Using 1960's Plain Enamel Magnet Wire

[WBPickups]

read the whole thread -- I was accused of being the guy with the wire -- had good reason to make those statements -- it's called self defense --

a bro or two here need to leave my name "DON MARE" alone at least a tiny tad more then they seem to do... while others forgave and moved on.. actually those who were directly effected by my one "Mouthy Moment In the sun" already cooled and we talk like humans now and share info.. seems ashame I'm still gettin' ROCKS to the head by maybe one or two bros, that were BTW. far-far less effected by "my moment" if AT ALL.. and the Rocks have still not stopped since that day... just got re-smacked up along side the head by the same fellow in this thread I see..

thats the only reason I got dragged into this conversation, I had little interest to post here much at all lately... seems I'm rousted out by GOOGLE Alerts lately I have set up to keep tabs on the business I'll hit a link in my email and end up here cause somebody LOVES MY name "DON MARE" more then HOMER SIMPSON or something???????????


so I never just piped in to POKE Ol' WB in the ribs or anyone else here for that matter.. I am not like that at all..

DON MARE

Don Mare, nice to meet you.... I do like your sense of humor.

[David Schwab]

People have called me a trouble maker (not on the forum) because i ask a lot of questions or they think that i'm up to something sneaky.

Heh.. join the club! I seemed to have rubbed a lot of people the wrong way here in the beginning...



I question everything... I wont accept an answer without some data to go with it... and eventually I learn some stuff too!

We are all temperamental creative people... can't put too many in the same room at the same time!

[NightWinder]

Its the sweetest tabo!!

[Spence]

Yes, it does make a difference using this wire. Why the big deal? Buy a set and hear them. Play with the sample wire if you's like. Do your own comparison. I worked hard on these pickups and no, I don't want to share anything with my competitors. Do you think Leo and Ted sat around and compared notes?

Do you think I would not R&D this? I spent 8 months alone with this wire prior to putting them out. I made 15 set of Protos and sent them out to people who had helped with the development of the series. Discussion is fine with me. Go discuss. As for the 67-07's. The proofs in the pudding. My customers are happy and to me that's the bottom line.

At this moment. I have to go to work. I will offer this to anyone here. Buy the pickups, take them apart. Make sound comparisons and answer your own question. By the way, Anybody here want to buy enough wire to make your own 1 set of 67 pickups. Feel free to call me. I won't be here today, I have to go to San Francisco.

I am not going to buy your pickups. I don't want a sample of your wire.

How many times do you have to be told; the thread starter wanted to know what your wire was. I couldn't care less. But I did suggest he challenge you rather than speculate. What's your problem with that?

Now we know that this wire is nothing out of the ordinary, is widely available and we know it makes no difference that this wire was made in 1967.

Some of us here really do make a lot of pickups and really have done extensive R&D.

Personally I've used many different wires and their coatings and I know that this wire is nothing special.

That doesn't mean you can't make a good sounding pickup and I never suggested that you couldn't.

What's your problem with that then? You're getting flustered over nothing and why you get the idea I'm picking on you I'll never know. It's starting to sound like you've got issues.

[David Schwab]

If this wire is indeed not so different from what is available today (and we don't know that since we haven't seen a sample), one explanation for the difference in tone might be that he has to wind slower than he normally does because the wire is fragile.

So a test would be to wind with similar modern wire at the same speed, handling, etc. and see what you get.

I also believe that intent plays a big part. If you really believe that you are winding something special, you will.

Just to be pedantic, any pickups wound in 1967 with this wire would be vintage today. Just because they didn't use that in Gibson or Fender pickups doesn't mean pickups weren't wound with the stuff.

[WBPickups]

I am not going to buy your pickups. I don't want a sample of your wire.

How many times do you have to be told; the thread starter wanted to know what your wire was. I couldn't care less. But I did suggest he challenge you rather than speculate. What's your problem with that?

Now we know that this wire is nothing out of the ordinary, is widely available and we know it makes no difference that this wire was made in 1967.

Some of us here really do make a lot of pickups and really have done extensive R&D.

Personally I've used many different wires and their coatings and I know that this wire is nothing special.

That doesn't mean you can't make a good sounding pickup and I never suggested that you couldn't.

What's your problem with that then? You're getting flustered over nothing and why you get the idea I'm picking on you I'll never know. It's starting to sound like you've got issues.

How many times I have to be told? LOL! How many time you have to show you don't know what your talking about?

OK Spence! You are so right. Feel better now Spence? This wire is a dime a dozen! LOL! You don't know what your talking about and until you feel the wire, play the pickups. You really have no opinion as to them. I also have no need to explain myself or my pickups.

Look, I am not angry or flustered. In fact. I find this & you quite comical. It's shows a lot about why you have to sit here and pimp your opinions to justify you make pickups.

As for R&D... I have done mine. And my pickups have been proven over and over again. Challenge? What is this a duel? LOL! Look Spence, you sit here daily... When do you ever R&D? When do you make pickups? With all that R&D your doing, your pickups must be the bomb!

I am off now to watch my "run of the mill" 67-07's live at the Warfeild in San Francisco with me new endorsees.

Will

[voodoochild]

Hello all,

I found the manufacturer you are all speaking of. Very interesting. I was always under the impression that the wire made today is far more superior than what was made years ago. I've been told that tolerances are much tighter because of todays manufacturing methods. So I don't understand how wire from the 60's is any better than what is made now. If anyone can enlighten me that would be great. Thanks in advance.

[Spence]

How many times I have to be told? LOL! How many time you have to show you don't know what your talking about?

OK Spence! You are so right. Feel better now Spence? This wire is a dime a dozen! LOL! You don't know what your talking about and until you feel the wire, play the pickups. You really have no opinion as to them. I also have no need to explain myself or my pickups.

Look, I am not angry or flustered. In fact. I find this & you quite comical. It's shows a lot about why you have to sit here and pimp your opinions to justify you make pickups.

As for R&D... I have done mine. And my pickups have been proven over and over again. Challenge? What is this a duel? LOL! Look Spence, you sit here daily... When do you ever R&D? When do you make pickups? With all that R&D your doing, your pickups must be the bomb!

I am off now to watch my "run of the mill" 67-07's live at the Warfeild in San Francisco with me new endorsees.

Will

Don't quote that I said your 67-07's were run of the mill. I said your wire was. So's Plain Enamel. So's formvar. They are all commonly available.

Started doing R&D 23 years ago. I think you are the one pimping opinions and you make a habit of swamping the MLP forum with your opinions.

If you need to know anything don't be too big to ask. We like to help each other here. No one pushes the products here and no one says my "pickups are better than yours" etc. We all know you have a product to push and I wish you well.

Also I don't think you quite understand, no one, incuding me is trying to put you down. You just seem to get really pissed that someone has the front to talk about your pickups and marketing angles. You'll have to live with that I'm afraid. It's a fact of life. You'll be mighty upset if you ever get a bad review otherwise.

BTW, I make fucking loads of pickups. Want to buy some or something?

[Possum]

"special" wire....

Here's what bothers me, and I side with Spence on this. There is no such thing as "special" wire. To state that demonstrates ignorance to me. Anyway excuse my bluntness... There is ONLY bare copper wire diameter, build, outside diameter, and insulation type, and of course alloy. So I stated you can't get .0027" PE anymore but you can STRETCH .0028" down to that and voila. Some of you guys need to buy micrometers and use them they will teach you alot, save every vintage pickup rewind wire you ever do, throw none of it away. Measure everything, your new wire, your vintage wire, your pubic hair :-) Then you will learn easily to measure some wire and know instantly how it will sound and what to use it for, period. Some of you ought to buy an LCR meter which will also teach you loads about wire and what it does. The fact that you think there's some "special" wire to me means you haven't done your homework. Its fine to use the NOS angle with customers and I've done this myself, I have some that was used in '63 on the earliest patent buckers, but there is nothing special about it and I can easily replicate with any of the modern wire out there.

Secondly, we have an unwritten agreement here on the forum to not try to SELL shit to eachother. Now we got all the hobbyists all hot and sweaty wanting to buy some "special" pickups with magic wire and even Wolfe is going for it, holy shit :-) Suckers....

Hey I got some magic PAF magnets, wanna buy some.....cast.....woooooooooh......

[Possum]

followup.....

A good example of why knowledge is key rather than thinking something is extraordinary, is the PAF magnet myth. Used to be guys would take their PAFs apart and put the magnet in say a cheap Duncan or something and exclaim on the forums that these magnets are magic and really change the sound of their pickups for the better. All they were really doing was pulling an A2 magnet out of their PAF and exchanging it for their Duncan A5 magnet, so of course the pickup sounds different, and maybe better. But if you know what the PAF magnet is then there's no magic to why the tones change. One of the reasons I like this forum is for its myth busting information I've found and some mythgs I've busted myself with help from people like Joe Gwinn. If something sounds different or great in a pickup there is a reason why and thats been my whole obsession since I started this stuff. So I"m glad you got some good sounding wire, it sounds good for a reason, no I won't buy one of your pickups, sure I"d love to see a sample of the wire, I love this stuff :-)

[corduroyew]

Hello all,

I found the manufacturer you are all speaking of. Very interesting. I was always under the impression that the wire made today is far more superior than what was made years ago. I've been told that tolerances are much tighter because of todays manufacturing methods. So I don't understand how wire from the 60's is any better than what is made now. If anyone can enlighten me that would be great. Thanks in advance.

I think possom summed this up a little further down but didn't address this directly. New wire is more consistent which makes it easier to get consistently good pickups. The variance in some of the older stuff makes it so that sometimes you can get lucky and have everything fall into place and you will get great sounding pickups when other times you won't get lucky. That is why there are not that many really great vintage pickups left. Truth was there wasn't that many to begin with. Most of them sounded good, a few of the sounded horrible and some sounded great. If somebody knows what they are doing they can use the consistency of new wire to their advantage and make lots of really great sounding pickups, a few good ones, and hopefully no bad ones. Some people don't know how to manipulate the new material to get a true vintage tone (I've still got a way to go on this) and so they might be better served with NOS wire that falls in the sweet spot for their pickup formula.

[Possum]

........

this is exactly WHY you must have a micrometer that reads into very small numbers. When some guy sends you his pickup to rewind thats dead after fifty years and he tells you it was a killer sounding pickups, the wire is the first thing you need to take notice of. Its still pretty easy to make a boring sounding pickup with modern wire by using it wrongly, say winding a 12K strat bridge pickup with 44 gauge wire isn't going to win any tone contests :-) I have found all kinds of vintage Fender pickups for instance also that have wire on them thats not in anybody's charts, and if you make a pickup with that same spec wire they sound killer. The term 42 guage wire for instance can mean a whole range of different size wire and builds......

[kevinT]

this is exactly WHY you must have a micrometer that reads into very small numbers. The term 42 guage wire for instance can mean a whole range of different size wire and builds......

Possum

what type/brand micrometer do you have to measure wire?

[voodoochild]

I think possom summed this up a little further down but didn't address this directly. New wire is more consistent which makes it easier to get consistently good pickups. The variance in some of the older stuff makes it so that sometimes you can get lucky and have everything fall into place and you will get great sounding pickups when other times you won't get lucky. That is why there are not that many really great vintage pickups left. Truth was there wasn't that many to begin with. Most of them sounded good, a few of the sounded horrible and some sounded great. If somebody knows what they are doing they can use the consistency of new wire to their advantage and make lots of really great sounding pickups, a few good ones, and hopefully no bad ones. Some people don't know how to manipulate the new material to get a true vintage tone (I've still got a way to go on this) and so they might be better served with NOS wire that falls in the sweet spot for their pickup formula.

Thanks. That clarifies thing for me. Its pretty irritating to see some of these false statements that some manufacturers use just to fool the public into thinking its something special. Oh well par for the coarse I guess.

[David Schwab]

Great post Dave!

This reminds me of the people who claim that using anything other than nito lacquer, or applying it too thick, will ruin the tone of a solid body...

Oh boy...