Re-winding pickups?

[madanglian]

I have an old Maxon pickup that is not working very well.

Output is very low and the DC resistance is about 70 ohms. Reseach suggests the resistance should be 7000-8000 ohms.
This suggests to me that somebody has had a go re-winding it, but they've used wire that's too thick, and not enough turns.

I'm wondering if anybody knows what gauge wire is normally used for pickup coil windings, and how many turns are typical?

Is PU rewinding something that can be done by hand, or does it need a machine to do it properly/ at a practical speed?

Cheers

[icastle]

[quote name='madanglian' post='1364210' date='Sep 6 2011, 04:01 PM']I have an old Maxon pickup that is not working very well.

Output is very low and the DC resistance is about 70 ohms. Reseach suggests the resistance should be 7000-8000 ohms.
This suggests to me that somebody has had a go re-winding it, but they've used wire that's too thick, and not enough turns.[/quote]

Possibly, though it's probably more likely that part of the coil has become damaged and the windings are shorting out.

[quote name='madanglian' post='1364210' date='Sep 6 2011, 04:01 PM']I'm wondering if anybody knows what gauge wire is normally used for pickup coil windings, and how many turns are typical?[/quote]

Somewhere in the region of 42 gauge wire seems to be the most common.
The number of windings depends on the size of the core, so not easy to quantify.

[quote name='madanglian' post='1364210' date='Sep 6 2011, 04:01 PM']Is PU rewinding something that can be done by hand, or does it need a machine to do it properly/ at a practical speed?[/quote]

It's usually done using a motorised machine that keeps track of the number of rotations (and therefore windings).
It must be able to wind them by hand (they must have been able to make them before they made machines to do it!) but keeping track of the wind count and ensuring that each winding stays parallel to the previous one could be very time consuming.

[JTUK]

I'd give Arron Armstrong or Wizard a call.

The gauge can be variable as can the winds..I think that is the art of a pickup maker.
I would think something like 4000 winds would be ballpark ..although that depends on the gauge, so you need a mechanism that can do that accurately and does not fatigue.

[SS73]

Youtube it, watch some guys and make your own mind up.

[madanglian]

Thanks for your replies

[gelfin]

Try this guy. I've heard great things about his pickups.

[url="http://www.shedpickups.com/"]http://www.shedpickups.com/[/url]

[GarethFlatlands]

Bulldog rewind pickups for £20 a coil, heard nothing but good things about them. I just bought some replacement jazzmaster pickups from mojo pickups who does rewinds but have't installed them yet so can't comment on their quality.

[janmaat]

the old fender ones were wound up until "full" so it is only recent that there is consciousness about that. if you manage to fix it onto something that would turn it those 4000 times, you could wind it yourself - however, probably better to let somebody do it who has the equipment & experience.