The luthier did something to my pickups on a Sterling axis

[gardo]

 

You stop it too!

 

 

I guess I like frustration

[catscurlyear]

 

I wanna see what he can do with a soldering iron

 

well to keep up form, i presume it will be broke.

[daddymack]

 

I wanna see what he can do with a soldering iron

 

can't wait to see if he wants to mod that for more output too...

[Danocoustic]

 

can't wait to see if he wants to mod that for more output too...

 

Well...if a 40w iron is sufficient, then a 140w GUN should be better---right?

[PaddyGBarr]

Hey Dano, you're telling folks on another forum you'll be dead in a few days. Is that true? Because you seem to be spending a lot of time discussing trivial matters.

[WRGKMC]

I've converted many standard PAF pickups to 3 or 4 wire. The difficulty depends on the potting and how much tape is used around the two coils.

 

Typically they will connect the two coils together and leave some slack and tape the wires were they were soldered together.

If you can get to that tape joint, you can use a soldering iron tip to get the tape off, then clip the wires to create two separate coils. After that its just a matter of connecting up a 4 or 5 wire cable. Sometimes its best to keep the ground separate if you'll be running coils series parallel or reverse phased so having a 5 conductor can be better then 4.

 

Three wire tapping is the same process except you don't need to clip the two coils apart. You simply solder the third wire to the junction where the two coils are soldered together in series.

 

In all cases, you may have tone or/and loss of signal strength. You're adding additional wire and depending on the grade of wire you can create a decent amount of tone and gain sucking. I'm not sure if this guy removes the coils from the housing, but tracing their exact position with a felt tipped marker can prevent issues there too.

 

If the pickups were potted with wax you have the additional obstacle of getting the coils seated directly on a magnet. A thin weak sound suggests the coils have a gap between them and the magnet or the additional wire added causes caused gain and frequency losses.

 

Without actually seeing what's been done I can only guess. Personally for higher cost and vintage pickups I wouldn't mess with them. The risk of damaging a coil is high and unless you have a coil winding rig it doesn't pay to have most pickups replaced when the cost of a new one is cheaper.

The gains in tone aren't that spectacular either.

 

Personally I'd rather have a little more lead in the pencil and have fewer tones to mess with. If its only being used for recording, fine, load it up with as many options as you want so you can get a wide range of tones.

 

For playing live, simplicity still rules the day. When you have spot lights blinding you on stage you have a hard enough time finding the main toggle switch and volumes. If you have a bunch of aux switches for coil changes things can get real dicey when you're cranking live and accidentally knock those switches. You not only feel like a fool for loosing your sound when performing, there can be a delay getting back to the settings you had.

 

I learned those lessons first hand, long before the internet made it easy to simply google what you want. I did every mod you can think of to pickups and adding active electronics and all that stuff at one time or another. I remember going through a boxes of thousands of different types of caps to find the ideal tones only to wind up right back where I began using the same values. Its a change of pace if your amp has limited tones and you lack the pedals for all that. Floor pedals have gotten so much better I don't bother messing with the guitar itself much any more beyond making sure its working top notch stock.

 

I suppose the pickup wiring is phase most guitarists go through at some point if only to discover first hand whether it makes as big a deal as many people on line think it does. Somewhere along the way you gain a deep appreciation for how most guitar manufacturers already have the best options available. Its fun learning all those tricks and it can lead to a career in building and repairs if you do the work yourself.

Just remember its the notes that counts the most, not the technology. Some of the best songs written had extremely crude signal chains and this in turn forced the player to be just that much more creative musically.

 

If you get a chance to find them, There are a bunch of great books on guitar electronics. I think I still have one written by Craig who has a forum on this site. It was quite extensive starting off with the simplest of mods right up to the more complex stuff. It would educate you on the best parts to use and how to test things to make sure it was done right, In 50 years of playing I never had anyone work on my instruments, mainly because I could do anything they did and often times many times better.

 

 

 

This is similar to the book I have. https://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Electronics-Musicians-Donald-Brosnac/dp/0711902321 Here's another. https://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Electronics-Understanding-Wiring-Diagrams/dp/0615165419/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=QP99YJBT5ZX1PHQVXWC8 This one covers a good deal of the basics too. https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guitar-Repair-Hideo-Kamimoto/dp/0825601568/ref=pd_sim_14_4/140-3122674-5187461?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0825601568&pd_rd_r=707d70d7-2490-408c-9d8b-ad69bfc8cae5&pd_rd_w=GUCFI&pd_rd_wg=CoUrZ&pf_rd_p=90485860-83e9-4fd9-b838-b28a9b7fda30&pf_rd_r=QP99YJBT5ZX1PHQVXWC8&psc=1&refRID=QP99YJBT5ZX1PHQVXWC8#reader_0825601568