Real NOS PAF era plain enamel wire....

[big_teee]

I tried unwinding this, but it had so many breaks that I just cut it off.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]19565[/ATTACH]

What is the yellow between the screws?
Is that like a foam or something?
T

[David Schwab]

What is the yellow between the screws?
Is that like a foam or something?
T

Yep. foam rubber. It's to insulate the screws from the wire. That's a 1972 Rick pickup. I think the owner tried to raise a pole screw under the low E string and killed the pickup. The brass screw in the middle is where the start wire is attached. It's a very odd pickup.

[Stratz]

I tried unwinding this, but it had so many breaks that I just cut it off.

A hair dryer usually helps. Especially if it's been taped off on the outer layer.

[David Schwab]

A hair dryer usually helps. Especially if it's been taped off on the outer layer.

It was not wax potted, but had many breaks on the outer layers, and I could not find an end that would unwrap.

I'd likely never use the wire anyway, but if I could have found the free end I could have repaired the pickup without rewinding it.

[big_teee]

It was not wax potted, but had many breaks on the outer layers, and I could not find an end that would unwrap.

I'd likely never use the wire anyway, but if I could have found the free end I could have repaired the pickup without rewinding it.

I always lose my patience, and take the Exacto Knife to it.
Supposedly Seymour Duncan, used to take the wire off and put it back on.
T

[Stratz]

It was not wax potted, but had many breaks on the outer layers, and I could not find an end that would unwrap.

I'd likely never use the wire anyway, but if I could have found the free end I could have repaired the pickup without rewinding it.

I wasn't referring to wax potted pickups only. The hair dryer helps loosen up most anything sticky on the outer layers.
Sometimes I find the finish end by gently brushing the coil in the opposite direction of the wind with a tooth brush.

[copperheadroads]

Supposedly Seymour Duncan, used to take the wire off and put it back on.
T

I did that last weekend

[Possum]

1972 magnet wire wasn't substantially different than what we get now anyway, the biggest changes happened in '65, who knows why, probably a change in technologies. I soak coils in naptha, it doesn't hurt the wire or bobbin and really helps get 50 year old black glue from the tape off the coils, brushing with Q-tips helps the process. Some of that stuff just hardens too much and only scraping will get it off, especially where the black tape was used on the baseplate, you can never get the tape off that part on PAF's hardly ever without destroying the tape. I have a very early 50's P90 in now that I'm going to attempt to get the wire off intact, those things hold enough wire for a full PAF. Doubt I'll get it though.......

[Fuzzy Logic]

Cool find. The last stuff like this I ran across was 80+ lbs. of 44AWG PE wire from the 50's. Wrong size for what I make though. I did get some spools of old Essex and GE heavy Formvar in 42AWG and 43AWG. I have run across NOS wire 4 different times. Three of the four were people that I bought winding machines from and I just asked if they had wire old wire to sell when I bought the winders. Two different places had a lot of wire in different sizes. The 42AWG PE seems to be harder to find than Formvar 42 AWG and 38AWG wire. There are a lot of wire makers from the 50's that are gone like Winco, Anaconda, Viking.....

If you have any variety of wire to test what you will see is the old 42 AWG wire varies in diameter from .00255 to .0028 and varies in ohms per foot from about 1.74K to 1.88K per foot. Post the diameter and the ohms per foot on the forum when you get a chance.

Interesting.

Wire with the diameters and ohms/foot you mention is basically AWG 42.5 size wire (albeit with a tighter specification for the bare wire diameter and, as it appears, a less tighter specification for insulation thickness when compared to modern wire).

So, just out of curiosity, are the wire diameters you mention valid for vintage wire while it is still on the spool or are these diameters valid for vintage wire after it has been wound on a bobbin ?

[Possum]

I just scored a 5lb. roll of PE from 1971 for $16, its 40 gauge. Very modern stuff. You have to be careful about this ohms per foot stuff. The data I got from Elektrisola was done in a lab, I'm not real sure you can get accurate measurements at home, I'm sure they have some kind of temperature controlled device and a high tech meter of some sort. The REA stuff always had ohms per foot written on each roll usually. I would think you'd need to measure a good long section, more than a foot then average it out since just a one foot piece is unlikely to match same from other parts of the roll. The actual insulation measurement can make your ohms measurement meaningless if its different from your other stock, so your wire could sound real bright or dark but have close ohm specs. Then there's bare wire spec which also varies, you have to acid strip the insulation or your measurement will be wrong. Elektrisola uses lasers to measure their specs and a simple micrometer is just not very accurate overall. I always mic new rolls of wire but in the end only winding coils and listening to a new batch is the final word.

[JGundry]

I would think you'd need to measure a good long section, more than a foot then average it out since just a one foot piece is unlikely to match same from other parts of the roll. The actual insulation measurement can make your ohms measurement meaningless if its different from your other stock, so your wire could sound real bright or dark but have close ohm specs.

Possum it sounds to me like you have not really given much attention to experimenting with reading ohm per foot for yourself in a controlled way. You really should. First wrap 10' of magnet wire around a foot long ruler, make sure you are always in the same ambient temperature, take your reading, divide by 10, done. Easily done for all of your wire new or old and more reliable relative to the readings on a spool if there. Taken with an inductance reading of a control test coil you can extrapolate coating thickness relative to ohms per foot if you want. As far as reading wire from a wound coil or off a spool, from my tests if you keep the tension around 20 grams you don't get any difference in ohm per foot after winding. Maybe a .01 ohm added at 25 grams. IMHO Gibson vintage stuff was wound below 25 grams sometimes well below 25 grams of tension.

[Possum]

No, I haven't because I have Elektrisola's specs on every kind of wire thats been made since 2002 among the modern PE offerings, including what MWS sells now, Essex, REA, Korean PE, a few others. Plus every vintage sample of PE I collected over ten years, multiple PAF examples, P90's, a Nocaster, 50's steel guitar from Fender, P13's, minibuckers, CC pickup, CBS Strat etc. etc. So all the wire I currently have new and old I have lab specs on. I just plain don't use it in practice, it was highly educational to see that up until 1965 PE was different then it changed more to what we buy now. I mic every new roll to make sure nothing changed and I QC all my pickups so if there's a sudden change in final reading I know something is wrong or the wire changed. But since Elektrisola makes PE now there have been no variations in wire I buy. When REA was making wire it changed every six months and screwed me up many times. I don't know exactly how Elektrisola's lab reads ohms per foot but they were able to do it on cut off coils with not much length at all. I've only done a measurement once and ran out about 20 feet of new and vintage wire and even then there was a difference, but I realized its just too hard to control a consistent temperature in a home environment so didn't pay alot of attention to it. Just the fact that you're breathing near it or have a light on near your work would invalidate things if you want to get picky. My own work table lights always heat the coils up enough that the readings change from winder to work station. All my pickup recipes are turns counts and I know each one by heart and know which wire to use. Ohms per foot was just a research tool, just like insulation thickness and bare wire sizes of vintage wire were, but in day to day production I don't use it at all.

[JGundry]

Possum, ohms per foot is one of your best QC and research tools when it comes to magnet wire. Having your own in house standard for testing it is worth the effort IMHO. Test everything old and new and mic it as well is my advice.

[Possum]

Elektrisola never varies, and since I use turn counts I know what the DCR of the finished product should be, no need for anything further than that. Its the same thing anyway, 5000 winds in a recipe equals a certain DCR in known wire, if it starts coming out noticeably different then something went wrong in the coil. I know Wolfe is really into ohms per foot last I heard but then that was in REA days when it would of been helpful. I kind of don't see the point anyway since I'm not winding to "ohms." I don't need it and its all on lab printouts anyway if I ever did. Even then if we were getting variations in wire or had other companies making it my bottom line is my turn count because that determines what your actual voltage output is, so if there was other wire available all I would do is wind it to the same turn count and see how it sounds, mic it, and read the total DCR. I really don't need anything else. With the NOS 50's roll of wire, thats exactly what I'll be doing, I already mic'd it, so will wind to a recipe and see what DCR it comes out and probably check the peak rez too and a frequency analysis vs. an identical coil in modern wire. I'm kinda swamped with projects so its going to be awhile before I wind that wire, there's not much of it so need to have some space to test it out.

[JGundry]

Possum, it sounds like you have it all figured for yourself. But I think you are missing the bigger picture. Say you own a pickup you like, you unwind 10 feet of magnet wire from it and take an ohms per foot reading, find duplicate diameter and ohms per foot wire, do a test coil then calculate your turn count. Confirm with an inductance reading. That is great starting point if you are working on cloning a pickup. Call it turn count, call it ohms.... if you can control the temperature you can get and apply extremely useful data with ohms per foot and mic readings. Applying the data just means having a good variety of wire on hand and having a temp. controlled environment.