New Mojotone Butyrate humbucker bobbins. How accurate are they ?

[big_teee]

If the guitar in question is a cheap Import, I agree with Possum.
You need to replace the Plastic Nut, gut the guitar.
Start over with good Jack, Switch,pots, Cable the whole Nine yards.
If it's a Custom Shop Guitar, I would not think any of that to be necessary.
T

[RedHouse]

If the guitar in question is a cheap Import, I agree with Possum.
You need to replace the Plastic Nut, gut the guitar.
Start over with good Jack, Switch,pots, Cable the whole Nine yards.
T

I agree, except that if it was a cheap import we're talking about, it wouldn't have decent wood either so after replacing all those parts one would still have a cheap sounding guitar, so IMHO, that scenario doesn't go anywhere near finding decent tone.

Wood first, then everything else.

[RedHouse]

3. Dave Stephens is a crazy nutjob.

Hey now, with all due respect to Possum (and you), I've heared there's a fine line between crazy and genius.

While I'm not sure how that applies to this context, I've also heared the phrase "savant idiot" thrown around before, but I wouldn't use the term because it seems derrogatory somehow.

[big_teee]

Well I'm sure the High dollar gibsons and fenders sound best.
I've worked on a lot of Imports and some of them have Surprisingly Great wood in them.
That is a Market in itself, I happen to be plugged into.
Not talking about Professionals here, but the Joe Blow Working man buys a cheap guitar.
He wants it too sound decent.
He wants decent pickups.
So you sell him a set of Pickups, Pots, switch, wiring harness, and Installation.
You may have to file a fret or two.
It happens everyday all over the U.S.
That's how I got into making pickups, was with my own cheap guitars.
We aren't talking 59 RIs Here, just your common Guys who play a bit.
They are everywhere.
B_T

[RedHouse]

Well I'm sure the High dollar gibsons and fenders sound best.
I've worked on a lot of Imports and some of them have Surprisingly Great wood in them.
That is a Market in itself, I happen to be plugged into.
Not talking about Professionals here, but the Joe Blow Working man buys a cheap guitar.
He wants it too sound decent.
He wants decent pickups.
So you sell him a set of Pickups, Pots, switch, wiring harness, and Installation.
You may have to file a fret or two.
It happens everyday all over the U.S.
That's how I got into making pickups, was with my own cheap guitars.
We aren't talking 59 RIs Here, just your common Guys who play a bit.
They are everywhere.
B_T

Yeah, I've had some experience with some of the MIM Strats that sound pretty good with Poplar bodies, the Squire stuff aint so great though, nor the china Epi's.

Now that you mention it, I probably mis-read Possums post and a big part of his business might be catering to the cheap import market which would explain why he encounters so much bad wiring and pots, dunno.

[David Schwab]

"play them in for several weeks", then as Possum said, they sound better after that.

As the new strings get duller?

I know it's true of new guitars, but I've never had new pickups change in tone.

[Corona Blue]

Even in my pricey Gibby's, the pots, caps, and wire were cheap.

I went to matched CTS pots, paper-in-oil (or foil-in-oil) caps, and push-back wire and also wired the pots for the "50's wiring" which allows the player to roll off the volume without losing quite so much of the highs. I'm not sure if I would have heard a difference having done only any one of these things, but the cumulative effect was an obvious improvement.

If the wood, nut and bridge are decent, even before changing pickups, I would recommend doing these things first.

[David Schwab]

You need to replace the Plastic Nut, gut the guitar.

If it's a molded plastic nut, then yes. If it's been cut well, there's no need. There's nothing wrong with plastic nuts, such as Micarta, Corian, Delrin, the various graphic impregnated nuts, etc.

The most important thing is that the nut slots are cut to the correct depth and are shaped well. Otherwise the material, unless it's REALLY cheap and hollow, wont matter much, and it only affects the open strings.

I like corian and aluminum for nuts.

[ReWind]

She's a good cow to buy.

It's a chapter long interview and I read it two or three years ago. He actually pulls out some of (if not the) first humbucker prototypes from his bench and talks about the design ideas, metals, covers, etc. with the author. I wasn't quite as obsessed with the pickups specifically back then, so I didn't pay as much attention to things I would today. I'm due for a re-read of it myself. Great book all around though.

I'm in Rockville too, but in MD. For a second there, Teee, I thought we were neighbors and I was going to offer to loan it to ya after work.

[RedHouse]

Even in my pricey Gibby's, the pots, caps, and wire were cheap.

I went to matched CTS pots, paper-in-oil (or foil-in-oil) caps, and push-back wire....

One might call an ES335 pricety at $2,500 but apparently (as someone posted earlier, or in another thread) they have those weird 300K pots, pricey is relative but the custom shop stuff already has CTS pots, decent push-back wire, and a decent Switchcraft toggle, it's only the repro B's that are gripe'd about on the forums.

Gibsons standard (factory) stuff definately has the funky pots, ceramic caps, weird circuit board assemblys and such, the Epi's are packed with sub-par electrics.

[JGundry]

FWIW here is what I know from having actually worked with a molder on site with butyrate for P.A.F. bobbins and P-90 covers.

1. As far as shrinkage goes butyrate shrinks more the higher the plastizer content. It loses it's plasticizer fairly quickly from off gassing . In fact the shelf life for Butyrate pellets is a little over a year simply because it loses plasticizer through evaporation that quickly. When you mold the butyrate a lot of the plasticizer is off gassed from the molding process. So shrinkage is a pretty short term phenomenon with it and is built into the mold design..

2. Higher plasticizer level in butyrate increases the shrinkage. I supervised the tooling of the mold Belwar and I did. The molder made sure to construct the mold exactly like the vintage P.A.F. mold in terms of cosmetics but all in gate size and location, parting lines etc.. When we ran test material through the mold it was soon apparent that low plasticizer butyrate was used for P.A.F. bobbins and therefore a low shrinkage factor both short and long term. Higher plasticizer content gave an unrealistic sink between the poles. Also the kind of mold used for P.A.F. bobbins will not easily release the bobbin if it shrinks too much.

3. Butyrate is not your normal petroleum based plastic. It is a cellulose based plastic, cellulose, acetate and butyrate. The butyrate, which is a form of fat, is what stinks even in old bobbins. It is not the plasticizer off gassing. There are different plasticizers that can be used for butyrate one of which is castor oil.

4. P-90 covers and M-69 rings use a much higher plasticizer content than P.A.F. bobbins. M-69 rings were molded flat and bent to the top curve when installed and P-90 rings will split down the middle easily when mounting which higher plasticizer helped prevent. So they were molded with a higher level of plasticizer. But because of this both P-90 covers and M-69 rings are prone to warping and some shrinkage but I think people often see this distortion as shrinkage rather than simply warping.

In short when it comes to butyrate P.A.F. bobbins any shrinkage that might happen would happen almost entirely in the molding process. When it comes to operator variation in molding dimension this is nonsense. Molding temperature, material temperature, pressure, back pressure, hold time... takes a lot of time to work out and is recorded for future runs. HPI did all P.A.F. bobbins and they certainly would have had a file with these numbers to reference.

Of all of the P.A.F. repairs I have had in, any that were dimensionally off were clearly messed up by heat, usually from poor potting. The bobbin flanges do naturally flare out on the ends and in on the side and you have to push this flaring up when measuring the core. But even the most beat P.A.F. bobbins are usually sound mechanically. I have also seen some screw bobbins that are warped from poor assembly at Gibson.

[Possum]

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 ;-)
The first person I heard about this from before me was a customer in Japan with fantastic ears and it was on my strat pickups. Over six months he told me how they had changed and for the better. Its a little more difficult to hear in single coils, very noticeable in my neck buckers. I didn't stumble on this with my buckers til later on, it slows prototyping way down but there's no way around it. If you're used to playing with alot of distortion, (like I don't), you might not be hearing this effect, but I think its more about what I'm doing and making myself....

I now send out a full adjustment and break-in information sheet with every pickup as 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. Eventually I convinced him to put them back in after patiently explaining that they needed time for all the magnetic parts and coil settling to take effects to take hold. A week later he wrote me a long "love" letter about how much he was enjoying them. I have a very good workable theory why my PAF repros are doing this more than the StewMac kit buckers, but maybe it'll be in my new book.......or not ;-)

[Possum]

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.

[LtKojak]

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.

As a hard-core magnet swapper, I can say that I've noticed a change with time, my notes say two days for A8 up to one week for A3 to "stabilize". This is fresh in my mind as I've recently tried several sets in my last acquisition, a Gibson L-5 CES copy and this time I've taken notes, as my memory, once "infallible", is starting to age accordingly with the rest of the body and it's not as "failproof" as it once was.

I haven't made recordings of this "process", mind you, but I wouldn't dismiss it completely as just "cork sniffer" stuff.

With the next remake of my #1 guitar, I'll try to record the whole process with both notes and recordings just to verify I'm not "daydream allucinating"

Back to refill my meds...

[Possum]

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...