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Broadcaster and Telecaster rhythm pickups are not wax potted, but were treated with a potting solution to protect the coil from damage and give mechanical stability. After the coil and bobbins are potted and let dry, the cover is then put in place and the 3 tabs on the cover are mechanically bent over the…

Inner Coil Pole Corrosion happens when the magnet rod polepiece on your single coil pickups starts to rust causing the insulation to break down inside the coil. If the insulation (Formvar or Plain Enamel) breaks down, the exposed copper wire can oxidize and eventually break inside the coil. This usually happens from excessive moisture inside…

Make sure you remove all the bobbin hardware such as studs, screw or various polepieces. The best way I found to get out broken screws in humbucking bobbins was to carefully heat the broken screw from the bottom with a pointed soldering iron (not gun) to soften the plastic around the threads. From the top…

First off I would try to see how many turns were broken. If you can remove a few turns to the break, lightly sand the magnet wire and solder the finish lead on and test. If the beginning wire is broken that will be a lot more difficult. When you need to rewind it and…

Winding with too much tension on the magnet wire can cause extreme side pressure on the magnets as they are wound. This can cause the magnet to crack. When the rod magnets are assembled into the flatwork to make a bobbin, the arbor or force used to press the magnets into the fixture could crack…

The majority of pickups that don’t work can usually be repaired and restored if you take the time and find a qualified repairman. Many times there are cold solder joints that can be carefully heated, broken magnet wire can be spliced if the outer coil is broken. You don’t always need your pickups rewound –…

There are many things that can cause a pickup to be inoperative. Pickups don’t always have to be used and abused for them to fail. Here are some things to check. Broken magnet wire from the beginning eyelet or pigtail*: On Fender style pickups the beginning magnet wire is connected to one of the eyelets….

1. Damaged coil. Broken magnet wire Damage to a single turn of magnet wire will result in failure in the pickup working. You may get a thin faint signal to the amplifier but if you turn the tone control down for the particular pickup and you have no sound, that is usually a sure sign…

There could be several things wrong and first are you sure that the magnet wire is 42 gauge? Sometimes if you buy surplus magnet wire the label might be wrong and that’s why it’s surplus! If the wire is old the insulation might be brittle and flake off as you are winding. This can happen…

I would try to find the orientation of the existing magnetic field in the pickup by using a gauss meter or determine alignment and polarity of the magnet or magnets used. I would remagnetize the pickup with an opposite polarity it originally had. This would change the polarity magnetically and make it in phase with…