Splicing wire to fix a break or to add extra windings

[foonting]

When looking at Fender stuff, longetivity doesn't readily come to mind as the design goal, more of a "production" mentality. They just figured if a pickup doesn't work, it's a service dept or warranty issue, replace it with a new one.

Some music stores in my area are still like that, we have a store where there's this guy who has been there since the 70's, he's their "guitar guy" and nice enough and all that, but one day I was in there and tried to get him interested in some of my pickups, we was indifferent and said "we have all these" pointing the display case (full of SD's and DM's and Gib's and Fenders) and so I thought well fair enough, and said "what about rewinds? who does your rewinds?" he said ..."we don't bother with that, if a pickup doesn't work we yank it, drop in a new one, toss the dead one in the trash".

I so loved Phillis Stein ... she was a lovely girl!

[David King]

I see we are skirting a subject which I don't think get's enough attention around here re failures of pickups with forbon flatwork. Forbon is quite hygroscopic apparently and as it picks up moisture it expands. When it expands it warps and it also pushes the outer poles further apart and when that happens the wire can break.
Jason just mentioned it in the tools discussion about vacuum potting and explained that vacuum potting can help keep moisture out of the forbon and stabilize it by sucking wax deep into the porous structure that is forbon. Seymour's comment that David quoted certainly gives it some credence and Terry above mentions how warpage often accompanies failure.

My initial instinct was to blame warpage of coils that were wound too tight but now I'm beginning to see that the culprit was more than likely movement in the forbon after the pickup was wound. Guitar builders know to build their masterpieces in a dryer environment to avoid winter cracking later on. Perhaps we winders should be storing our forbon in a damp box at 99% relative humidity just prior to winding?

[David Schwab]

That's a good point David. Leo seemed to be aware of this, which is why probably why he dipped the bobbins in lacquer, and in his wax potting patent he talks about moisture. Kind of amazing that he got a patent for that!

[Mike Sulzer]

My experience with that stuff is that if you move from a drier climate to PR is it warps. Maybe you can then faltten it; I would prefer not to use it. I have a couple of pickups I made with it on guitars I made, and I intend to replace them before they get ugly and go bad.

Also some nasty agricultural product leaked that caused steel to rust, and also caused a nearby stash of forbon to deteriorate. Sure, it will probably last nearly forever in the right environment, but this is a material whose time has come and gone, except for historical accuracy.

[David King]

Hey Forbon makes a great drum case.