Advice on rewinding cheap pickups...

[tuccisbabe]

Hi guys... I've been lurking about a bit for a while and now have myself just about set to do some winding. I'm going to start off by rewinding some pickups I've pulled from various guiars. You know... the ones sitting in the box collecting dust. I figured it would be good practice.

My question here - in your experience, is it really worth rewinding cheaper pickups? Or is it a "purse from a pig's ear" kind of situation?

I have a couple pair of newer Epiphone alnico humbuckers, a pair from a 1994 Ibanez Artstar (Samick Korean "Super 50" I think... not the good ones), some of those Squier staggered alnico strat pickups, and a few more odds and ends.

Has anybody rewound one of those Epiphone humbuckers and managed to get something decent out of it?

Any insight you guys have here would be appreciated. Thanks!

[David Schwab]

I've rewound a few cheap Fender/Squier humbuckers, the ones with 12 studs, and they sounded much better after I rewound it. The probable reason they sounded better was because I wound them differently than they were.

It could be because of the machine wound pattern they came with. Machine winding isn't a bad thing, but some cheap machine wound pickups sound like crap, and sound better after you rewind them, so that may be part of the picture.

Also the metal parts aren't the best, and the magnets are often junk. But you can make an improvement, even a small one.

[Mike Sulzer]

Advice on rewinding cheap pickups...

Don't.

[Possum]

...

For a learning experience it would be good but the parts are all kinda junk. And really to improve them you'd need to machine wind them with PE and dump the poly wire they have, might get something better out of them that way....

[tuccisbabe]

PE... that's plain enamel, right? For now, I just have a spool of 42 single build solderable wire from BAE. Their typical eBay deal. Anybody else using this?

I definitely planned on using some of these cheap pickups to practice on, but I probably won't spend too much time and energy on rewinding all of them. I can tell that some of them are made of much cheaper parts... slugs that you can almost chip the chrome off with your fingernail, etc. I'll put my effort into the ones that look like they have better construction.

My winding will all be done by hand, of course, and figured that scatter winding would be an improvement over the machine job.

We'll see how it goes. I'll probably buy some flatwork and parts from Stew Mac and see what I can do from there. Any other recommendations for parts would certainly be welcome.

In the meantime, I'll just keep reading the older threads here. Thanks to everyone for the knowledge and insight you've shared here!

[Possum]

...

Handwinding humbuckers really isn't a good way to go, some who are very practiced at it with years of experience can work with them, but pretty all historic Gibson pickups everyone tries for were machine wound, hand winding will make them sound overly less articulate....

[David Schwab]

hand winding will make them sound overly less articulate....

It can be done... just take your time and wind neatly. I'd prefer to machine wind, but all my humbuckers are hand wound and they sound nice and articulate.

[Norcal_GIT_r]

Handwinding humbuckers really isn't a good way to go, some who are very practiced at it with years of experience can work with them, but pretty all historic Gibson pickups everyone tries for were machine wound, hand winding will make them sound overly less articulate....

This is only one persons opinion. And thats all it is.
There's many many great handwound humbuckers made everyday of the year.
Do your research and experiment on your own and come to your own conclusions. Some of the responses you get here are not always the best advise. Use your brain and your own experiences to decide what the best way for you to make pickups. As in music everyone has their own style. Some people have a nice style some do not. Some struggle just get a note out while others have notes flow like butter. This is the same for pickup makers. Some have a natural knack for making great sounding pups and some struggle for many years just find a consistent method get thier pickups made let alone make nice sounding consistent pickups.

[David Schwab]

It's also what you are aiming for. I could care less if a guitar pickup I made sounds like a 50's PAF or whatever. That's not the only tone there is. As long as its musical sounding, and gets the tones I like, that's all that matters.

You can improve upon a cheap pickup by rewinding it. Even with SPN wire and hand wound on a Schatten winder. Not everyone will get the same results, but as you said, everyone has a different skill level and talent.

Rewinding a cheap pickup can be a very valuable learning tool. You might end up with an ugly sounding pickup, but then you try a different design. Something will work with those parts. Might not be what you had in mind, but could be a cool accident. And you can learn from that too. I made a horrendous sounding Strat dual rail pickup the other day. It was truly awful. Loud and boomy and ugly. I changed the magnet and it was like night and day. It's still wound too hot, but now I'm on the right path.

And Dave, you make great sounding pickups, so your ideas work too. But it's also that talent thing. Sometimes that transcends the tools used.

[automan]

I'm with David. The worst thing that would happen is you would get experience winding with minimum investment. I made a tele pickup not too long ago putting on my normal amount of wraps, then I added another coil on top of that one to be able to add 2000 winds with a switch. It didnt sound very good, but if I grounded both side of the outer coil, it made the pickup much quieter due to the outer coil shielding the inner coil. That's not something I was looking for, but it's another tool in the arsenal.

[Mike Sulzer]

Advice on rewinding cheap pickups...

Why not?

1.) Suppose it is a humbucker with a brass base plate (or a brass cover if you use one). The bad sound of this pickup is dominated by the eddy currents in the brass. Sure you can wind a different amount of wire on the bobbins and get a different resonant frequency and make it sound somewhat different, but the sound is still going to be dominated by the frequency-dependent losses in the brass. And you will not be able to hear any subtle effects so easily.

2.) Suppose it is one of those cheap single coils with steel polepieces and a ceramic magnet. There is nothing wrong with steel pole pieces in the right application, but the eddy current losses in those pole pieces are different than what you get with alnico magnets. Winding a different coil on the bobbin is not going to make it sound more like a good single coil is expected to.

If you have time to burn, spend it on learning about the engineering. You have to wind a lot of different pickups to learn everything by experiment since changing one thing usually has multiple effects. Sound is the ultimate goal, but it helps to be guided by an understanding of how things work.

[restorationad]

I started that way... (rewinding junk) and they sounded better but still not good. Then I found out the parts are not that expensive and what you get when you buy good parts is light years ahead of rewinding junk.

The best part about rewinding junk is that it doesn't bother you as much to cut the wire off and start over.

Better parts make better pickups...

[David Schwab]

[B]1.) Suppose it is a humbucker with a brass base plate (or a brass cover if you use one). The bad sound of this pickup is dominated by the eddy currents in the brass.

Like this?

[tuccisbabe]

So, maybe taking the brass baseplate off of the Epi humbuckers and swapping it for a Stew Mac nickel silver plate would be a step in the right... well, let's just say... a better direction?

Thanks for the input so far. I'm with you, David... I'm not looking for a particular sound. Certainly not trying to reproduce something vintage. I'd just like to make something good. I love snagging cheap guitars at the pawn shop and, of course, the first thing that needs to be dealt with are the pickups or cutting a half decent nut. I just got a Korean made Hamer LP special kind of thing for $60. Set neck... mahogany with a flamed top... with a Gotoh bridge I added it is surprisingly resonant. I think I get some good pickups in there and it will be a real player. And I really don't care that it's a Korean Hamer!

I did a similar job on a Cort strat copy with soft V maple neck. I was shocked how good it felt. I added some used GFS pickups and a solid trem block... and voila. It is pretty good. For sure, though, I took the Cort logo off of the headstock. I have my pride.

[Dave Kerr]

Advice on rewinding cheap pickups...

2.) Suppose it is one of those cheap single coils with steel polepieces and a ceramic magnet.

Steve Kersting's S90 is a nice sounding pickup on-the-cheap.