epiphone les paul signature electar pickups

[e515062c]

Picasa Web Albums - Carl - Electar pickup

Follow the link to some photos of this pickup. I had to remove the entire wiring harness to replace the output jack. This is my guitar. I have not seen pickups constructed like this before. Can anyone on this board offer an explanation of the construction and design of this pickup. I know it is a low impedance pickup and cloned after the Gibson version supposedly designed by Les Paul. They work fine, but I am concerned what to do for replacement or repair if they ever fail. Fortunately this time it was only the output jack.

Carl

[David Schwab]

They are low impedance and connect to a transformer. There's no reason why they would fail. Pickups last a long time.

Output jacks fail because they are mechanical and wear out.

You should have been able to remove the jack and pass it through an F hole, without removing everything. It's not much fun.

I didn't know Epi made a guitar version of the LP signature... just the bass.

[e515062c]

Thanks for your response. I certainly hope they never fail, they sound great, and ridiculously low noise. I was just trying to obtain info on them in case they ever needed a rewind. I can't tell much about their construction because the coils and magnet are covered in epoxy. I had to remove the jack and all the pots to get enough slack in the harness to get the jack close to the f hole. When I got it there it would not move further. The wires to the transformer were tethering it so I had to remove the pickup to access the transformer and unattach it to eventually get the whole harness out through the bridge pickup cutout. Epiphone made this guitar for only a short period. It is a fairly faithful replica of the original. The neck and body appear to be mahogony and the top is maple. It is from the Peerless factory in Korea. I wonder who wound the pickups for them?

[David Schwab]

There's not much you can do as far as a rewind on those, since they are encapsulated. Bill Lawrence designed the rectangular signature pickups.

Someone posted this one day:

"The Modern Era of the Les Paul Legacy, 1968 - 2008" by Robb Lawrence

...in the book Bill Lawrence is quoted with respect to the Les Paul Signature pickup, "I used fewer low-impedance turns, what you call 42-gauge wire ... the normal humbucker with two bars in. ... I wound them to low impedance - on that pickup, about 2,200 ... due to the particular transformer, I had to change the number of turns instead of using it with a low-impedance amp."

There's a few pickup makers in Korea.