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As for "when am I ready?" You'll never be ready. It works in reverse, you become ready by doing it. - pmbomb
just because you do, doesn't mean you should.
Zebra:
https://flic.kr/p/2pyCZFq
Reverse zebra:
https://flic.kr/p/2pyEBuW
I note for black/cream, Charvel usually do zebra, Musicman do reverse. I think I may be leaning towards reverse. May not help that I’ve painted over the pole pieces on one of them.
I think you may have a strong point…
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
I was going to check back in next week and ask if you could do a black/pink zebra… like a really lairy almost fuschia hot pink… as much as I like the current seethrough bobbins I’ve also always fancied pink/black zebra since seeing it on the Dimarzio website.
And yep a NF would work well ...
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
Cream (raw/unpigmented butyrate) bobbins were originally a short term production glitch at Hughes Plastics during the Fifties. Since the humbuckers were destined to be covered, Gibson did not care and used the bobbins randomly until the cream ones ran out.
During the Sixties, there was a fashion for removing the metal covers. (Probably, to cure microphonic squeal at high sound pressure levels.) Thus, the bobbin colours were revealed. Some permutations looked nicer with sunburst tops than others. Gibson eventually responded by using cream bobbins for some humbuckers.
Having said that there is no convention, I have to admit that some guitar brands only look right with cream screw coils (Gibson, PRS) and others only with cream stud coils (Musicman, anything associated with DiMarzio).
When I briefly had all-black pickups in a Sterling AX40, it just looked dull and sad. Double cream bobbins would have been preferable but still not as cool as reverse zebra. The fact that my bridge pickup is a Crunch Lab does not spoil the looks at all.
Visually, the cream coils appear "bigger" than the black coils, so I think it usually looks better with the cream coils on the outside and the black coils on the inside. But I also liked the old Hamer approach of a single-colour bridge pickup and a zebra neck.
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
A rarity that one comes across now and then are Gibson P90s with transparent bobbins - this seems to have been a 70s thing while Gibson were trying out new materials ... I've also found a few 70s and 80s Gibson covered humbuckers with one transparent screw bobbin! Vanishing Zebra?
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
I don’t like double-cream bobbins on Gibsons though, because I associate them too much with DiMarzios and late-70s/early-80s Japanese guitars, where they are the correct pickups - they look wrong with zebras, although usually OK with double-black.
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"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein