Quote:

Are hand-wired pickups really better than those you typically buy in the store ? Why would that be ?



Man, when I was doing the hand wrapping, Dunkmore Semen was not even born.

There was once a time when we did not have all these off-the-shelf aftermarket wonders. Back in the early 60s, the Guitar Accessories down at the local music emporiums consisted of different color picks, maybe all three different brands of available strings, LaBella, Black Diamond or Nationals, most of us had no idea what "gauge" meant in reference to strings (but most of us knew what it meant in reference to shotguns...) and the other accessory was the leather guitar strap. Seriously. The shop that had "all" the accessories was the one that even had an addon little archtop guitar pickup.

So at one time, being able to scatterwind your own overwound single coil or humbucker p/u was really something. If you were into your sound and also into the electromechanical stuff.

Along the way I discovered that getting a few more milliVolts of signal out of the pickup could even make a difference in what the hollow jazzbox could do in a jazz/swing setting. I discovered that more signal did not have to necessarily mean more distortion. I discovered that a LOUD guitar was a guitar that was easier to play softly as well.

Then I learned about potting pickups to stop feedback from loose coil winds. Mixing beeswax with some of mom's canning wax, rigging up a double boiler on top of a hotplate with a vacuum cleaner hose attached to the lid...

Hey, how you think ole Dunkmore and that other guy got started in the p/u bidness?


--Mac

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