Oil City Pickups ... building the raffle prize pickups.

OilCityPickups

I thought I would start this thread so that the lucky prize winners of both the special engraved Anniversary Triple Blues set, and the 'custom designed pickup set could have a perminant record of their pickup's construction ... in words and pictures.Please bear with me as this will be a bit labour intensive, and may include some video as well ... as I'm testing out the new Oil City film and audio equipment (for those interested ... a Canon DSLR rig with Saramonic audio preamp).
Watch this space!
Ash

OilCityPickups

Cracking on with @tone1 s pickup prize set. Here we have the flatwork cut and engraved ... a gap left on the right for the all important 'red label' that tells you it's an anniversary re issue.


Here I've been grinding the magnet bevels ... in common with all masterwound the magnets are hand beveled and polished ...
bevels put on the reverse end of the magnets too for simple insertion into the flatwork.
The Anniversary Triple Blues use a special stagger pattern ... no dropped B string pole ... and a curve that follows the fingerboard radius. 


Assembled and glued bobbins... these will be nitro coated before having the eyelets installed ... saves a lot of cleaning up after!

Neatly laqured bobbin.
Nitro laquer on the bobbins insulates the core wire from the magnets ... but also gives a nice gloss to the bobbins and helps fix the flatwork in place ... in addition to the cyanoacrylate I use around the magnet/flatwork joins to seal and keep out the playing sweat.

We now use our own laser cut tool-less faceplates to hold the bobbins secure during winding. The winding machine manufacturers didn't really think through the fixing issue ... but a bit of CAD design ... and firing up our laser ... job done.

And wound ... next to fit the hookup wires and tap the height adjustment holes ...
To be continued ...

tone1

@TheGuitarWeasel  Thank you so much! 
I think my shite playing will sound a lot less shite now...can't wait to fit them in my Strat..Time to fire up the old soldering iron.

OilCityPickups

tone1 said:

@TheGuitarWeasel  Thank you so much! 
I think my shite playing will sound a lot less shite now...can't wait to fit them in my Strat..Time to fire up the old soldering iron.

They'll be quite special ... I promise :-)

OilCityPickups

Next part then ... 

The hookup wires are soldered to the eyelets ... and pulled tight

While on the subject of eyelets ... as we laser cut our own flatwork, we have a choice of the eyelet type and material we use. 
Most of the commercially available pre-made flatwork comes with somewhat oversize aluminium eyelets. This isn't period correct for many early pickups, and also takes solder less well than pure 'bright' brass. I can't stand the aluminium and order in brass eylets by the 10,000! 

These are then set in place with a StewMac eyelet setting tool from the US. See below ... and five or six stout hammer blows!

Pickups waiting in the potting bath queue ... all lead wires attached. The middle pickup is RWRP and you can see it's leads are attached the other way. We 'true reverse wind' all  RWRP bobbins on single coils. Some companies wind all three in the same direction to save time in resetting the machine, however this puts the hot 'output end' of the coil up against the magnets on the RWRP pickup, and can lead to 'pickup killing' shorts as the unit ages. We put the winder into reverse gear and do things old school :-)

And in the wax bath ... these get a minimal pot for a 'live' feel.

More shortly :-)

tone1

I almost feel guilty for winning them

OilCityPickups

Lol .... I love building these ... they sum up five years of striving to get things 'bang on' right. 

tone1

I'd better start learning sum blooze licks...They look like a work of art..I will be proud to fit them into my No.1 Strat 

OilCityPickups

They were designed for that classic Stevie Ray sound ... huge 'piano' bass tones ... shimmery clean 'Hendrix' style rhythum tones ... and a biting scream when driven hard ... especially with a Tube Screamer. 

OilCityPickups

And so to finnish off ... potted, labeled and tested ...

And in the boxes with the earliest Oil City graphics.

Glad to be of help in raising money for a good cause with these ... they will be in the post Monday Tony, ENJOY!!!
And as a reminder: there are still several more of these unique re issues for sale ... at a special forum price .... before the limited edition runs out. :-)

tone1

Ooh...the anticipation is too much to bear..they look stunning.. Thanks very much 

rsvmark

Lordy. If they sound anywhere close to the build quality you are one lucky @tone1

tone1

rsvmark said:

Lordy. If they sound anywhere close to the build quality you are one lucky @tone1

Haha, I always said I was born lucky...I will post some pics of the fitting process 

tone1

Many thanks to @TheGuitarWeasel ;the Pickups have arrived!! I'll have to pluck up courage and crack on with installing them now....Pics to follow

tone1

Well I plucked up courage and with a recently acquired Mint green Scratchplate thanks to ( @Majorscale ) I popped them in to my Belt Sander Special 

Now, the Lollar Blackfaces were pretty damn good so I knew it wouldn't be drastic sound change....First impressions...well for a start  I had to put new strings on, which wound me up as a set normally last me a year  and it's only June...Seriously..They sound wonderful, I noticed immediately that the tone controls actually do a lot more to the sound..The bridge isn't as ice picky as the Lollars. I haven't adjusted pickup heights too much yet, just proud of the pickguard..

http://i1373.photobucket.com/albums/ag391/tonysmyth1/Mobile Uploads/08F00289-1479-403B-81CF-F82D5FC37939_zpsjwzs5w8q.jpg

tone1

Out with the old...
http://i1373.photobucket.com/albums/ag391/tonysmyth1/Mobile Uploads/4E0E660A-9495-4DEE-86AA-0CA5CE8431B2_zpsdek23in0.jpg

tone1

Haven't really put it down yet...all positions of the 5 way are mega usable. Bridge on its own is a Strat position I rarely use..the bridge pickup on the Oil City's is ace on its own, almost honky in its sound. Neck pickup is just what Ash described SRV to a tee. Even middle on its own is bloody ace!
My Strat is my number 1 (as nobody would want it) and now with these personilsed pickups it's a keeper for life.
What's people's opinion on the mint green scratchplate with the Sunburst..?

OilCityPickups

I love 'minty ones' on a burst! Glad you like your pickups ... they were fun to make :-)

tone1

I'm loving them...Seriously loving them..Expressive, articulate, rich and detailed...I'm one happy bunny

Bridgehouse

Brilliant - so good to see the raffle after-show party carrying on here!!!!

Love the fact that it feels 'real' with the pickups being actually in existence, fitted and being played!


Oh, and I like the mint guard.