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And a wiring experience out of the ordinary. For me that is?
I have wound a bunch of pickups up to today (not as many as some others here) but mostly new from scratch were I can change a lot of factors, or repairs were I try to reproduce the original as close as possible. Now I got one of my guitars with Kent Armstrong P90s in for a check up and the guy mentioned that he still likes the guitar. But he has grown really tired of the amplified sound and thinks that it is really boring sounding compared to another guitar he has with a genuine Gibson P90. And when playing it I agreed 100%. Those pickups were dull sounding, with out any top end sparkle. I offered to rewind them as part of my lifetime warranty for custom made instruments. As a side note: I made this guitar some 7 years ago, way before I started winding pickups. That?s why we used Armstrong pickups?
I measured the pups before disassembling them. I thought I would share the specs:
Kent Armstrong WPU90 BLN (bridge)
Resistance: 10.93 Kohms
Capacitance: 22.7 nF
Inductance: 6.80 H
Alnico 5 bar magnets and 9400 turns
Kent Armstrong WPU90 BLR (neck, reverse wound)
Resistance: 8.41 Kohms
Capacitance: 28.7 nF
Inductance: 6.84 H
Alnico 5 bar magnets and 7.300 turns
(L is measured at 250Hz)
So some surprising parts:
The turn count and the DC resistance! And I really de-wound the neck pickup some 4000 turns and re-measured the resistance. I guess the he used AWG43 to get that high DC reading.
On the other hand he had a really neat assembly method compared to some Gibson?s I have seen. He used a soldering tab that is screwed to the base plate with one of the base plate fixating screws. That way it is possible to
1 wind the coil
2 tape the ends of (HB style) coil lead wires to the coil
3 solder the coil wire to the lead wires
4 wrap the coil up in tape
5 probably put it away as you do the next coil
6 Assembly the pickup with the lead wires coming down through the cut-out in the base plate
7 conveniently solder the lead wires to the shielded coax
All this as opposed to (as I have seen) getting the centre lead from the coax cable into the coil while soldering the shield to the base plate. Neat and quick and of cause better for high production.
Well I rewound them with AWG42, 10000 turns for the neck and 10500 turns for the bridge. So what about the outcome? I was really surprised. As mentioned I have mainly started from scratch and really not tried to use exactly the same parts and ?make something happen?. But boy DID something happen! The sound really came alive. The top end sparkle was suddenly there. The guy was really happy with the result.
I have wound a bunch of pickups up to today (not as many as some others here) but mostly new from scratch were I can change a lot of factors, or repairs were I try to reproduce the original as close as possible. Now I got one of my guitars with Kent Armstrong P90s in for a check up and the guy mentioned that he still likes the guitar. But he has grown really tired of the amplified sound and thinks that it is really boring sounding compared to another guitar he has with a genuine Gibson P90. And when playing it I agreed 100%. Those pickups were dull sounding, with out any top end sparkle. I offered to rewind them as part of my lifetime warranty for custom made instruments. As a side note: I made this guitar some 7 years ago, way before I started winding pickups. That?s why we used Armstrong pickups?
I measured the pups before disassembling them. I thought I would share the specs:
Kent Armstrong WPU90 BLN (bridge)
Resistance: 10.93 Kohms
Capacitance: 22.7 nF
Inductance: 6.80 H
Alnico 5 bar magnets and 9400 turns
Kent Armstrong WPU90 BLR (neck, reverse wound)
Resistance: 8.41 Kohms
Capacitance: 28.7 nF
Inductance: 6.84 H
Alnico 5 bar magnets and 7.300 turns
(L is measured at 250Hz)
So some surprising parts:
The turn count and the DC resistance! And I really de-wound the neck pickup some 4000 turns and re-measured the resistance. I guess the he used AWG43 to get that high DC reading.
On the other hand he had a really neat assembly method compared to some Gibson?s I have seen. He used a soldering tab that is screwed to the base plate with one of the base plate fixating screws. That way it is possible to
1 wind the coil
2 tape the ends of (HB style) coil lead wires to the coil
3 solder the coil wire to the lead wires
4 wrap the coil up in tape
5 probably put it away as you do the next coil
6 Assembly the pickup with the lead wires coming down through the cut-out in the base plate
7 conveniently solder the lead wires to the shielded coax
All this as opposed to (as I have seen) getting the centre lead from the coax cable into the coil while soldering the shield to the base plate. Neat and quick and of cause better for high production.
Well I rewound them with AWG42, 10000 turns for the neck and 10500 turns for the bridge. So what about the outcome? I was really surprised. As mentioned I have mainly started from scratch and really not tried to use exactly the same parts and ?make something happen?. But boy DID something happen! The sound really came alive. The top end sparkle was suddenly there. The guy was really happy with the result.