This 1970s Tele pickup came to me dead ... normally a simple matter to rewind ... not so this time. The piece of black tape hinted at a bodge ... little did I suspect the bodger from hell had been under the cover before me!
Hummm narrow masking tape ... Fender sometimes used wide masking tape to wrap coils ... but not this stuff ... and at the bottom there seems to be ...
Oh my god ... the whole coil is not only wound with the wrong wire ... it's solid ... smothered in epoxy resin!!!
So hard it broke my knife tip!
Resin soaked wire off at last ........The whole core of the pickup has been filled with manky, rock hard epoxy.
So out with the burr and mini grinder ... and drill ... and files ... till at last ...
Bobbin cleaned and re-lacquered ... eyelets replaced as the muppet who had bodged this poor pickup before I got to it had used so much heat on the eyelets the flatwork crumbled around them. I patched the flat-work, then re drilled before I fitting new brass eyelets.
Rewound ... I fitted the reused output wires before re-fitting the cover and ensuring the pickup would keep rocking on for many more years.
Moral of the tale? Careful who has rewound your pickups in the past ... and 'EPOXY ... JUST SAY NO!' :-)
Comments
Surely any value associated with its age is now gone, and the wouldn't it sound different too (if the owner can remember how it sounded) given all the work you put into it, and the changes made?
Plus I'm guessing the charge for your time (and materials) is somewhat more than just buying one of your standard pickups??
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It is entirely possible that the refurbished pickup is now built to a higher standard than the original factory spec.
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