Best Fender Factory-Made Stratocaster Pickups?

[Possum]

....

We own a 1987 Chevy van, does that mean we bought it in 1987? No, we didn't. Why is there a belt on that thing when Leo spent so much time and money only to end up using rubber bands, there's no rubber bands on that, all his girls had them on their winders. I think you guys are reading the wrong page about rubber bands, its in the book in more than one place. Yes my book say 1960 and I'm willing to accept that. The rest is just conjecture. He bought it, tried it, probably hated it? Used it in '60, what? Need more info... Yes, all the machine wound ones ended up in the trash :-) I'm sure you can call that shop, tell them you want to steal their secrets, I mean need historical information, ask when it was purchased, are there any records of what it was used for, how much it was used for, when it was first put into service, what TPL does it wind, etc. I for one would be fascinated what they say, but just some kid works there doesn't mean he has infallible information either. Shit, I had EMG as a client for 14years and never saw a pickup winder in that place, but wasn't interested either. Abagail was there, though there seems to be disagreement about when she was hired. Write her a letter, doesn't she work at Seymour's? If you really want to find something out eventually you will.

[JGundry]

We own a 1987 Chevy van, does that mean we bought it in 1987? No, we didn't. Why is there a belt on that thing when Leo spent so much time and money only to end up using rubber bands, there's no rubber bands on that, all his girls had them on their winders. I think you guys are reading the wrong page about rubber bands, its in the book in more than one place. Yes my book say 1960 and I'm willing to accept that. The rest is just conjecture. He bought it, tried it, probably hated it? Used it in '60, what? Need more info... Yes, all the machine wound ones ended up in the trash :-) I'm sure you can call that shop, tell them you want to steal their secrets, I mean need historical information, ask when it was purchased, are there any records of what it was used for, how much it was used for, when it was first put into service, what TPL does it wind, etc. I for one would be fascinated what they say, but just some kid works there doesn't mean he has infallible information either. Shit, I had EMG as a client for 14years and never saw a pickup winder in that place, but wasn't interested either. Abagail was there, though there seems to be disagreement about when she was hired. Write her a letter, doesn't she work at Seymour's? If you really want to find something out eventually you will.

This is what my research has dug up so far.

Sam Lee Guy told me the oldest machine wound Strat pickup he has seen is 1962.

You yourself said it is documented that Fender machine wound in 1960.

Tim Shaw told me what he knew about old Fender winders.

Was it left of Coweco has fairly complete sales records and they are searching a Fender order slip. The problem is the orders are hand written and tedious to search through one by one. But I gave them the ser.# for the two Cowecos I have and they produced copies of original hand written orders for both machines I have. So I may call Fender and see if they will give me the number off that machine.

The last most important detail is my 1959 Coweco CS mackes great sounding Strat and Tele pickups!

At this point I think it is safe to say that Leo was fine with machine winding pickups when he owned Fender. Even if you read his previous quote he says a machine cannot do better than hand winding. He does not say that machine winding cannot produce a pickup of equal quality. That was obviously his attitude when he owned Fender and started machine winding.

[greenfingers]

I have no problem with the consensus that Fender has this winder in 56 and wound with it, what i have a problem with is that it was acquired and used in a automated manner, Abigail Ybarra started working at fender in 56 and winding in 58, plumb in the middle of 56 and 60 the lost years Jon wants to know more about, so if that winder was used in that fashion she would probly have been one of a few to use it at some point, and at this moment i cant recall her saying she wound coils with automated traverse as part of the wind.

Since were still in the realms of speculation i might as well add that maybe Fender didn't get the Coweco for its auto traverse but instead for its more accurate counter assembly, a area they had problems with on their other winders.

Abigail has carted that winder around trade shows for years for everyone to see, if she was keeping a secret just so she could hand wind coils and get recognition for it why would you use the Coweco over a less incriminating winder, Why?..well maybe its because thats the way she has always done it on that winder,..but who knows.

[JGundry]

Two points.

1.) Fender could have bought machines without an auto traverse but with good auto stop counters and saved big bucks. I have a Geo Stevens winder from the 50's with a foot pedal that is perfect for hand winding. This Coweco is automated and still has the wire guide on it which Abigail uses to prop up a white card.

2.) Abigail's claim to fame is hand winding. She probably did see this machine in use for automated winding. But she is marketing her hand winding skills when she uses this. Not the virtues of a Coweco automated winder.

Abigail probably likes this for hand winding because it is small, very quiet and has a smooth operation and has a built in Variac.

[Possum]

...

Wow, we're really stretching it here now Abagail is a personal witness to auto machine winding in Area 51 next to the men's room out in the little shack in the back at Fender in 1956. OK. She would rather justify her job than ever mention that she saw that UFW (unidentified flying winder) next to the men's urinals. Leo was a secret closet machine winder lover and wound alone in his closet at home in women's underwear, while claiming publicly he loved hand jobs. OK. I only quoted A. R. Duchossoir, but I am positive he talked to Fender when he did his book as it is full of official Fender control drawings you just can't get at the library. They told him 1960, thats all I know. He has got some things wrong now and then. Odds are they won't find that sales receipt because Leo found it in a dumpster or bought it off a junk dealer for five bucks in 1985. So, now since I have a couple Maxwell Adams winders from the early 60's it proves that I am actually older than I claim to be and have always hand wound and made a fake machine traverse to fool people because I am ashamed of using my hands. OK. Since you have several ancient winders it proves you are several hundred years old and actually smuggle guns to Cuba while posing as a photographer with a winder fetish. OK. So, how about sticking to hard proveable facts or this is going to turn into a good science fiction movie script, and I forgot to buy pop corn. Sorry but this is getting to be funny....

[JGundry]

Dave you apparently don't want to see the facts concerning this. The fact is Leo was machine winding when he owned the company. The date of 1956 is from Fender. We don't know the date of the machine for sure yet but it can be checked. Fender could be wrong with the date they gave the guy doing the video or they guy doing the video could have made up the date. Or the date of 1956 could be correct.

Tell me what is missing from the above statement? The stretch is to think that this info was fabricated either accidentally or on purpose. Of course confirmation is needed but that path is already laid out.

[David Schwab]

Rubber bands

Just for those that are wondering.. the book says:

We also had to design and build machines we couldn't buy, such as belt sanders in the woodshop or coil winders in final assembly.

One of the most delicate tools needed was a coil winding mechanism for winding pickups. This had to be built in a specific way in order to properly wind the pickup coils, and required a fair amount of ingenuity in its design.

Leo and I always preferred hand-wound pickups for the instruments we built, because we felt machine wound pickup coils did not produce as good a sound. Machine-wound coils had each turn of the wire wrapped evenly and tight against each other, which made the coils almost a solid mass of copper.

The coils that were wound on a hand-controlled winder were quite uneven. The crisscrossing of different tuns left many small open spaces between each turn, which allowed the magnetic field to saturate the coil more fully.

By winding the coil unevenly, we changed the capacitance, which helped the stored electrical charge to operate more efficiently. It just naturally seemed like a better way to wind pickups coils. There was just one question. How would this be possible on a large scale?

Designing and building a winding mechanism required much trail and error. We tried direct drive, belt drive, gear drive and several other ways, but none seemed to work right. These methods did not have the proper tensioning means of winding the coil. However we eventually came up with a rather ingenious device.

In Winding an oblong-shaped part, such as a pickup coil, the fine copper wire was naturally wound tight over the ends, but the tension dropped, leaving the copper wire loose on the sides as the form completed a turn.

The way we learned to manage this problem was to drive the winder with a sewing machine motor and foot pedal control. We used a small pulley on the motor shaft and another small pulley on the mandrel that held the coil form.

Simple as it may seem, we used rubber bands to turn these pulleys. The stretching of the rubber bands pulled the copper wire tight over the ends of the form as it was turned. Their reciprocal action kept the tension the same on the sides as on the end.

The problem was the ends of the bobbin were tight, and the middle was loose.

I have this problem also if I wind too fast, so I will have to try some rubber bands.

From reading a little of this book on Google, it doesn't say that Fender didn't machine wind, it only says that at G&L they wanted to do things differently from the past, and what Leo felt was a better way.

So it seems from this that Fender did machine wind, and Leo wanted G&L to do it differently. It also seems they wanted to build a winder and not buy one, and I assume at Fender they didn't use shop made winders? How would they have kept up with production?

There are a few other things that are questionable in the section I posted here, but I guess this is how George Fullerton remembered it.

That's my take on the passage from the book.

[JGundry]

Thanks for posting that David.

One other thing to remember is that G&L was very small in scale compared to Fender. From a purely marketing standpoint it made sense for G&L to play up the hand crafted details like pickups that Fender as a much larger manufacturer could no longer do.

Another thing to factor into it. I'm not sure when Leo decided he would look for a buyer for Fender. But anyone looking for a buyer would first streamline production to make it as efficient as possible to reduce the overall product cost in materials and manpower. Plus they would want to make sure that the production numbers looked attractive to a potential buyer. Switching to Machine winding BEFORE finding a buyer would make complete sense from this standpoint.

[David Schwab]

Yeah, and Leo was obviously very unhappy with the way CBS did things, so much so that he moved his office off site. I'm sure one of the things CBS would have been doing is using automated coil winders if Leo hadn't done it first. But Fender was selling a lot of guitars by then.

I have no opinion either way. It's not anything I've studied up on. But I would think the early pickups might have been hand wound, and it would seem reasonable that they would have to go to a more high production method as sales increased.

[Possum]

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David the text you quoted he was talking about what they did at Fender with the rubber band thing, NOT at G&L. The book has an extensive section on their history at Fender, its not really a book only about G&L, thats why its such a valuable book and worth getting because he recounts his entire story from the beginning of his relationship with Leo from Fender until his death after retirement.

Jon you can speculate all day long, I can make up alot of good stories too. Maybe they bought that winder in the 90's when they were promoting Abagail. Most who have dissected real vintage Fender pickups say they see no machine winding before '62. Now that is a hard fact, not speculation. Yes, please find some confirmation thats jibes with actual facts and keep your feet on the ground. If it WAS used it was used in '62 until '65 when CBS took over and had a very expensive sophisticated mass pickup winder built shown in that photo from '66. Thats a real short stretch of time. I have a '64 strat pickup but I'm not going to unwind it to find out. I was also told by someone that hand wound pickups are also found in '62-'65 so whatever machine was there wasn't the only source of pickup winding then. So, without wild speculation if that IS the early Fender winder it was only used for 3 years. IF that is true you can't really lay claim to a Coweco winder as being the only way they wound in those 3 years since the handwinders were still doing their thing.

[Bill M]

Are we still beating this subject to death.... We can speculate all we want. There is still no firm evidence to show that fender made machine wound pickups prior to 1963. Until someone comes across one of these rare pickups, it is just speculation. Jon I have no problems with proper machine wound pickups, all of my cbs era pickups are machine wound on an old Boesch tail stock winder from the 50's and they sound exceptional.

[JGundry]

There is firm evidence for 1962.

Where did you get the information about a Bosch tailstock winder? Do you have a photo?

Thanks.

[Bill M]

What is this evidence? The Boesch winder is my winder, and I use this winder to do my CBS era strat and tele pickups. I'm not stating that fender used one.

Leo was clearly machine winding by 1964 and if they were done on coweco's then they must have had at least a few of them. There could be a very good chance they were wound on that six at a time winder that possum mentioned. Who knows.

[Sam Lee Guy]

Machine winding started somewhere between mid 62 and mid 63. I don't care what the books say, if you ever rewound a pickup from this era you can clearly see this transaction. .

Here evidence! Some guy with name Bill M say machine winding started between mid 62 and mid 63.
Sam unwound hundreds of plee CBS pickup. Many black bottom have pencil dates, Signature from Mel, AY, etc...etc... and number of assembler.
Sam found some definite machine wound mid 62 coils. Sometimes sloppy old machine wind and handwind velly easy to confuse. Sometime bad bobbin assembly make machine wind look velly uneven.

For Sam to believe 56 Fender winder, want to see old dated photo of winder or sales info of winder to Fender or hypnotic reglession of Mrs. Ybarra.

[Possum]

...

I still don't buy this idea that some vintage winder is going to impart anything special to a coil wind. The last PAF I unwound down to the core was very precisely wound, I tried mixing up that TPL on my machine to see what would happen and an unplesant midtone thing started happening. Those vintage pickups' tone was more due to the magnets of the period and the magnet wire especially. I got my lab results from Elektrisola on friday of about 12 vintage wire samples I sent them, those guys are sooooo nice, and it confirmed some things for me and surprised with with other details. No one makes exactly what was made back then at all. I also sent modern samples from all the maker's stuff I've used some that doesn't exist anymore, like Essex PE, AWC, and older REA stuff, and none of it matches. I wind everything I make with my auto winder but with strat stuff and tele I don't use a straight static single turns per layer number, it just doesn't sound that great to me. Alot of those tones has to do with tension too, and proper potting methods which most everyone gets wrong. Again one of those books I mentioned talks about that.
Just YOU, Jon, here's a crappy scan of that '66 winder, so now go find one :-)