B/H Round Table & Misc

[copperheadroads]

I got a return email from Josh at Remington.
They will update the site to list wire spool weight of each spool for sale.
This is the new site.
Remington Industries
I notice they now sell HFV wire.
Also they are showing HPN in a Red color now.
They also are selling hookup wire.
If you need 28 gauge hookup wire for humbuckers they now sell it.
T

I got quote for some of there hookup wire a couple months ago ,I kind of forgot about it

[big_teee]

I got quote for some of there hookup wire a couple months ago ,I kind of forgot about it

Next time I order wire, I may get some 28 guage wire.
It would be handy to have on hand.

[big_teee]

I started a one question basic poll.
The purpose of this is to try to figure out How the Polling option works.
Feel free to vote, it will be open for today and tomorrow.
I think it will be fun to do polls in the future to see what all each other like.
Thanks,
T

[copperheadroads]

ok I will give my 3 cents worth

[SonnyW]

Besides yacking about solder I actually got some work done today. Here is the latest rewind. A pair of fairly rare 3x3 Gibson patent sticker mini-humbuckers. Probably around 1964-5 or so.

I have had these in for a repair for a while, and just finished them tonight. Since they are kind of rare, I thought I would give a little rundown on all the fun details of the repairs over the last couple of weeks. Most of that was waiting on supplies to come in.

My customer sent me these to be rewound. He said that he had played in a band for many years and the lead guitar that he worked with had died and willed him his guitars. He found these in the case of a Silvertone 1446 "Chris Isaacs" model, they were the original pickups and he wanted to restore them. He is also restoring the guitar. The problem was that the original owner had taken them apart long ago and for some unknown reason had cut off the lead wire inside the pickups. He had also removed the magnets and untaped the coils, breaking some wires in the process. The new owner didn't know why that was done. All but one of the coils had some problems. But when I got them I was able to repair the breaks on all but one coil, which I had to rewind because the start wire was broken off under the windings.

Here's a little history on these pickups. Rick T. please jump in here if you have any corrections or more info on this. As far as I know, these were one of the few if not the only pickups that Gibson sold to Harmony for the Silvertone 1446 guitar that Harmony made for Sears-Roebuck. One story is there was a trade involving some wood parts. They are patent sticker mini-humbuckers, but instead of the normal configuration, they have a 3x3 polepiece layout like the wide range humbucker that Seth later designed for Fender. The 1446 is the only Silvertone or Harmony guitar that ever had these. I don't think they were ever used on any Gibson guitars in this configuration. So they are kind of rare.

The customer wanted me to restore them to working condition keeping them as original as possible, except he asked if I could gold plate them. I tried to talk him out of that, but later I eventually gave in and plated them. That is a whole other story. OK so here are some of the things I found out. I was able to repair one of them which had loose magnet wires but had the ends intact, and reconnected the ends and soldered on a new lead wire, and it read 7.03 K ohms. The windings looked like #42PE. It was 3.25 Henrys. The magnet had lost most of its charge. More on that later. The other pickup was in worse shape, I was able to find the break and splice in a short piece to fix one of the coils, but the other coil was a hopeless case. So I very carefully unwound 1674 turns of it by hand. The wire diameter was .0027, and the TPL varied but averaged about 93. I weighed everything to within one gram. Per the weight and wire tables I calculated it had originally had 5301 turns. Then as a check, I measured the bobbin core and put that into the coil estimator, and with a little calculating came up with 5344 turns. That was pretty close so I rewound the coil with 5350 turns of #42 PE, to the average of 93 TPL with my cnc winder. Then I reconnected everything and gave that one a new lead wire.

Now came a dilemma, the magnets had been left stuck together in the bottom of a box for years according to the owner. and he didn't know how they were supposed to go in. I measured the gauss in six places on each magnet then re-charged them. One magnet had lost 60% of it's original charge and the other had lost 62%. I think they are A5. I googled everywhere and finally found where Curtis Novak had rewound one, and in the photo of his notes was able to see where he had noted the magnet orientation. So that took care of the magnets. Once assembled I was getting about 160 gauss or so at the polepieces. The pickups were working again, and had output of 142, and 151 ma on my test rig where 100ma is a standard Strat output. the resonant peak measured about 8.8kHz on one and 6.2 on the other.

But the owner still wanted them gold plated. Evidently everything else on the restored Silvertone had been changed to gold. At first I thought it would be easy just to get some no holes gold mini-humbucker covers and drill them and put those on and leave the originals alone. But these and probably I'd guess all of the vintage mini's are not the same dimensions as the current models. I had asked the owner to send along one of the mounting rings. It is a good thing I did. A modern mini humbucker cover wouldn't fit inside it because these are about 1/8 inch shorter on the longest dimension.

So I tried to talk the owner into sending the original covers out for tank gold plating. Eventually that didn't come to pass because of minimum orders at all the places he had inquired. I had some experience with chroming, and had a Caswell brush plating kit with most of the various plating alloys, and a really nice constant current power supply, but these were rare vintage parts. And the owner was nervous about leaving the covers off for plating and had no other sources, so after exhausting all the possibilites I agreed to try to gold plate them on a best efforts basis. Besides, in my kit was some gold solution that needed to be used before it expired or it would go to waste. I assumed that the covers were nickel silver and chromed. So I ordered some chrome stripper. Meanwhile, I plated some mounting screws and a few of the polepieces. Those came out great. When the stripper came in it didn't work as expected. You are supposed to get a yellow residue and when there is no more yellow on a clean gauze bandage on the brush plating wand, you know you have removed all the chrome and are down to the nickel undercoat. Well there was never any yellow residue. And they didn't seem to be polished nickel plate, because they didn't respond to nickel activator. I tried plating one with a copper then a nickel layer and the gold that I had. The results were not great, and the color was uneven. The copper went on fine, but the nickel didn't want to go on top of that. Plus the gold plating part seemed to take forever. So based on all that and some other stuff I eventually decided the covers had to be made of stainless steel. I ordered some activator for gold on stainless substrate and some of the more concentrated "fast gold" (way expensive). I didn't need much of it and I hope I will have a use for the rest of it before it too expires, but it worked like a charm. IMO, the covers are definitely made of polished stainless.
So here are some pics of all of this.

here are the bobbins of one of them, note the half slugs.
this is what the baseplate looked like - notice two hardwood spacers, and one whittled down to make room for the screws. Notice the size difference compared to a modern Mojo baseplate
bottom side of baseplate showing pat sticker
as repaired, before plating.
24k gold plating done, and ready to ship back to customer.

[big_teee]

Haven't done much winding this week, been busy working on the back 40.
Got a call today from my Tele Player Danny.
He has a 72 Ash Tele, the Signature Bender Tele, and the Esquire with the neck and middle hidden pickups.
Plus some others that he has sold, all with my Pickups.
He just purchased another Bender Guitar, it is a 76 Fender Tele, with Both a B, and G Bender Mechanism installed.
At the present it has 3 EMG pickups, a EMG Tele Style Bridge P/U, a Strat style EMG in the Middle, and a Tele Style EMG Neck P/U.
He said he will give them a try, and maybe Later try some of My Blades in it.
I'll let you know How it Transpires.
T

[big_teee]

Everyone must be busy Water Ski-ing and cooking Hot Dogs?
Not much activity on the forum as of late?
T

[SonnyW]

No water ski-ing for me, have been pretty busy in my shop (at least for an old guy like me).
Just finished a wiring job and a setup on a very nice 1960 Strat. That was fun. The customer picked it up an hour ago. I put a photo and a little writeup about it on my shop's facebook page. It might be worth a look. Also delivered another repair job on a Yamaha strat-ish clone yesterday and several parts orders over the internet earlier in the week.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=1&theater

I've got some maintenance chores to do around the place this weekend, but next up is a vintage tele from the same customer to do a setup and some other work on, and I have several amps to work on and one pedal to repair, and a mandolin to set up to keep me busy next week. I have been working on a request for a design on a Johnny Smith type mini-humbucker pickup, but it will have to wait until I get the backlog of other jobs in the shop worked down a little. That's about all the pickup making that is in store for me at the moment.

[big_teee]

Hi Everyone:
I just rewired a Squier Tele bass.
Replaced the Pots and switch.
It has a J Bridge Pickup, and a Fender Wide Range Type Humbucker in the Neck.
http://www.musicradar.com/news/bass/...-basses-556154
It is about the size of a Gibson EB0 Mudbucker.
Has Anyone seen the neck pickup apart, or rewound one?
It measured 22k DCR.
The neck P/U is a bit dark for my taste, and was wondering if I could rewind it?
The bass is nice and light, and has a medium 32 inch scale.
Seemed to have great balance.
T

[copperheadroads]

Hi Everyone:
I just rewired a Squier Tele bass.
Replaced the Pots and switch.
It has a J Bridge Pickup, and a Fender Wide Range Type Humbucker in the Neck.
Squier unveils two Vintage Modified Telecaster basses | Squier unveils two Vintage Modified Telecaster basses | MusicRadar
It is about the size of a Gibson EB0 Mudbucker.
Has Anyone seen the neck pickup apart, or rewound one?
It measured 22k DCR.
The neck P/U is a bit dark for my taste, and was wondering if I could rewind it?
The bass is nice and light, and has a medium 32 inch scale.
Seemed to have great balance.
T

I have done make overs on the RI wide range pickups but they never read 22k
rewinding don't really help ,It's not a real WR pickup

[big_teee]

I have done make overs on the RI wide range pickups but they never read 22k
rewinding don't really help ,It's not a real WR pickup

It had fender ingraved on the cover.
This was a Bass pickup.
Two pole screws on top and 2 pole screws on the bottom.
T

[copperheadroads]

It had fender ingraved on the cover.
This was a Bass pickup.
Two pole screws on top and 2 pole screws on the bottom.
T

Me bad ,I guess it's late & bedtime .
I thought it was an electric guitar .........

[mcgruff]

I wonder if someone can mark my "homework"... I'm going to build a simple little winder using a computer fan as the spinny thing in the middle. The fan says 12V 0.12amps on the side - hence I'm assuming its resistance is 100ohms. Am I right in thinking I can wire this up in series with an old 500k guitar volume pot to create a speed controller? I need to keep the speed down to about 200rpm since my DIY counter (the old calculator trick) can't cope with anything faster.

[ReWind]

McGruff - I doubt a computer fan of 12v/.12A would be able to turn a bobbin, especially one with magnets or pole pieces installed, especially with wire mass and wire tension applied.

…unless it turns very fast and you are planning to gear it down to 200RPM? In that case, I could be wrong.

Try a local thrift store or salvation army and look for used/broken cordless electric tools. You might even leave your name with local pawn shops who would otherwise turn away a cordless drill that won't hold a charge, is missing the battery, or won't power up, but if they know you're willing to pay $20 for it, they might buy it for $5 for you. A cordless drill would give you lots of winder parts, including a higher torque DC motor, speed controller, gearing, and a chuck. You might even be able to use your computer power supply for it. Just an idea. Happy building!

[ReWind]

It had fender ingraved on the cover.
This was a Bass pickup.
Two pole screws on top and 2 pole screws on the bottom.
T

If I'm thinking of the same RI pickup, it should be just a regular humbucker with a bar magnet inside and could very likely benefit from a rewind. I would lean towards thicker wire and lower turn counts, personally. Formvar, if you're feeling wild?