620 Pickup

[brent]

I noticed last night that the bridge pickup on my 620FG appears to have gone dead.. Anything obvious I should look for, or am I off to the guitar technician?

[brent]

Well, I did some digging and decided to look at the pickups myself. I replaced one pickup when I originally bought the guitar second hand sometime around 1995 as it was dead, and it appears to be the remaining original pickup that isn't working.

So, out with the multimeter, checked this pickup:



seems to be OK as far as I can tell.

and then the other one:



erk.. I don't think that's very good.

hrmm, never realised how much graffiti was on the inside of this guitar:



some of it a bit rude, maybe Gordon Ramsay owned this before I did

not sure what these white dots are inside where the neck pickup goes, any ideas?



There's also this weird black gunk underneath where the bridge lives:



and the back of this bit is just plain nasty!



This isn't quite as bad, but I'd still like to clean it up a bit:



She looks so naked!!!!



Guess I need a new pickup, figure I may as well bite the bullet and replace both with toasters, this is where I figure everyone is going to tell me how impossible to find now So... any leads??

[doctorwho]

Yep, toasters are hard to come by. You might PM Sergio and see if he can rewind your bad pickup.

For cleaning the metal parts, I recommend using Maas ... works great!

I think that the white splotches are just bits of buffing compound. Not sure about ht black stuff.

While you have everything off the guitar, it might be worth giving it the Scratch-X/Zymöl treatment.

I also have a pair of "naked 620s":

620/6 MID

620/12 MID

Their "death sentences" have been suspended ... for the while. [These are the ones I got for the "622/12" doubleneck project, which is still on hold ... obviously!]

[brent]

Is Scratch/X and Zymol available in Australia?

I would like to clean it up whilst it is disassembled

[doctorwho]

Howard, Darren, Greg R., or Ron V. might know ...

[brent]

I had polished it once before with Carnauba Wax (however it's spelt)

but with the recent house move I don't know what happened to the wax!

[doctorwho]

I'm PM-ing some of the cast of characters as we speak ... er, write! (one mentioned won't hobnob with us statesiders ... just kidding, Greg! )

[ozover50]

Hi Brent.

Meguiar's Scratch-X should be found at any decent auto accessories outlet - it comes in a black tube and will probably cost you around $20.

Zymol cleaner/wax is a different story because there are very few stockists in Australia. Darren Trott found a bottle for me in an Autobarn store here in Melbourne - Mentone, in fact. Apparently the manager there is keen on the product and stocks it whenever possible. They may be worth a call. I think I paid around $50 for the bottle.

The other possibility is Zenti, who stock Zymol products also but according to their web site they are out of stock at present:

http://www.zenti.com.au/products.html?c ... c=Zenti018

The stuff is pretty popular with show and shine freaks, so if there are any car clubs in your area they may be able to help. A lot of crash repairers use their other products so it may be worth contacting a few of them. They at least may know who the distributor is so you could contact them.

Hope this helps!

[gregga41]

I'm PM-ing some of the cast of characters as we speak ... er, write! (one mentioned won't hobnob with us statesiders ... just kidding, Greg! )

What????

[doctorwho]

Just kidding, Greg ... I was taking a pot shot at not being able to PM you! (not a problem!)

[gregga41]

It's all good Gary!
I've got PMs from other forumites, so it must be working, or were they through the email link?

[doctorwho]

It was when I tried to add your user ID to the To: list, it came back that PM was not available to yours. Must have been a glitch.