A Gold Foil Pickup is not for everyone or for every situation. They are low powered with no shortage of high end.
This Gold Foil Pickup came to me with the coil reading ‘open circuit’ on the meter so it was likely it would need re-winding. It’s a Tokai from the 1960’s
You never know what you’ll find inside these.
Under all that gold and chrome there is a very scruffy little coil wound directly around a ceramic magnet. There isn’t a bobbin which makes it rather tricky to work with.
I never just re-wind a pickup without testing all the connections first just in case it was just a dry joint. This time it paid off, one of the connections had failed. The repair turned out to be fairly simple.
Pickup Repairs
Pickup re-winds are a big part of what I do.
In the early days back in the 1990’s I re-wound a lot of pickups. It was an invaluable introduction into the inner workings of electric guitar pickups.
Back then there were a lot of 60’s and 70’s quality pickups around to practice on, they weren’t as valuable or sought after as they are now. Because of that I got to see how pickups were put together in the old days, the construction, the potting material…
There wasn’t much information available so experimentation was the only way to learn. I made so many bad pickups back then but made a note of every single one, how I’d wound it and what the result was. By using that method I got closer and closer to what I wanted. I also made a note of all the re-winds I did and the original spec if I could get it. I’m still writing in that note book to this day and it’s becoming a fantastic reference tool when I receive an unusual pickup repair from a customer.
I still really enjoy re-winding pickups, I think I have a strong instinct to fix things. I would much rather repair a faulty old pickup than sell a customer a new one. Sometimes, of course, the customer wants a different sound that the old pickup can’t give them and a new pickup is the way to go.
Please feel free to contact me about any faulty pickup by email (mrglynspickups@gmail.com) or by phone (021 912 678).
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcDggiRTQyFec5KAVHsC2xA
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