The hell with soldering

[Alabam]

Read a few threads on here lately about soldering problems, mostly from posters who are just into pickup making.
I came up with this idea a while back when i started making pickups, maybe this would help somebody out, it requires no soldering at the pickup.
I bought a few packets of compression springs 5/32" dia. and 1/4"dia, length 3", cut them up into short pieces and inserted two into the baseplate of the pickup and four into a humbucker test pickup, reinforcing them with a little superglue.
I then pulled the springs back slightly and slipped in the start and end magnet wires.
I pressed lightly down on each spring (to get through the insulation) until i got a reading from my meter.
All was left was to hook up the switch control wires the same way to the springs underneath the baseplate.

[John_H]

Here's my Epi Les Paul that I use for a test/demo guitar. I can substitute pickups without soldering, but I wanted to do the same for capacitors. Compression springs should work great. Thanks for the cool idea!

[David Schwab]

I have a bass with alligator clips like that. I also always have a set of alligator clips connected to a 1/4" jack handy.

[Alabam]

I forgot to add this drawing to my earlier post.

[David Schwab]

So what happens in a few years when the spring and the end of the magnet wire start to oxidize?

[Alabam]

So what happens in a few years when the spring and the end of the magnet wire start to oxidize?

Never got to that stage, what do you think would do the job?

[Alabam]

Here's my Epi Les Paul that I use for a test/demo guitar. I can substitute pickups without soldering, but I wanted to do the same for capacitors. Compression springs should work great. Thanks for the cool idea!

Nice setup, i haven`t seen the controls cavity on a Les Paul up to now, not much room in there.
Hope that idea of mine works for you.

[David Schwab]

Never got to that stage, what do you think would do the job?

Soldering.

It's a cool idea for the wires outside the pickup though.

[Bruce Johnson]

I built a bench "mule" for doing R & D work on pickups. It's essentially a crude neck mounted on a wood base resembling the body, with strings, bridge, etc., matching the geometry of my production basses. It's designed so I can quickly swap pickups in and out. Built on to it is a box with my normal pots and passive wiring harness. I used standard electronics lab type binding posts on the box for the hookups. Binding posts will clamp on the 22 ga leads, or directly on the magnet wire if needed. I also brought the tone caps out to binding posts, so they can be quickly swapped during testing.

[David Schwab]

At some point I have to make a pickup testing platform.

I'm currently using this bass, but it's going to get renovated and put back in service soon, so I need a bench mule.

[Alabam]

Soldering.

It's a cool idea for the wires outside the pickup though.

A kick up the butt and a pat on the back, nice one David, ROFL.
Regarding those tiny round coils we talked about a short while ago and the pic you supplied.
I noticed they were all wound separately and i wondered if you wound these yourself.
I wind them in series on the winding rod, three or four bobbins at a time which leaves me with just the start and end wires, have you ever tried this method?
The plastic bobbins I ground down to the right diameter so they fit right into Strat covers.
I got into this circular type of winding because i it seemed to me you got a closer contact to the magnet source than the standard rectangular wind, also it was a faster and smoother operation, and no need for all these gadgets i read about on the "Tools and Coil winding gear" forum.
Cheers.
Sam.

[Alabam]

Soldering.

It's a cool idea for the wires outside the pickup though.

How did that thumbs down icon get there, must have clinked on it by mistake, sorry about that.

[David Schwab]

How did that thumbs down icon get there, must have clinked on it by mistake, sorry about that.

[Clint Searcy]

Here was my original Neo Jazz solderless connection system. It works well but it was a pain for me to do and most folks seem to be able to solder in a pickup or pay the guy at Guitar Center to do it so I dropped it on later models.

[David Schwab]

I was using those same connectors on the preamps I used to use with my low z pickups. The one problem was it was for heavier gage wire. They do make smaller ones, but I was getting them at Radio Shack at the time.

If you want to talk about a REAL pain... make some of those multi pin connectors like on the bottom of EMG pickups!