Waxing Guitar Pickup windings- would this way work?

[mmschweizer]

Hello to all from the newbie. I am always looking for ways to do things different in hopes of also doing them for the better. I'm preparing to rewind my telecaster 52 reissue bridge pickup. I had this idea that I thought I'd run past you folks. What if after each few layers of wraps I took a brush and brushed on a tiny layer of hot wax. Then when the whole thing is done I would have the wires completely embedded in wax. Time consuming, yes, but for one-off pickups might be worth it. The question I have is would this enhance tone, or would it create microphonic feedback? My idea is that it would allow the wires to be separated by the wax and give just a little in the wax- just enough to enhance the tone, but not enough to cause microphonics.

I am no expert, and I'm new at this stuff, so please respect that it took bravery to ask what might turn out to be a silly question, but hey, if nobody ever asked questions we'd still be plucking cat gut!!!

Is it better to have all the wires touching, or is the idea of having some wax insulator between the wires in tiny layers viable?

Here (hopefully) is a picture of my hotrod Telecaster. The idea behind this one was to mimmick a 50's hot rod- black and lots of chrome.

[EffectsGuru]

What your talking about doing, doesn't seem to have any advantage over dipping them, I would say why bother? It's more time consuming, and probably wouldn't work as well. It's great to be creative and try new things just don't lose sight of the goal... a quick way to effectively eliminate microphonic issues with the pickup, and that being said, there isn't a more efficient way than just dunking the whole pickup in a meted pot of wax.

[mmschweizer]

Cool, thanks for the response. It was a thought, but seems it's just a long way to achieve the same simple thing.

[jrfrond]

The name escapes me, but there is at least one pickup manufacturer that mists a solvent on the windings as the coil is being wound. The Polysol insulation on the magnet wire dissolves slightly and cures to the surrounding layers of Polysol-insulated wire. This insures a solid coil all the way to the core. Wax dipping, unless done as a vacuum process, does not penetrate more than a few layers in.

[Steve Conner]

I'd be worried that the layers of wax would take up a lot of room in there, so you wouldn't be able to get enough turns on.