Broken '78 repair job, pics, cautionary tale
Last week SteveAlysis asked me about fixing a broken '78 he bought off CL for dirt. He decided to send it to me to look at rather than try to do it himself. Once I got it I could see a white wire dangling, but I couldn't tell if it was just pulled from the red, or if it was the coil lead. I hoped for the best.
Errr, nope. Coil lead is cut, damn. I took the coil off and then I noticed the cut windings poking out. This thing is ****ed. Looks like some nub decided to jam a cover that wasn't wide enough on it. Awful expensive pickup to do something like that on.
LOL:
I unwound probably at least a hundred or so turns before I got the broken wires all out and it tested again. Every time I came to a break it was fun finding the right end again. The wad of hair from the sink drain is pickup wire:
My method of stripping PE, folded over fine grit sandpaper. Don't pull or squeeze very hard:
Scotch tape underneath, then over the top, leads soldered to the coil wire:
Recovered with the original coil tape:
Resoldered connections after testing again to make sure I didn't gank the wires while taping, and shrink wrapped them, which is how this should be done in the first place, in my opinion:
Screw coil after rewiring, 4.84:
Slug after rewiring, 4.47K:
Series, 9.25K, all is good:
Retaped with some tape from a donor cheap pickup. This thing is overwound enough and the windings loose enough that the coil wire is exposed in some spots and this could happen again fairly easily, won't happen now.
A couple observations. I've seen it said by SD employees that the 78 doesn't have mismatched coils. As I've suspected by the descriptions of them, this is obviously not true. I unwound this one quite a bit, and the screw coil still measures quite a bit hotter than the slug coil. So much so I even waited for it to cool after handling and everything, still .4K hotter. Explains a lot.
I was resisting the temptation to try it, and I didn't want to waste a set up strings, but I've wanted one for a long time, I've got a hunch it will match up really well with the El Diablo as a neck pickup. So I tell Steve I got it fixed and I'll get it back out to him ASAP and he tells me to keep it!
LOL, HOLY HELL!!! I thought I was doing him a favor and he did me one. Soon will be going into the Kelly XLR, and, as far as I know, will be the first '78 used as a neck pickup. YAY!!!
I hope this rambling nonsense helps someone who's killed a pickup. It's fixable as long as it's not the start side. It is VERY delicate work though. Nothing compared to terminating fiber, but yeah, be very, very careful.
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Originally Posted by xxxplorer
it will sound great as a neck pup but since that one is a trem model it will not line up under the strings at the neck, no biggie to most like me but to some a major no no, dont know where you stand on that cosmetic stuff?
