The difference between a wax soak and vacuum potting.

[rjb]

I preheat all of the pickups that I pot to a certain temperature....

But you're not going to tell us the temperature because it's a trade secret, right?

[David Schwab]

I preheat all of the pickups that I pot to a certain temperature. This way they only need stay in the wax for a very short period of time. I can also un-pot a pickup that's been over saturated. Works great.

They will get hot fast enough in the wax on their own. It doesn't take very long... just about a minute.

[David Schwab]

That is kind of what I was thinking, too. But there is one more factor also, that might not have been mentioned, heating up the coil. Not sure how fast heat penetrates through fine insulated wire, but I bet the delay is significant. So the wax might cool and thicken as it penetrates, and the pressure provided by opening the system up to air pressure might be necessary. I do not really know.

Put a bobbin in some hot wax, and take it out after a few minutes. The entire thing is very hot, actually too hot to handle. It doesn't take that long.

I don't use any vacuum, but I have also cut off wire from bad coils that were already wax potted, and the entire thing is solid.