I’ve though about this long an hard. Been building and modding amps forever. The reality is that you’re no going to get rich in any boutique music manufacturing business unless you somewhat mass produce. Amps are very expensive, not only for parts but labor intensive, expensive to ship, and require much more overhead if you want to do it the right way.
Pickups on the other had are lower upfront costs for parts. Don’t take long to do if you do things in batches, cheap to ship and open yourself up to a much larger market as pickups are much more affordable. I’m not looking to do this full time, as I have a great day job. But I want to retire an move to Japan in 10 years. I would like to have a hobby with supplemental income. The Japanese are hardcore about PAFs and less completion over there. Parts would be easy for me to obtain and reasonable to ship. Yes, there are a lot of winders out there. I think many try to take on the world, but end up with a menu of items, but no signature items. I’ve studied a lot about what makes certain pickups what they are.
How many winders advertise veintage spec handwound PAFs? Alot! Well, the reality is that original PAFs were not hand wound. They were machine wound and had an automatic traverse mechanism with lobed cams set to specific amount of winds per layer. The coils had inconsistent numbers of winds due to the lack of auto stops resulting in 2 resonant peaks giving them a unique sound. Additionally, over time when you have magnet mounted 6 inches from 1 another with a N to N or S to S configuration they will degauss over time. Sitting close to a guitar cabinet for decades can have the same affect. The key is to have access to some of the better sounding PAF and measuring the magnet strength and doing your best to get the recipe right l. But, there is no pickup that is the all encompassing “PAF” sound, because PAF specs were all over the place. You end up with replicas that simply sound like a specific PAF. I am very OCD when it comes to getting magnets just right. Most people would be surprised how different you can make a pickup sound playing with its gauss strength. But there’s a technique there as well. During the process you can weaken it too much or even pretty easily reverse the polarity. Anyone would builds what they call a PAF clone and puts in a fully charged ALNICO 5 magnet is building what one may have sounded like 60+ years ago, which in reality will sound boring like a PAF as we k is it today. So, I guess my point is that I am not going to approach it as an winder/assembler, but take into consideration the technical aspects of why a 60 year old pickup sounds the way it does. And I have some very specific pickups that I am trying to replicate. 1 is a standard PAF and the other is the Greco Dry Z which was only made for 2 years in the early 80s and fetch tons of money.
