tele bass single coil specs

[johnnydr]

Hey guys, I did a search but wasn't able to find anything. I got a buddy's old tele bass with the single coil pickup, which is dead. Can anybody tell me how many turns of what wire? The pickup has grey flatwork and is dated '68 on the bottom. Looks like it was potted with lacquer, but I think it was the dryer hose that broke in the closet where the bass was that killed it. Lots of rust, the pickguard warped and busted into about 10 pieces. Lots of work to do. I used to check out the forum alot, but its been a long time since I've been back.

Thanks, Johnny

[David King]

This is only a wild guess but somewhere between 9000 and 10,000 turns. There isn't room on these bobbins for much more than that. I see one maker indicating that their "vintage" style tele bass pickup is 6.8K ohms. That sounds about right to me. You can weight the wire on the bobbin and make an educated guess from that.

[Jim Darr]

A lot of people think the Tele Bass single coil bobbin is essentially a Strat bobbin punched with only four holes. It's not. It is dimensionaly different than its six string cousin, but proportionally looks the same. The bass flatwork top is about the same as a Tele bridge (6 string) flatwork top. However, the inner length of the bass coil is close to the inner length of a strat coil.

Early versions used 42 gauge plain enamel with about 8500 to just under 9,000 turns hand scattered. The circa 1968 reissue used a grey bobbin with a white string wrap and, as I recall, was machine wound.

Here is a picture of the 68 reissue pickup (Note the original pickup was moved to become the bridge position pickup).



As you can see, this pickup has room for a lot more winds.

Also, notice that the E & G string magnets are flush with the top of the flatwork, while the A & D are slightly raised with the A even higher than the D. Why? To correct individual string volume due to the 7.5" fretboard radius used at the time and general nuances in individual string volume.

Hope this helps as you restore your friends bass.

[johnnydr]

thanks so much for the help. if I have time and can figure out how, I"ll post a few pics.