbins ... or lacquer. The former definitely dates it to 1972 ... and helps explain why the pickup failed. After 72 the almost always taped the bobbins on JB pickups and they fail from shorts less regularly in my experience.

Most of the gunge removed from the bottom flatwork ... and here you will see the slightly projecting magnets which are the reason for the little spacer jig I used in the winding shot!

Here I've taped the coil to prevent the same shorting fault happening again.

The tape is sprayed with nitro laquer  as 'belt and braces'.

Here is the pickup being hand scatter wound. The original was a very crappy machine wind ... it appears they didn't centre the bobbin properly, and all the early layers were built up against one side of the flatwork. A scatter wind will improve the tone anyway.

Wound

And now potted ... lightly in wax

And the job's a good'un!

ThorpyFX

Awesome work again, love seeing these old pickups get a refresh. Do you have a test rig to make sure these work when you've done them?

OilCityPickups

I have a cheap Harley Benton J bass 'mule' and a similar P bass ... both actually pretty okay basses in their own right ... that can be used to test bass pickups. Bit stuck for Rick ones mind! 

Sarge

This is ace, really interesting to see how you go about your work!

looking forward to seeing the Super Distortion you rewound for me, not that I'm pressing you of course!

OilCityPickups

Sarge said:

This is ace, really interesting to see how you go about your work!

looking forward to seeing the Super Distortion you rewound for me, not that I'm pressing you of course!

That was posted back to you an age ago recorded! Oh dear ... PM me

Sarge

Lol, I got it back, you just said that it was going to feature in a photo story of it's rewinding. Don't panic bud

OilCityPickups

phew!

GuitarMonkey

I think that "bitumen" IS the rubber cushion which rots over time.

OilCityPickups

GuitarMonkey said:

I think that "bitumen" IS the rubber cushion which rots over time.

Well manky anyway lol ,,, 

There will be a 'Masterwound' Oil City pick based on this rewind by the way ... but upping the output over the originals for more punch and growl.

ICBM

TheGuitarWeasel said:

A scatter wind will improve the tone anyway.

Tone?! It's a bass pickup! It just needs to go Thud and no-one will ever notice the difference.

Above and beyond the call of duty with this one! Yuck. I'd probably have recommended just sticking a Duncan in or something .

Nice to see you fix the design faults as well as simply repairing them.

OilCityPickups

Lol ... well 72 Jazz basses tended to go sorta clank rather than thud due to their low wind pickups :-) 

I prefer to wind Jazz bass pickups a tad hotter to help them compete with P Bass. I think originality was in mind for this owner, but my own Jazz bass 'HardMan' is far more of a beast.

ICBM

Ah, well if you're actually making new ones I'd use one of those instead of a Duncan .

Speaking of correcting design flaws, is it possible to do a humbucker which fits in a Rick 4001 bridge pickup mounting without incurring the Wrath Of RIC? I've got an old Kent Armstrong (guitar mini-humbucker with bar polepieces, I think - original neck pickup from an Eggle Broadway) in mine that happened to fit perfectly after a little work, and sounds great. It's essential given the amount of fuzz I use on bass, but is another of the things RIC won't fix. Their humbucker is good in the neck but doesn't sound right in the bridge, it's too muddy - and too thin if you wire it in parallel.

OilCityPickups

If people buy their own rick surrounds ... it is not my concern if a pickup I happen to make happens to fit it ... pure coincidence.