Potting question

[Possum]

Shellac has a real downside, I used it for years too until I ran into the bad things it can do. First of all, shellac has alcohol in it which has a real high dielectric rating, so it warms your coils up really nicely. There is some water in it which does the same thing. But eventually the alcohol evaporates and you end up with a much brighter sounding pickup. I know one of the known winders uses something similar to shellac and customers have told me the pickups "changed" over time and became unbearably bright. Shellac also doesn't always evaporate, I was doing prototype tests a long time ago and shellac potted it. It was real dark sounding and couldn't figure it out until I cut the coil off and found a sticky mess inside the coil even after a month of drying out. I wound a coil and tried baking it for a couple hours in a toaster oven and even that didn't dry it out. If I remember right shellac and poly wire don't work well together and it doesn't want to evaporate. You also need to make sure you are using very fresh shellac because as the can or bottle ages it attracts water which makes it even harder for it to evaporate, I think maybe the dark pickup was old shellac. Anyway, I gave up on it. Every now and then I find some newbie online saying he has a "secret" potting formula that makes pickups sound "vintage." Its shellac and the effect doesn't last. Lacquer potting like you find in very early Gibson and some later Fender single coils, doesn't penetrate very well, only goes in a few layers, and I think over a length of time might kill the coil, at least it may have on vintage insulation recipes, and Fender didn't pot with it very long that I've seen. If you shellac pot use real fresh stuff and don't let it soak long....

[David Schwab]

I have got yet to figure out whats wrong with wax potting
What is the advantages of using shellac

I avoided wax for a while, but I'm now convinced it's the best thing to use.

[copperheadroads]

I have used shellac for guitar building
& the stuff you buy already mixed has a shelf life of not very long ,Which you will need to test to see if it will go hard .
after a while it wont cure or dry