Has anyone here ever wax potted pickups?

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CaseyCor

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You could take the cover off and put it on a new humbucker.
 
I would just yank the old ones out and put them somewhere safe and get some replacement pickups This way you could always put the guitar back to stock should you ever want to sell it. Even potting the pickups could change the value of the guitar should someone notice what you did. That said, if you still want to pot the pickup, Talk to Tweed about it ;)
 
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Gainfreak":1aefd said:
I would just yank the old ones out and put them somewhere safe and get some replacement pickups This way you could always put the guitar back to stock should you ever want to sell it. Even potting the pickups could change the value of the guitar should someone notice what you did. That said, if you still want to pot the pickup, Talk to Tweed about it ;)
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+1
 
if your pickup hasn't been potted before it might help?


i did one that had allready been potted and it didn't help.



no need to buy anything, open flame or not. just use a double boiler. i used a pan with a pyrex butter dish inside of the pan for the double boiler.


that said, probably just as easy to get a new pup and use your old cover. i know i was pissed as hell after taking the time pot and put them back in and still not work.


i've got a Rio Grande Crunchbox and like it, don't know about the others models, guess they'd be allright.

the Crunchbox has it's own cover and it just barely fits through my pickup bezel, so might want to call them and ask about fitting your cover if you go with them.
 
you might want to take a closer look at that pup thump. i don't know about the '71's but on my '73 sg standard the back of the pup is sealed in some type of epoxy. i tried removing the pup covers many years ago and found to my chagrin that it's not possible without damaging the pup.
 
Hi Dave, I could easily take the cover off my T-Bone pickups. There was some solder between its cover and the ground plate.

Btw Chris: you may want to check, if the pot is okay too. Maybe its not the pickup, but the pot . . . (at least worth a try before . . . )
 
T-Bone - LOL - yeah, T-Tops

btw: instead of changing the pot, just hook in and out together to verify its the pickup, not the pot.
 
I've done it a few ways, the easiest way was to simply run a bead of silicon over the lugs of the pickup, then using a clamp to ensure the pickup was securly pressed against the cover. (Obviously, use something to protect the face of the pickup.) Then, solder the pickup to the cover. Presto...worked like a champ.
 
hi olaf. i know norlin did some major re-tooling on the gibson lines once they took it over.. but most of those changes really didn't hit until around 1976 or so iirc. it's quite possible that the pup covers weren't epoxied down.
1973 was the first year that gibson came out with what they dubbed the "superhumbucker" after the original humbucker patent expired. it is a bill lawrence design. my standard has "supers" which were only available on models that had a "bigsby" tailpiece. so i guess that expalins why mine are epoxied and others aren't. thanks olaf! that jogged my memory. LOL. :lol:
 
My LPC was a 76, not a 78 (that was a Pro Deluxe) - all gone now (friend, family). Too heavy for me old fart unfortunately :(
I really loved them . . . both are in best hands now though . . .
 
Pots should be 300k in there, Chris. Smoother sounding than "new" 500k btw
 
Just make sure by grabbing a screwdriver and look into that cavity ;)
 
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SgtThump":f36a8 said:
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Really? Wow... I haven't taken them out or even looked behind them yet. I just assumed that the covers could be removed. I'm told these should be "T-Top" pickups.
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T-Tops are good stuff.

I have them in my 75 Custom :)

I need to refret it though before I can play it regularly. It's just too difficult being a "fretless wonder" with so many miles on it.
 
yeah, my '73 is at the point where it needs a fret dressing and probably a new bone nut. luckily there's a shop about an hours drive away that can do that work. i really should play it more.. but after 30+ years of club gigs i decided it needed a rest. besides.. i'm getting really comfortable with strat style guitars lately. what's up with that? :doh: i used to hate them. :D
 
I've re-potted many pickups. I didn't bother getting a double boiler though. Here's what I used:

-Candy or candle making thermometer
-Soup can to hold the wax
-Wax in proper proportions (beeswax and paraffin)
-Vegetable steamer pot (which has a "shelf" inside it...sometimes they have baskets but this one was simpler and cheaper)

I sat the can on the "shelf", filled the water high enough that the can was mostly submerged but wouldn't float. This way the heat transferred from the water to the can of wax instead of directly from the element on the stove to the can, so it worked fine.

The vegetable steamer pot wasn't getting much use, and it cost me no extra cash to use it, so there it was. :)
 
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You might have already tried this but if you haven't you'll be surprised at the dramatic difference it can make. I had a guitar that a runaway feedback problem also. All of my other guitars did not have the problem even at the same gain and volume levels. A guitar tech friend of mine told be to adjust the pickup height up and down too see if that made any difference...it did...my problem solved. :)
 
The other thing, I've heard (not confirmed) is that the pots can contribute to feedback problems as well.

Those older LP's don't have the ground-plate for the pots like the new ones - then again, my 68 RI doesn't have one either.

Just a thought...
 
Yeah, I'm "double boiling it" in a sense. The "shelf" of the vegetable steamer sits in the middle of the pot, not at the bottom, so it elevates the can of wax from the bottom (so it doesn't make direct contact with the stove's element). The wax melting in the can, having the heat transfer from the water (and not the element) is "double boiling". So if you can make a setup like that, go for it. :)
 
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