Total rookie pickup winding question

[casey73]

I've built many tube amps and pedals, but never messed with guitars or pickups. I'm taking on a strat building project. It's low budget mostly to see what I can put together buying odd parts on Ebay and pulling it all together. This isn't going to be a pro machine, just a hobby guitar I don't mind dinging in my cramped shop when trying out amps/pedals.

I've purchased a Carvin twin blade humbucker for the bridge position and thinking about getting a cheap Mighty Mite loaded pickguard to get started. For $50 I'm not expecting much and I've read that their pickups are pretty cheaply built.

I have a large roll of 36 guage magnet wire that's been laying around for years, and I've seen videos doing demos of simple pickup rewinds using a drill, followed by wax potting. My question is, could I get a decent sounding pickup rewinding a bad sounding cheap pickup with 36 ga. magnet wire, or would I be wasting my time?

[black_labb]

you would not be able to fit enough 36 onto the bobbin for a passive pickup, as you would need more winds. possibly for an active pickup, but the sound of the mid hump made by the passive pickups is something most people find important to a good tone. and strats are already ffairly lat compared to many other pickup types.

for an answer, probably not. you might be able to do something that makes it work. maybe a bigger bobbin that uses the same magnets. the pickup would have to be quite big, but might sound great.

[casey73]

Thanks for the feedback. That's kinda what I was thinking. Back when I had more time than money, I might have tried it. I'll just get another pickup. Who knows, I might like the Mighty Mites

[bbsailor]

Casey73

Put about 300 turns of AWG 36 on each bobbin and make a low impedance pickup. Feed the pickups output to 2.5K to 5K volume and tone pots and the use a Shure A95U series matching transformer at the input to the amplifier and you will have a good high fidelity pickup with a bright sound. The turns ratio boost of the transformer will make up for the lack of wire turns of the AWG 36 compared to the approximately 5000 turns of AWG 42.

Joseph Rogowski