New Mojotone Butyrate humbucker bobbins. How accurate are they ?

[big_teee]

Its real and can be measured and recorded on audio. Measure on an LCR meter then if you have the Syncomp analyzer look at the resonant peak, you'll see it there probably. I never bothered to measure it with instruments because its right in my face probably more than just what swapping a magnet can do. As I told before, my big "AHAAAAH!" moment with it was a pickup prototype years ago I knew should have sounded great but when I plugged it in, it was just tooooo dark, so put my guitar away for a week or so, totally disgusted and confused. Just sitting there unplayed it changed into something really nice, so I know that new parts somehow have to get soaked in the magnetic field over a bit of time; but its way more than just that too, especially with what I'm doing, so the process is really evident, wish it weren't so because it means testing alot of different things takes five times longer to get accurate judgements. Its impossible to really nail WHAT exactly is happening, just enough to know I have to deal with it and grit my teeth...

Now I think about it, maybe magnetizing the whole pickup at once like Gibson used to do might make the process go faster, but when you magnetize the pickup as a unit, especially with modern magnets, you get real high gauss, and not sure there's an accurate way to knock it back down controllably...

Respectfully, Sounds like Smoke and Mirrors to me!
B_T

[RedHouse]

...all I gotta say is you definitely aren't doing anything remotely like I am ;-) and actually that makes me smile quite broadly, he he... LOVE those StewMac kit buckers, LOL ;-)

...I had to do this out of necessity because I'd get an email from several early customers telling me they had just put the pickups in their guitar and they sucked horribly on first playing. One guy even removed them immediately and wrote me a real nasty email telling me how much "better" his Duncans were than mine, and put them away in a box for weeks. ...

You are so right Possum, I'm not doing anything remotely like you do.

I've never yet (to this day) had a single customer respond in that manner with my pickups, buckers, singles, or my Rick replacements. But then I don't cater to the LPF and MLPF folks having learned my lesson way back when Tim White was the big deal of the day winding the pickup-de-jour.

Although I don't use Stew-Mac parts kits, I'd disagree and point out many folks make quite decent pickups from their (and Allparts) pickup parts, kind'a silly to keep ragging-on about it as if everyone besides you uses Stew-Mac parts.

In fact the worst response I've had from a customer (so far) was when a customer was looking for a certain tone/response which he described well to me, and when he got the set and tried them out he said they are great but would have liked just a hair more treble. When I asked him if I could make him another set and swap him for the ones he just bought ... he said no, he' quite happy with the them, he's happy, I'm happy, we're done.

Those forums (LPF and MLPF) can be considerably flakey when it comes to tone reports, I learned a lesson back when everyone was making such a big deal about Tim White's (Timbuckers) for several years there was so much raving about his stuff. A friend of mine bough a set to try 'em out, that's when he (and I) realized things were not as they appeared on those forums. The pickups he received were absolutely not the ultimate PAFs the forum-churn had them cracked-up to be (advertised as replica's of forum member EdA's real PAFs) in fact, they were a 1-trick pony and he sold them on eBay by the end of the month (has a set of mine in his guitar ever since).

After that I completely stopped taking the tone raving reports on those two forums seriously.

I don't know if the thread you linked to is the one I was looking at several months ago (and don't want to spend any time looking) but I do recall the whole thing made me laugh out loud. What a way to get unhappy customers to give your pickups a second chance convincing them, or them convincing each other, that your pickups will "break in" like a speaker does, good on ya for thinking of that sales technique!, get the customer to let them grow on them over time, get the customer to find their own virtue in them rather than a critical audition decision, brilliant!

[JGundry]

Right on JON!

I think Gibson was using something different for their bobbins pre-PAF, as I have had quite a few 50's P90's in here for years that the bobbins were literally crumbling to dust. Maybe they were more nitrate based in the early years, I know my Charlie Christian bobbins are, but I don't see deterioration on the CC pickup at all.

Before making my P-90 bobbin mold I tested several soap bar P-90 bobbins. The plastic for the bobbins that had self destructed was general purpose styrene. I got a sample of general purpose styrene and ran it through my P-90 mold and it is super brittle stuff. You can wind a pickup with it but just a little bit of stress will snap the bobbin flange even before it is wound. I think internal tension and a little deterioration from age did some of these in. The more durable 50's P-90 bobbins I tested were styrene with a little rubber modifier which is what I had my P-90 bobbins made of.

[Possum]

Yeah its smoke and mirrors, total magic ;-) and I love doing them that way. There were only a few of my customers who posted on that thread, ALL my PAF repro customers experience the same thing, it has nothing to do with forums, a few of them just happened to be on the MLP and made their own observations. Real PAF's exhibit the same thing, I don't play mine much and when I don't play them for months and months they become a little choked up and dark for a few days, they'd been sitting for over a year last time I gave them a try.. Its easy to pass judgement on something you've never experienced and many on that thread did that, because they NEVER PLAYED my pickups before, so opinions based on no actual knowledge of what I make counts for zero. Anyway, I don't care, you either are familiar with it or not. As for those Timbuckers, I got sucked into buying one to see what all the bull was about, they are a total stock Allparts kit bucker except he had a machinist make keepers for him, it had nothing to do with PAF's and wasn't even as good as the hand wound buckers using the same parts as he was that I was making at the time. I'll sell it to you for $250 if you want to visit tone nirvana ;-)

[Possum]

Styrene makes sense, those bobbins are real touchy to rewind but it can be done, the ones I've had massive deterioriation, I wonder if maybe nitro in the cavity over time had something to do with that, I don't think there was any outgassing as the metal parts weren't affected that I could tell, but even that could be wrong as most of them had rust as well. The zinc plating on the baseplates are always highly oxidized too, so something was going on that may have deteriorated the plastic. I would have made them out of straight styrene personally, its funny the bobbins I hear the most complaints about are actually the most accurate, but again few actually are looking at the design. The Epiphone bobbins most buy are totally inaccurate for vintage repro but they sound good....

[copperheadroads]

Right on JON!

I think Gibson was using something different for their bobbins pre-PAF, as I have had quite a few 50's P90's in here for years that the bobbins were literally crumbling to dust. Maybe they were more nitrate based in the early years, I know my Charlie Christian bobbins are, but I don't see deterioration on the CC pickup at all.

I rewound a couple of P-90's from 50's a 1959 & a 1957 in the last few months & i was sweating bullets .
The bobbins had hairline cracks/cracks ,pole screw holes striped out .thank god for superglue

[Possum]

Yeah superglue! Some of the real damaged ones I glued on thin material over where parts were falling off to support them when I glued the pieces back, it worked but is tricky and is pretty ugly to look at ;-)

[David Schwab]

Dave and Redhouse. Go to the MLP and read what every one of my customers says about the break-in process my pickups go through. Every customer of mine experiences it (with my buckers only), and I deal with it on a weekly basis when doing prototypes.
Stephens Design VL 2 break in ? - My Les Paul Forums
You will notice I didn't start the thread, and the question caused a big argument, til my customers chimed in, then I think someone hijacked the thread if I remember, haven't looked there in a long time.

If you've never heard this personally, well all I gotta say is you definitely aren't doing anything remotely like I am ;-) and actually that makes me smile quite broadly, he he... LOVE those StewMac kit buckers, LOL ;-)

First off Dave, I don't make pickups with Stew-Mac kits, but I did disprove your contention that pickups make with them all sound alike. They don't. And that was one kit, would over and over again. Also, I have a bag of the pole screws you use. They don't need breaking in. I used those in the Stew-mac kit you heard in all except the first clip, which was the SM screws. Most of my guitar humbuckers use blades.

If you tell people they will need to break in pickups, then they will believe you. These would be the same people who claim a cap made their guitar less boomy when the tone control was on 10.

[copperheadroads]

Have anyone ever taken Gauss readings from a freshly wound pup ............day to day
They do vary just a little

[JGundry]

Styrene makes sense, those bobbins are real touchy to rewind but it can be done, the ones I've had massive deterioriation, I wonder if maybe nitro in the cavity over time had something to do with that, I don't think there was any outgassing as the metal parts weren't affected that I could tell, but even that could be wrong as most of them had rust as well. The zinc plating on the baseplates are always highly oxidized too, so something was going on that may have deteriorated the plastic. I would have made them out of straight styrene personally, its funny the bobbins I hear the most complaints about are actually the most accurate, but again few actually are looking at the design. The Epiphone bobbins most buy are totally inaccurate for vintage repro but they sound good....

There is more than one styrene mix for P90 bobbins. Styrene with no added rubber modifier will pretty well develop cracks on the bottom of the bobbin where the magnets angle into the flanges immediately. Rubber modifed styrene is about the same but can handle the flex without immediately cracking.

Vintage P90 baseplates are tinned not zinc plated. I had my repro baseplates plated with the same stuff. They have powdery white to grey residue on the from the plater. Just a little handling will tarnish them in a week or two.

[David Schwab]

Those forums (LPF and MLPF) can be considerably flakey when it comes to tone reports, I learned a lesson back when everyone was making such a big deal about Tim White's (Timbuckers) for several years there was so much raving about his stuff. A friend of mine bough a set to try 'em out, that's when he (and I) realized things were not as they appeared on those forums. The pickups he received were absolutely not the ultimate PAFs the forum-churn had them cracked-up to be (advertised as replica's of forum member EdA's real PAFs) in fact, they were a 1-trick pony and he sold them on eBay by the end of the month (has a set of mine in his guitar ever since).

That's nothing. Have you heard Sheptone pickups in person? I had a customer bring his LP with a set to replace with Duncans. They were really bland sounding. No highs, no lows, just life to them.

But you read reviews and they are the best PAFs ever!

The were also made very sloppily. with little pieces of taper holding the wires in and on the ends between the coils.

BTW, I had the owner of MLPF over once to repair his stinger LP. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but I couldn't understand why anyone would have paid $10,000 for that guitar.

The tailpiece stud had lifted out. I knew what I had to do, and he demanded to sit while I worked on it. Imagine the look on his face when I grabbed a block of wood and a hammer and proceeded to whack the stud back in! He jumped right out of his seat.

[Possum]

You know Dave, you haven't understood what I've said at all. I don't like THE DESIGN of StewMac kit buckers, period. It is a tonal design, with an intentional tonal result, it has the same CHARACTER to the tone no matter what kinda sauce you dunk it into, period. Me no like. I like making PAF's because everyone else isn't. They sound better to my ears and they are a completely different design than those kit parts. You know, I analyzed every commercial kit part out there from all the parts sellers, they are all the same except GuitarPartsUSA's slugs were different alloy than the rest. None of them are remotely close to PAF's. Anyone reading this go buy guitarpartsusa.com bobbins, Mojo butyrates, and WSC bobbins. Measure every dimension on them, wind and play them, try to understand why the dimensional changes make the tone change, you'll learn something.

You cant just plop my pole screws in your pickups and suddenly hear what my pickups do, sorry. You also won't get a clue what my work is like from Skatterbrane's work, or anyone's work for that matter. You should dissect a TTop or PAF at some point, all of them used snippets of paper tape to cover the two coil connections and the hot connection to the leads, I used to think that was pretty cheesy too, but actually its far more effective than shrink tubing because shrink tubing is too fat. A paper wrapped connection takes up the minimum space so you can tuck the connection between both coils easily between two really fat coils. I don't even use shrink tubing anymore because its slow and uses up too much space. Paper tape lasts forever same as shrink tubing and alot quicker to use. Gibsons' TTops and PAF's and early Patents if you like real finely machined and perfectly assembled pickups you won't like them at all, everything about them was sloppy, alot of hand work involved, hand filing, slugs with nubs, wire sticking out the tape.....love those tones ;-)

Jon you could be right but I have sitting in front of me a dogear baseplate from the 50's and it has grey plating that looks bluish like zinc does and like Fender's Broadcaster baseplates, and my own zinc plating pretty much matches the look. I buy the tinned ones and they look different than the vintage one, no bluish tone to them.

[David Schwab]

You know Dave, you haven't understood what I've said at all. I don't like THE DESIGN of StewMac kit buckers, period. It is a tonal design, with an intentional tonal result, it has the same CHARACTER to the tone no matter what kinda sauce you dunk it into, period. Me no like. I like making PAF's because everyone else isn't. They sound better to my ears and they are a completely different design than those kit parts. You know, I analyzed every commercial kit part out there from all the parts sellers, they are all the same except GuitarPartsUSA's slugs were different alloy than the rest. None of them are remotely close to PAF's. Anyone reading this go buy guitarpartsusa.com bobbins, Mojo butyrates, and WSC bobbins. Measure every dimension on them, wind and play them, try to understand why the dimensional changes make the tone change, you'll learn something.

I'm not interested in making PAFS.

You cant just plop my pole screws in your pickups and suddenly hear what my pickups do, sorry.

Well I wasn't trying to do what you do, but the pole pieces sound nice. You also can't do what I do.

You also won't get a clue what my work is like from Skatterbrane's work, or anyone's work for that matter. You should dissect a TTop or PAF at some point, all of them used snippets of paper tape to cover the two coil connections and the hot connection to the leads, I used to think that was pretty cheesy too, but actually its far more effective than shrink tubing because shrink tubing is too fat. A paper wrapped connection takes up the minimum space so you can tuck the connection between both coils easily between two really fat coils. I don't even use shrink tubing anymore because its slow and uses up too much space. Paper tape lasts forever same as shrink tubing and alot quicker to use. Gibsons' TTops and PAF's and early Patents if you like real finely machined and perfectly assembled pickups you won't like them at all, everything about them was sloppy, alot of hand work involved, hand filing, slugs with nubs, wire sticking out the tape.....love those tones ;-)

I owned a set of early patent label pickups as well as some T tops and Shaws. I've taken them all apart and put them back together. I still have one bobbin from the patent label siting in a box. Unfortunately, at the time they were just used pickups so I experimented with them. I had one of the patent labels in my Sekovia Les Paul copy along with a 70s P-90.

What I was talking about with the tape was each bobbin was taped. And then there was a small piece of tape over the gap between the bobbins. It looked really dumb. The tape was falling off the wires, and besides all that, the pickups didn't sound good, which is why the guy, who had just bought them, was replacing them.

[RedHouse]

... they are a completely different design than those kit parts... None of them are remotely close to PAF's...

Really not that much different (IMHO) some slight dimensional changes and different metal, but not a completely different design. Really more a case a different implementation of the same design.

Possum, with all due respect, your posts both here and elsewhere sound as if you believe you're making actual PAFs and not repro's.

[RedHouse]

Have anyone ever taken Gauss readings from a freshly wound pup ............day to day
They do vary just a little

Yes they do, but it's a slight change as opposed to a play it in for a few weeks and it will fullfil your destiny kind of thing.

IMHO it's more of self balancing between poles and sides. Also the way they're handled/stored after winding produce the same effect.