Could you 'unwind' the high gain pups to lower the o

anonymous · Post by **anonymous** » Mon Sep 30, 2002 6:04 pm

i am finding the high gain pups don't have the same jangle and have too much..well..gain!

Would removing some of the windings on a high gain pup be a viable option or should I just steer way clear of this?

It would be a lot cheaper than importing a pair of the toaster pups into Australia.

Your comments??

cooperman · Post by **cooperman** » Tue May 20, 2003 3:27 am

I have owned a 330 fitted with hi-gains since 1985 into a 1961 AC30 and had never been able to get the jangle until now!
After reading lots of posts about vintage toasters wound to 7.4k I decided to unwind the neck hi-gain on the grounds that if I messed up I could order a vintage toaster to try. The pickup started off at 22K and after about two hours and removing about 2/3 of the wire I ended up at just under 8K. I plugged it into the normal input of the AC30 and guess what, I Can Explain! at last.

If you are prepared to buy new pickups if you mess up then I say go for it. Be careful though the wire is thin. I've only done the neck pickup up to now and that sounds great. If you do both then let me know how that sounds.

The only other modification to the guitar is that I had previously added the 4n7 cap in series with the bridge pickup. This made a subtle improvement to the tone.

rickcrazy · Post by **rickcrazy** » Tue May 20, 2003 11:18 am

22K?? Wow!
I'm sure the bridge pickup ohm rating is much lower, though. Probably in the 8.0/12.0 K range.

johnhall · Post by **johnhall** » Tue May 20, 2003 11:37 am

David, I think there's a good possibility your ohmmeter is off- I don't think 22K worth of wire will fit on that bobbin, at least not the stuff we use.

But I guess the end result, the sound, is all that really matters.

cooperman · Post by **cooperman** » Wed May 21, 2003 2:39 am

Thanks all for the interest. The ohmmeter is a Fluke 77 I use at work. I'll check the cal but I'm almost certain it is spot on as I use it every day. Is 22k such a big surprise John? Its serial number ZI 2413. I'll measure the neck pickup tonight.

rickcrazy · Post by **rickcrazy** » Wed May 21, 2003 3:15 am

'ZI' dates to September 1986.
And I believe that last sentence should read "I'll measure the bridge pickup tonight.".

cooperman · Post by **cooperman** » Wed May 21, 2003 3:23 am

correct on both counts Sergio, I checked and I bought the guitar in 87. I'm not really awake today

cooperman · Post by **cooperman** » Wed May 21, 2003 8:12 am

I've checked the meter and the bridge pickup. Unbelievably the bridge pickup is only 6K so I wont be unwinding this one.
I am now a little confused as to why there is so much diference between the neck and bridge pickups. If they have the same number of turns and wire, 44 guage I believe, then they should be the same.
However, since the resistance of the pickup will be inversely proportional to the square of the wire diameter it is possible that variations in the thickness of the wire could cause large variations between pickups. This is possibly more likely with very thin wire such as the 44 guage used. Any way an approximate 50% variation in wire thickness could cause the 6K to 22K variation I have measured.

360dave · Post by **360dave** » Wed May 21, 2003 10:12 am

David...I bet the neck pup was high resistance open. The resistance of #44 copper wire is 2593 ohms per 1000 feet....soooo...22x2593=57,046 feet of wire....I don't think so.
To compare...a 6K pup would have about 15,558 feet of #44 on it.....jeeeze, that's a lot of wire!!

rickcrazy · Post by **rickcrazy** » Wed May 21, 2003 10:20 am

The variation was/is deliberate. The idea behind it is, quite simply, to assign the neck pickup to BASS and the bridge pickup to TREBLE, and a neck pickup wound to 22K and a bridge pickup wound to 6K WILL certainly achieve this. Alas, under these conditions the neck pickup also tends to be much hotter than the bridge one. But that's another story.

360dave · Post by **360dave** » Wed May 21, 2003 10:44 am

Sergio...if the variation was/is deleberate then your theory is backward. The hotter pup should be in the bridge position, not the neck as in David's instrument. I don't know for sure but I'll bet you my next set of worn out Black Diamond's that 57,000 feet of wire will not fit on that pup!! When David said he removed 2/3 of the wire, he probably removed the bad section. Copper wire is pretty expensive so if it really had 57,000 feet of copper wire on it I imagine JH would be concerned about the expense. I bet he is concerned at 15,000 feet!!
From an electrical standpoint, that's my opinion.

cooperman · Post by **cooperman** » Wed May 21, 2003 10:52 am

Sergio, The neck pickup was always very very HOT compared to the bridge and also muddy, not in a bad way, a bit like an ES335 and great for the heavy stuff but I'm much happier now with my jangle.

David, yes that is an awful lot of wire but I can assure you that the pickup was not open. I regularly checked the resistance as I unwound. It started at 22K and gradually decreased as I unwound it. I didnt count the turns accurately as I removed them but I'm quite sure I removed a few thousand, maybe five to ten. I can only think that the wire must have been on the thin side. In case you all think I'm mad, I am an electronic design engineer by day. Cheers all and thanks again for the interest.

rickcrazy · Post by **rickcrazy** » Wed May 21, 2003 12:06 pm

360dave: indeed, "the hotter pickup should be in the bridge position". Tell RIC that. On a 1989 360 I once owned, the neck pickup was crammed full of wire, unlike the bridge one. The guitar neck pickup on my 1979 4080 also has much more wire than the bridge one. So, the idea is clearly to make the neck pickup sound bassy or, at any rate, muddy, and to make the bridge pickup sound clear, in addition to trebly which results from being close to the bridge.
As for the wire gauge, it is #44, same as it ever was.

360dave · Post by **360dave** » Wed May 21, 2003 12:15 pm

Sergio...yeah...it's weird...I don't understand it. (actually, perhaps I DO understand it)

cooperman · Post by **cooperman** » Thu May 22, 2003 5:46 am

One more point on the subject of wire. I've done some checking up on wire guages and tolerances. I've noticed that two factors combined could cause the wild resistance variations we see. Firstly if the factory or suppliers ever became confused between SWG 44 gauge and AWG 44 gauge that would account for huge differences as swg is nomially 32 thou and AWG is 20 thou. This possible mistake coupled with the natural tolerance applied to these thin gauges, about 20% would do it