Vox Phantom IV bass pickups

[David King]

I have one of these beasts in my possession and I think it sounds great. Any ideas on what wire gauge is likely to have been used? The pickups look to have been sealed in plastic. There's just a 2 way switch so you can't run both pus together but they seem dead quiet for unshielded single coils.

[jonson]

Hi Dave. Don't know what is up with this site but every jpeg I try and upload tells me it is not a valid file and then takes me to a message from tboy telling me it won't take long so summat is up the creek. The pups should be white square ended with the poles showing through the cover and all the ones I have seen and got, work the same as a strat bobbin and cover they should just lift off. Iv'e still got a few new pups for these basses in the cupboard so will have a look tomorrow and stick a mic on the wire and come back to you.

[David King]

Thanks johnson,
jpgs are not working for me either but those are definitely the pickups I have here. Thanks for letting me know all that good info. I was just thinking that the pickups would have been something Eko in Italy would have wound since as all the other components are Italian -pots, tone cap, and rotary switch. Oddly the jack is stamped "Switchcraft" but it's almost certainly a knock off, very crude looking.

[tboy]

I think its fixed

every jpeg I try and upload tells me it is not a valid file and then takes me to a message from tboy telling me it won't take long

Thanks for mentioning this as I was unaware of the problem (I'm still mopping up after the move to a new machine). jpeg uploads should be working now if you want try it again.

[jonson]

Hi Dave, This is getting bad. Still can't upload jpegs and the common one has just happened to me again. Logged in, wrote the post out, submitted it and was told I wasn't logged in again and lost the post. Sometimes happens 4 or 5 times and sometimes I give up, so, I'm gonna copy this and paste and copy and paste or go away.
No pics but a bit more info on pups. When you remove the covers they scream USA Fender at you as they are apart from mag size and solder eyelets good copies of the first P Bass single coils ie: 50s slab body jobs.
Black forbon oversize strat pups with all the same holes and construction. The UK at this time was mostly aircoil pups and Europe and the baltic countries were into small polythene bobbins but where these came from is a question I should have asked Bob Waite and never did. Bob Waite and his company Heathpoint Timber built most of these beasts along with the organ guitar in a factory about a mile from me. Same factory I built all my Hearts and Goodfellow basses in after Bob retired. He passed away recently so that info has gone with him. Shame as nowdays I do ask questions even if I get "piss off it's a secret" or we will lose all this stuff. I'm not a good judge of wire but a dark dull brassy orange colour I think makes it formvar and it mics up at 42awg. Ive got 6.82 from one and 7.24 from the other and there is short lengths of very thin green and red cloth covered hook up wire to the eyelets which also have small flat ringed terminals as well. Masking tape has been used as a wrapping and the mags are lower at each end to cater for the string radius but the mags are all the same length Alnico just pushed further out of the baseplate. What makes them quiet I don't know. Once this site prob has been sorted I'll post some pics as these are an easy made job and I have dimensions if anybody is up for making some retros to add to their armoury.

[Dave Kerr]

testing...


edit - jonson, I just upload my images to photobucket (freebie image hosting site) and insert the link using the image tool here.

[jonson]

Bit pc useless but I will give that a try. Cheers Dave.

[jonson]

Here we go.

[tboy]

Try ampix

I just upload my images to photobucket (freebie image hosting site) and insert the link using the image tool here.

We have our own photo hosting site at ampix.org if you want to try it.

[jonson]

Took 6 goes to get them in but between you 2 guys that will make my life easier. Thanks.

[Dave Kerr]

Some cool stuff there, thanks. I'm assuming that you want to restrict to on-topic stuff there to conserve bandwidth?

[David King]

johnson, that's amazing, so you were the fellow responsible for Goodfellows? I built one once for a Danish kid, it's a great and elegant design. I guess I owe you there...

[David King]

Here's the back of the pick guard.

[jonson]

Not seen those before so I guess they sourced other places.
Goodfellow not mine Dave, I just built them for the guy that bought the company off Bernie. But built 95% of them till they dissapeared so quite happy with that.

[Sweetfinger]

The majority of vox pickups I have seen have been the ones in the 'guts' pic, molded white plastic(polystyrene, I think) bobbins, stuffed inside a molded cover, which is glued to the molded plastic baseplate with little sheet metal chunks crimped over the 'ears'. These were clearly made in the same factory as many of the EKO pickups. You cannot dissassemble these unless it was very poorly glued during manufacture. Usually the little ears break off and you have to glue a chunk of plastic to the bottom of the pickup, or carefully use a dremel to saw through the glue joint at the base and fabricate a new base.

I have seen one of the other type of pickup which did indeed look like a dead on Fender copy underneath a crudely molded cover. At the time, I thought it was something that a previous owner had cobbled together because they were unable to source the real thing.