Built a Set of Pickups

[glpg80]

So I have a dark wine red custom I’m restoring with my luthier and I wanted to convert it from chrome Pat pending T top pickups to an uncovered 498T/496R combination. I also wanted to swap the stock short bar ceramic magnet in the 496R to an A5 to better match the warmth and mids of the 498T. I also had to swap the pole pieces of these from gold to nickel.

Don’t worry, the original pickups will get wrapped in large amounts of bubble wrap individually and stored in the case.

I finished disassembling both pickups and swapping pole pieces as well as doing the A5 magnet swap in the 496R. It was challenging since the wiring was done with the use of a shorter magnet, so I had to carefully move some of the winding wires around as to not pinch them between anything and short it out.

I verified the 496R still measured 8.5K when finished so it’s still working just fine.

Here’s the finished set.

Here’s the picture as is for the guitar and here’s a picture of what I’d planned to go for:

 

[Smashedguitaris⸸]

Badass, man. I rewire all my guitars, so i thought i was ready to mess with pickups. It was like 7 years ago or something. I was taking apart a pickup to see what made it work, and i destroyed the damn thing. It was not a cheap pickup, and i was not proud of myself.
But congrats to you.

 

[glpg80]

Badass, man. I rewire all my guitars, so i thought i was ready to mess with pickups. It was like 7 years ago or something. I was taking apart a pickup to see what made it work, and i destroyed the damn thing. It was not a cheap pickup, and i was not proud of myself.
But congrats to you.

Thanks man. You definitely get what it takes to do this then lol. It’s a lot of patience as those coiled wires aren’t hard to pull out or break.

I’m not winding my own set, but I have repotted a pickup before that’s in my charvel. I noticed in my recent vid that it’s slightly microphonic due to the amount of gain in my 74 amp, but in the past it’s not been an issue.

I’ve killed a pickup too. I had a single coil I really loved that came out of a no name ibanez that I ripped the plastic cover off of and it was amazing. I was taking it out of a guitar and pulled the damn wire right out of it. This was like 15 years ago and to this day I still haven’t found a favorable replacement. I was really bummed about it since it’s not like I can go buy another one.

 

[Mikeyboyeee]

Nice job. Can't wait to hear it in the new LP.

 

[scottosan]

Thanks man. You definitely get what it takes to do this then lol. It’s a lot of patience as those coiled wires aren’t hard to pull out or break.

I’m not winding my own set, but I have repotted a pickup before that’s in my charvel. I noticed in my recent vid that it’s slightly microphonic due to the amount of gain in my 74 amp, but in the past it’s not been an issue.

I’ve killed a pickup too. I had a single coil I really loved that came out of a no name ibanez that I ripped the plastic cover off of and it was amazing. I was taking it out of a guitar and pulled the damn wire right out of it. This was like 15 years ago and to this day I still haven’t found a favorable replacement. I was really bummed about it since it’s not like I can go buy another one.

I use tape folded around where the magnet wire is soldered to the lead. I put a 1” strip of tap on the finished coil, put a dab of super glue on that piece of tape and lay the lead with its folded tape on to the superglue spot leaving a little bit of slack. That gives some added protection if the leads are tugged, since your pulling g on superglued tape instead of magnet wire. If the tape breaks, you have a little slack as a fail safe.

 

[scottosan]

BTW. I much prefer when people order 2 conductor, as the 4 conductors are trickier the get all of the leads tucked away.