Original Broadcaster pickup specifications

[Stratotelec]

I am currently getting the items together to start winding pickups. I would like my first set to be exactly like the pickups offered in the original Fender Broadcasters. Does anybody know the specifications for these pickups. I do know they used 43 AWG wire and were wound hotter than the later Tele pickups. However, I am trying to find out other specifics such as:

Magnet type
Winding direction
Polarity
Magnet height
Average number of turns
Type of wire insulation (Formvar, enamel, or ???)
etc...

Any other specifics would be greatly appreciated as well.

I am interested in winding both bridge and neck pickups.

Please help. I am just getting started with this and need all the help I can get.

Thanks,

Todd

[Possum]

info

best thing to do is buy the BlackGuard tele book from the Lutherie books online, expensive at $85 but it has alot of good info in it......

[Stratotelec]

Thanks Possum. I just checked out the blackguard book online and it definitely looks like it contains a lot of good info. I will definitely have to start saving my pennies for it. Wait a minute...I have a birthday coming up soon. I guess I know what I'll be asking for. I take it you already own this book. Correct? Can you tell me for sure it if has the specifics I'm looking for? I have no problem purchasing the book since it looks like it would definitely be worth the money and it helps support a good cause as well. I would just hate to shell out all the money and still have many specific questions afterward.

Thanks for your help,

Todd

[Spence]

I too have the Blackguard Book. The thing about this weighty tome is that it contains observations in detail rather than hardened facts in detail. the variations with pickup DCR's would lead the unwary to conclude that Fender wound their pickups without any attempt to meet a target resistance. The book doesn't make any suggestions that the pickup DCR's are gospel which is a good thing.
You should read a lot, study some originals and make your own conclusions.
I have come to realize that Fender pretty much used whatever magnets were readily available after the war. Some Tele bridge pickups are AlNi some are AlNiCu and some AlNiCo 3. Of course A5 eventually became available and hence the standard.
You should use a glavanized baseplate rather than copper plated steel and mount the pickup using slothead screws and black straight grommets rather than surgical tubing. The rest is pretty obvious.

[Possum]

yep

well said Spence....

[Stratotelec]

Thank you both very much. I will be starting on this project very soon and I am sure I will make several mistakes before getting it right but that is half the fun and I enjoy doing things like this. I have a Fender Custom Shop Texas Tele pickup in one of my guitars and I like it very much. I heard that this pickup is like a Broadcaster pickup with staggered instead of flat pole pieces. I don't know if this is true or not. This is why I am curious to wind a true to spec Broadcaster pickup. I will definitely get my hands on the Blackguard book to read over the observations because I don't have access to an original Broadcaster pickup and even if I did I definitely would not want to "disturb" it. Thanks once again for the valuable input.

Todd

[hasserl]

Anyone with all the information you're asking for has gathered it thru a lot of effort over a long time. I doubt that they are gonna just hand it out to a guy on an internet bbs. You're gonna have to do some leg work, and wind a few pickups and try em out to get a feel for what you're trying to achieve. There are no short cuts.

[ken]

It took me almost 30 pickups before I got it 'right', and lots of research too.

IMHO a good 'Broadcaster' tone is one of the hardest to do, I'm still working on the details a year after I started selling them.

Ken

[Possum]

fender

Fender doesn't actually make accurate copies of anything they make that I've seen. their pickups are designed for one thing....profit.

Also have seen anyone making an accurate Broadcaster copy at all, no one....

[Stratotelec]

"Anyone with all the information you're asking for has gathered it thru a lot of effort over a long time."

Absolutely!

"I doubt that they are gonna just hand it out to a guy on an internet bbs."

It depends. Maybe or maybe not. I have received a ton of help and given a lot of help to members of Arons Stompbox Forum in the past. I guess it just depends on the person. Not to say that a person is "bad" for not wanting to share. It is just their own personal choice which I respect.

"You're gonna have to do some leg work, and wind a few pickups and try em out to get a feel for what you're trying to achieve."

Exactly what I plan on doing.

"There are no short cuts."

Agreed. However, it never hurts to ask for help from an expert.

Regards,

Todd

[ken]

Actually, IMHO making a 'perfect' copy of anything today is an **extremely bad idea**, because if you managed to do it too many people out there would be only too willing to sell your pickups as 'real 1950's pickups!' at 'real 1950's pickups!' prices and rip people off. Price a 'real' Broadcaster lead pickup sometime if you can find one and see what I mean. Geez, I did that once and I freaked... my last car was cheaper than that pickup.

All my single coil pickups are made with light gray Forbon for this reason. I believe it is better to sound good but not look too real because I don't want anyone who doesn't know too much about vintage guitars to be possibly ripped off.

Unfortunately, many people listen with their eyes, not their ears. I have had people tell me they could sell lots of my pickups... if only my pickups were black and I didn't have to sign each one...

The Blackguard Book ROCKS! I have one, and if only there was ones for the Strat and P and J Basses, I'd be an extremely happy (and broke!) camper.

Ken

[Possum]

repro's

My point about making repro pickups isn't to make them look like original old pickups but to get the details right, the tone is in the details. I'd be willing to be that there ARE counterfeit pickups being sold on Ebay, especially PAFs. There was a recent listing of a double black PAF set for $12,000 (give me a F-ing break, sheesh), you can see some of the wire color peeking out the edge of one bobbin and its pretty clear to me that its modern wire, wrong color. They were making counterfeits in the late 70s and through the 80s when they were only worth a couple hundred bucks, so you can imagine what one could make if you really nailed a dead-on counterfeit. Would take an awful lot of resources to make real looking copies though. It can be done and I'm sure is being done. Most guitar players don't have the expertise to tell the difference.

There is the "relic" idea and some make really good relic pickups but the guys who make those always put some kind of mark or logo etc. to distinguish them from the real ones. Spence makes some really good looking aged pickups that also sound really good. I'm one of those lazy guys who doesn't want to to that much work! But my repro type pickups are extensively researched to make sure the details are right, I change some things on them for tone purposes but construction specs etc. are important to recapturing old tones.

[Stratotelec]

I am definitely way more interested in capturing the sound and feel of these pickups than making a dead on clone. Being just a beginner, I have a lot of work ahead of me before I would ever consider trying to sell anything I make. Honestly this new hobby will probably not go beyond the stage of me experimenting with pickups for my own use unless I would happen to stumble on to something really cool and somewhat original. There are too many nitpicking details that would drive me crazy to attempt to try to pass something off as an original pickup. I never did understand the appeal of "relic" guitars anyway. I don't want to step on any toes if relics are your thing, they just never really did appeal to me but of course it is just my humble opinion.

I still think I will try to capture the Broadcaster tone for the bridge pickup but I may want to make a Tele sized Strat pickup for the neck position. I don't want to enlarge the hole in my Tele to put a Strat pickup in. I have played for over 29 years and have owned and played many guitars and my favorite sounds are produced by two different guitars. I love the Telecaster bridge pickup sound but I also love the Strat neck position sound. The "ultimate" combination IMO would be a nice hot Tele pickup in the bridge position and a nice Strat pickup in the neck position. Combine these pickups with a 4-way switch for the series combination and I think I would be extremely satisfied.

Thank you all,

Todd

[Spence]

You know, there's a lot of guys out there selling fake vintage pickups. I know people who think that's a good thing because it will eventually bring down the rediculous prices of the real ones.

But actually you've got to be unbelievably good to fake the real thing and then you'll be way out of pocket. Actaully, I'm thinking of 'Shed Pickups....Bordering on Bankruptcy' as a company moto. Just think what it would cost you in terms of tooling to turn out a spot-on PAF replica.

There's nothing wrong with trying to achieve the tone and the look because there are quite a lot of vintage guitars out there that have the original pickups missing. The problem is that unscrupulous people will pay peanuts for a top repro relic pickup and sell them on in an otherwize unoriginal vintage guitar as original.

Sadly a lot of music shops fall into this catagory.
I have had some people show me vintage pickups that are actually brand new made by me so yeah, it's a dangerous game and there's very little reward for the pickup-maker.

Still, you either go down that road or you don't but like Possum says, you've got to get every aspect right to get the tone right even in shiny new pickups or you will not get that vintage tone. The components and particular materials are key to everything.

[Possum]

big profits.....

yeah Spence ain't kidding about making pickups as a business. I am really struggling right now to rethink everything I do to make it more profitable. I have some real bad tax problems and lawyers are making me do profit and loss reports and had to do one for the pickup biz. I was rather shocked at how little money is clear profit in the end. Basically selling pickups pays for making more pickups. I think to really make money at this you gotta have a real good salesman out front on the phone every day, and a room full of minimum wage workers cranking out products that use the cheapest materials and hopefully have some kind of useable tones. the guys who seem to make money at it are way more workaholic than I am, and I sometimes scare myself by working 6 days a week 14 hours or more a day and then wonder why I feel like crap at the jams when I take a nite off.

I don't know what I'm going to do, stick with the word of mouth mystique that keeps growing, try doing the wholesaling thing, hook up with a partner and try to figure out how to make much bigger money, or maybe actually quit at some point and write an advanced pickup making book or something. Anyone who thinks this is an easy way to get rich is nuts. One certainly will never know it all and knowledge is key doing this, and most of it you get by trying crazy experiments and winding alot of pickups that fill up every nook and cranny in the shop , jeez I have all kinds of odd pickups laying around here that didn't cut it......