59 strat pickup

[Sam Lee Guy]

the big secret is they were wound by ladies gabbing away at a bench, no winding patterns just move the wire back and forth like Daddy Leo told 'em to do, Leo didn't believe in winding patterns, just put the damn wire on the bobbins...

...except for Rosies Wrap of course.

[chevalij]

I wonder if Abi and Rosie would fight it out in the parking lot after work? There can only be one true winder! And then Abi cut Rosie's head off. I assume Abi won, she's still signing pickups like they were 8 x 10 glossy's.....

[PoorMan]

Just rewound a 59 strat pickup , it was interesting to find some of the things fender did back then with their pickups..very very enlightening...

er...thanks for sharing?

[Spence]

All this talk about different 'wraps' doesn't wash with me. Show me the proof.
Photographic evidence will be acceptable.

[dazzlindino]

...very...very ...enlightening.....dude
enlighten this
you must be old, nostalgic and think the mid 50s was gods gift to music.....

[David Schwab]

...very...very ...enlightening.....dude
enlighten this
you must be old, nostalgic and think the mid 50s was gods gift to music.....

I don't know who you are referring to (except it wasn't me), but hey, before you call someone old and nostalgic, I saw the Beatles on TV when I was 6, and remember Hendrix and all those people when they were actually putting out new music... oh and the 80's.

The 80's was God's gift to music.

What are you going to have to look back on? The 90's? Well that was an exciting time in music (not).

I think the point was the classic guitar designs themselves are now 50 years old, and that's the tone the younger guys (who more than often haven't a clue) want, so that was the reason for talking about the old Fender pickups.

As for myself, I don't buy into that vintage stuff, and I'm 50.

[Possum]

....

Yeah, got you beat, I saw Jerry Lee Lewis when I was about 11-12 in France. He was on his "exile" tour I think because of all the BS flak he took for marrying a young girl. He played at the enlisted man's area next to the rec area where us kids hung out, guy totally blew me away, and I thought that guitar player was real interesting, never saw one of those things before. I remember Elvis's first tunes on the radio and black leather greaser hoods trying to be cool. Rock n' roll was just starting when I was about 5, man it was cool. If there ever was a time when music seemed dead its now. I mostly listen to old jazz and old blues now, can't beat the classics....

[PoorMan]

I like the oldies--Schwab and Possum have been very nice to me.

[David Schwab]

I remember seeing Jerry Lee Lewis on American Band Stand!

I like a lot of new music.. right now it's Santogold. Some stuff my 16 year old son turns me onto, and some stuff I turn him onto.. and that's new stuff too.

But I listen to a lot of stuff from the 70's and 80's... too much music all sounds alike now, no fault of the unique artists that don't get a chance to be heard.

[dazzlindino]

You guys are funny,all old and stuff, oh wait thats my son talking to me.....
but get this, I was watching the Beatles at that same age too so....
my point is that dude sounds like my dad, how the only good sh%$ was the old *&it, guess hes right, if you go back far enough he could have sent us smoke signals instead, much better than the internet and computers for communication breakdowns.
Its the radio and tv programmers more than it is the musicians fault, as far as good music goes....now where is that Trixter cd.........

[Instigator]

Huh? There's no big secret to the tone of a '59 Strat pickup except for the laws of Physics. No? Proof to this is in the fact that despite being crudely-made those pickups sound fine - there's not much "room" in them to sound wrong or poor, and that's the triple truth, Ruth!

[Dave Kerr]

...very...very ...enlightening.....dude
enlighten this
you must be old, nostalgic and think the mid 50s was gods gift to music.....

Seems directed @ Mick, both complaining about posting "I found out something cool and won't share", then poo-pooing the desirability of recreating an old design. Seems a bit contradictory to me, why complain about keeping info to oneself if you don't give a shit about 50's pickups in the first place?

I'm a geezer, too, but refuse to get locked in to listening to only stuff with which I'm familiar, or which bring back memories of diddling high school girl friends in the back seat of an old Ford. Every generation has its share of crap music foisted upon it by the media giants, but if you can't find ANY new music out there you like, you're either not looking hard enough (college radio, over the airwaves or streaming, Pandora, etc) or you've got such narrow taste you'll never be satisfied. Christ, Pandora'll do a bunch of searching for you - plug in a couple artists you like, and they'll deliver a bunch of stuff you've likely never heard before and track your feedback.

[mick]

Do you reckon these women winders had any training like " just sit there chatting and look out of the window , just move the wire left and right till you have 8000 winds? don't worry about any kind of pattern , they will be fine , 50 years from now people will love them ,
I would think that they were made so much better back then and pulling one apart just confirmed it....thats why they sound so good..modern stuff can't compete with old stuff , it's a fact..

Mick

[Spence]

They would have been trained very quickly and told to get x amount of turns on each type of coil and try your best to keep it neat. They would also have been under pressure to make x amount in a day.
A woman I once dated worked on an assembly line. I asked her what she was assembling and she said,' I dunno. Something to do with coils for aeroplanes.'
What it was for didn't really matter and she had been shown what to do and how the damned thing should look. Testing didn't come into it and doing your own wrap was unheard of.
There's too much myth and fantasy surrounding pickups and guitars. Believe it at your peril.

[mick]

There wasn't anything to share , wish there was..? mags were 190 thou diameter , B magnet was a bit shorter than what I thought it would be and thats it really...
I wasn't originally saying that I thought the old stuff was better nor am I nostalgic about it , I wouldn't be making pickups if I thought you couldn't make good sounding ones today..
I agree with the production line observation Spence , so many made per day or up to the office for a " chat " , been there done that...

Mick