anybody else have trouble with stewmac covers?

[corduroyew]

I’ve got a customer with stewmac covers that don’t fit the pickups I made him. This particular set of pickups was made with my last set of stewmac bobbins so you would think they would fit, but they don’t. The customer tells me that the cover is too narrow to fit over the bobbin and the cover is much longer than the bobbin.

Have any of you ever gotten a set of covers that was too small for the bobbins they were designed for?

What could have caused something like this to happen?

What can I do in a situation like this? Is there a company out there that sells pickup covers that are extra large but the polls are still spaced correctly?

Do any of you have any ideas about how we could make the covers work?

[Possum]

stewmac covers suck....

if you're talking about strat covers, yes they are probably the smallest ones on earth. Why are you selling pickups without covers, thats mistake number one. Their bobbins don't fit their covers you're right. Tell him to go to Guitar Center and get some Fender covers. I used to file down the bobbin tops so they would fit in the covers but then you can't wind much wire on them either.

[corduroyew]

I couldn't find the covers I needed locally. Allparts and WD music didn't have any in stock so I was stuck ordering from the USA. That meant, paying for shipping and taxes just so I could ship them back again. The customer didn't want to wait and I didn't want to pay the extra money so we took a risk and had stewmac drop ship the pickup covers. Thats what we get eh?

[Possum]

yeah....

I don't know why they sell that shit, it doesn't fit anything real. I wrecked more pickups trying to cram those things on, at one point I was even taping the coils to protect them, it works. Like I said, find some guitar store that sells Fender parts and get covers at retail for short term solution....

[Zhangliqun]

I never bothered with Stewmac Strat covers because that "cream" color is so bad. But I did have a couple of them at first and I don't recall having problems getting them on a Strat bobbin.

[Possum]

.......

In the beginning I made all my own strat flatwork and I made them to fit the StewMac covers. The SM covers will fit an actual vintage 70s strat pickup, I don't know about earlier than that. The problem is though if you are winding any strat pickups in the 7K range the SM covers will cut your cois because they are too tight. I suspect that old vintage covers from the 50s were probably bigger, some of those pre-CBS coils were wound really full....but don't know for sure. I like the mint color SM has but thats about all. AllParts covers are a little bigger but have the same fit problem for hotter coils....

[corduroyew]

That explains a lot. This was my 1st time ordering any stewmac covers. Before that I always used allparts covers. If only allparts would keep things in stock. At least I now know that I can't get away with drop shipping the covers to the Americans.

[Stan H]

That explains a lot. This was my 1st time ordering any stewmac covers. Before that I always used allparts covers. If only allparts would keep things in stock. At least I now know that I can't get away with drop shipping the covers to the Americans.

That's the key: "if only AllParts would keep things in stock". AllParts and GJ...

Stan