something that grinds my gears

[David Schwab]

I rewound a J-Bass set with HFV per request, and the customer loved them.
YMMV,

I'd bet you could have rewound them with SPN, told him it was heavy Formvar and he would have loved it. The fact that he would ask for it, even though he probably never heard a Jazz bass wound with heavy Formvar (but probably thought the vintage ones were), shows he had expectations, and conformation bias will always win in the end. I did rewind a neck pickup on a 5 string Jazz bass with heavy poly and the guy didn't like it. Too spongy sounding for him I think. But I think it was more the way I wound it than the wire.

When I was working on my Jazz bass single coils, I did a set in HF as well as SPN. They all sounded good, and the difference in tone was small.

For something different try 41 gauge single build wire.

[Rick Turner]

Aside from being amused that anyone would try to reverse engineer vintage pickups...which were all over the map...it seems that if you know what the wire was, and you know how many turns there were, and you know the DCR of your target pickup, there can be only one "tension" to achieve those results. Duh!

[Rick Turner]

Which is essentially to say that while you cannot measure the winding tension, you can deduce it through thorough reverse engineering. More than one way to skin that cat, and all that.

Sure glad I don't try to make faux-vintage pickups...

Too much smoke and mirrors for my taste, and why make what you can so easily simply purchase for very reasonable bucks? But then, I don't try to make fake vintage guitars, either.

[JGundry]

Which is essentially to say that while you cannot measure the winding tension, you can deduce it through thorough reverse engineering. More than one way to skin that cat, and all that.

Sure glad I don't try to make faux-vintage pickups...

Too much smoke and mirrors for my taste, and why make what you can so easily simply purchase for very reasonable bucks? But then, I don't try to make fake vintage guitars, either.

Pricing for vintage pickups is beyond the reach of many musicians. Faux vintage intended to deceive I'm not a fan of (usually). But vintage pickups and guitars are the standard reference for tone and design and my hat is off to anyone that can accurately make a reproduction.

There are a lot of great craftsmen that produce innovative and beautiful designs. But very, very few are able to even approach the popularity among musicians that 50's and 60's era Fenders and Gibsons have. Some designs are just right and can't really be improved, '57 Chevy, Stratocaster, Les Paul..... You can't improve them, they are already what people love. I enjoy making reproduction pickups for the challenge of working in that framework of specs.. And the satisfaction of making musicians happy that are hungry for those vintage tones.

Tension is pretty simple. Get a tension meter, experiment, look at photos of how old Gibson and Fender winders were tensioned, duplicate the set up, take apart old pickups, then use that info to make a decision.

[David Schwab]

But vintage pickups and guitars are the standard reference for tone and design and my hat is off to anyone that can accurately make a reproduction.

Considering most people have never played real vintage pickups, or vintage guitars, how can that be a standard? I think a lot of people think they know what a PAF sounds like, and most of them are probably mistaken, since they have never heard one in real life.

The older guitars might have been built better. I own a few myself. But I don't find them all that different from newer guitars.

[JGundry]

Considering most people have never played real vintage pickups, or vintage guitars, how can that be a standard? I think a lot of people think they know what a PAF sounds like, and most of them are probably mistaken, since they have never heard one in real life.

The older guitars might have been built better. I own a few myself. But I don't find them all that different from newer guitars.

Well Dave I think it is probably best that you not make a repro pickup if you can't hear the difference between vintage and new examples of say a P-90. I have vintage '52 and '56 Les Paul's and '67 ES-330 and they are quite a bit different in tone, feel than the stock Gibson pickups in my newer Gibson Special and R6.

I would guess that most guitarists 40 and over have experience with vintage guitars and working musicians younger than that do as well. If you are talking about a reproduction pickup we are not talking about entry level pricing. The customers are going to be serious about vintage spec. gear.

I'm 45 and the house guitar at the store I first got electric guitar lessons from was a '64 SG that was hanging on the wall of the lessons room. I could give you a very long list of vintage guitars I would have bought if I could have just come up with the $600 or $700 needed. I bought a '65 Newport bass 2 weeks ago and the early 20's sales guy at the store was lusting after it. It is not only old guys that play and seek vintage gear.

[David Schwab]

Well Dave I think it is probably best that you not make a repro pickup if you can't hear the difference between vintage and new examples of say a P-90. I have vintage '52 and '56 Les Paul's and '67 ES-330 and they are quite a bit different in tone, feel than the stock Gibson pickups in my newer Gibson Special and R6.

I would guess that most guitarists 40 and over have experience with vintage guitars and working musicians younger than that do as well. If you are talking about a reproduction pickup we are not talking about entry level pricing. The customers are going to be serious about vintage spec. gear.

I'm 45 and the house guitar at the store I first got electric guitar lessons from was a '64 SG that was hanging on the wall of the lessons room. I could give you a very long list of vintage guitars I would have bought if I could have just come up with the $600 or $700 needed. I bought a '65 Newport bass 2 weeks ago and the early 20's sales guy at the store was lusting after it. It is not only old guys that play and seek vintage gear.

I didn't say I can't hear the difference. I said very few people have played them, and I'd bet they don't l what they sound like. I have also made that type of pickup, and they were well regarded by the customers. I'm just not interested in that whole scene.

Plus I have heard new pickups that sound like old pickups. I have heard some new ones that sound better too. I know lots of players with old guitars.

It's easy to make replacement pickups that sound different from the ones in a stock new Gibson. If someone doesn't like the stock pickups, they will likely like something else. I've even heard some replacement pickup that are supposed to sound like PAFs, don't, but yet are well respected. They were also disliked by the people who brought me their guitar to swap them out with something else. So sometimes people think they want that tone, and then change their mind.

There's nothing wrong with making repros of vintage pickups. My point was they are not really a standard, since the only thing most people have to go on are old recordings. And it's doubtful they can get the exact same tone, even with the original gear.

I'll be 56 in a few months. Started playing in about '69, and owned a lot of vintage gear, which was just used guitars at that point in time. I've mentioned before about the guitarist I played with that had a '55 Les Paul, that was originally a gold top with P-90s and the stop bar bridge, that had been refitted before he owned it, with early patent label humbuckers. S for all intents and purposes they were the same as PAFs. We all know how much PAFs vary, and these pickups were fine, but he replaced them with DiMarzio PAFs, which sounded better.

The fact that many guitarists replaced the pickups in their vintage Gibsons shows that while they sounded fine, guitar tones change with the music. I install more Duncan JBs and DiMarzio (fill in the blank) pickups than vintage output types. So at least in the NYC/NJ metro area, that's what working guitarist want, and the JB seems to be more of a standard these days. I'm not a fan of that type of pickup, and prefer the more vintage type, although maybe a little hotter in the bridge.

Bottom line is there is no right or wrong guitar tone. What ever tone you like is the right tone. I'd love to see a double blind test with different real and repro vintage pickups to see which ones players picked.

[ReWind]

Neither accurate specs, metallurgy, sacrificing vintage pickups in the name of research, regularly repairing vintage pickups, nor owning the same vintage coil winding machines that the originals were made on (all of which I do) will land you some "golden recipe" in my experience. Those are just cards in the deck. Learning tools. You'll still need to take all of that information and tools, compile it into a whole, and adjust as needed to meet your goals with your materials.

What WILL land you a "golden recipe" for pickups that will knock your socks off every time, no matter what style you want to build, is closing the laptop and building and auditioning pickups day and night until your fingers and ears bleed. One couldn't help but learn something from that, even if they tried to avoid learning.

Just my thoughts but, hey, I have much to learn, myself …and I hope I always continue to.

[JGundry]

Neither accurate specs, metallurgy, sacrificing vintage pickups in the name of research, regularly repairing vintage pickups, nor owning the same vintage coil winding machines that the originals were made on (all of which I do) will land you some "golden recipe" in my experience. Those are just cards in the deck. Learning tools. You'll still need to take all of that information and tools, compile it into a whole, and adjust as needed to meet your goals with your materials.

What WILL land you a "golden recipe" for pickups that will knock your socks off every time, no matter what style you want to build, is closing the laptop and building and auditioning pickups day and night until your fingers and ears bleed. One couldn't help but learn something from that, even if they tried to avoid learning.

Just my thoughts but, hey, I have much to learn, myself …and I hope I always continue to.

Which machine models do you have that wound vintage pickups?

[ReWind]

I have a George Stevens 230AM. It's very similar to the one you had made/re-made. I think we've talked about this before, no?

Not my only machine, but probably the one with the most known name in the vintage pickup world.

[JGundry]

I have a George Stevens 230AM. It's very similar to the one you had made/re-made. I think we've talked about this before, no?

Not my only machine, but probably the one with the most known name in the vintage pickup world.

Post some photos of the machine set up for pickups. I'm not familiar with the 230AM being used for vintage guitar pickups.

[ReWind]

Do you mean photos of my machine or old photos of the same machine in use for (now) vintage pickups?

It's similar in construction to the schematic images in the Progressive Universal Winding Machine section of this book: http://re-wind.net/00001959/OtherGui...tevens-OCR.pdf …but, of course, I don't have it set up for winding progressive universal coils (nor would I know what to do with them)! However, the machine does have both a traverse bar and a rack drive and cams and/or idler gears, as shown in that schematic. It has a belt driven transmission that can drive a tailstock at a 1:1 ratio to the main drive, as well. Lots of options, but I have it setup in a very simple fashion to do one thing.

[JGundry]

Do you mean photos of my machine or old photos of the same machine in use for (now) vintage pickups?

It's similar in construction to the schematic images in the Progressive Universal Winding Machine section of this book: http://re-wind.net/00001959/OtherGui...tevens-OCR.pdf …but, of course, I don't have it set up for winding progressive universal coils (nor would I know what to do with them)! However, the machine does have both a traverse bar and a rack drive and cams and/or idler gears, as shown in that schematic. It has a belt driven transmission that can drive a tailstock at a 1:1 ratio to the main drive, as well. Lots of options, but I have it setup in a very simple fashion to do one thing.

Sounds like a cool machine, any photos would be fine. But being a sticker for vintage details there is no evidence that the 230AM Geo Stevens winder or any incarnation of it was used for winding golden era vintage pickups.

[ReWind]

Sure, I'll shoot some photos next week. I'll be working away from the shop the next two days, but will be glad to share my setup. I had some pix up in the forum somewhere from when I first got it several years ago. They are around somewhere, but definitely don't represent its present state anyway.

As to a 230AM, specifically, not being used historically, I don't know that "a 230AM" was or wasn't. Probably not "a 230AM", I would guess. It would be an unnecessary expense for a guitar company to order a Stevens with all the unnecessary extra features not used for pickup coils. But we do know that similar George Stevens machines from the same period were used and the only difference is that mine has extra options, which can be removed or disabled. The main power transmission path and traverse are all the same, if setup as such. Same parts connected the same way. I've even got the original 4 conductor reversible Bodine motor. So I definitely believe, "an incarnation of it" was absolutely used for pickups, historically. Why do you think this one is significantly different?

[JGundry]

As to a 230AM, specifically, not being used historically, I don't know that "a 230AM" was or wasn't. Probably not "a 230AM", I would guess. It would be an unnecessary expense for a guitar company to order a Stevens with all the unnecessary extra features not used for pickup coils. But we do know that similar George Stevens machines from the same period were used and the only difference is that mine has extra options, which can be removed or disabled.

It is pretty clear you have no evidence your 230AM model machine was used by Gibson or Fender to wind golden era pickups. So it would be appropriate that you not represent it as model Gibson or Fender used. Your machine does not even sound similar to the fine wire models that Gibson did use to wind P-90's in the 50's. Geo Stevens made me their very last fine wire machine from replacement parts they still had on the shelf. Other than the counter and the oiling method, my fine wire machine is mechanically the same as the one Gibson used in the 50's. I paid $8K for Geo Stevens to make the machine, the funny part is I have bought 5 used since for as low as $200! So it is not like you cannot find the right machine, which your 230AM is not.