Oil City Pickups Burns rewind part 2

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OilCityPickupsOilCityPickups Frets: 9986
in Made in the UK tFB Trader

The Burns Baldwin GB65 guitar like the one this pickup came from ... the pickups are actually the same as those fitted to a Burns Marvin bass, and look simply to have been re purposed for this application! I believe a lot of this happened in the burns range, and this caused me some confusion, as proper rez-o-Matik guitar pickups have open poles like a Strat ... in fact because Burns were copying Strat pickups pretty much exactly for Hank Marvin. Marvin had jumped the Fender ship for a while at that time as allegedly he couldn't keep his Strats in tune under hard trem use.

Now to rewind 



Here the coil has been potted, the original lead wires have been added, and the laborious process of taping the coil through the holes in the former is underway. this took well over an hour of fiddly work. Lots of tea needed here I can tell you.
Note small greenfly in picture ... I train these for all sorts of workshop duties ...

Then finally the clamshell halves of the former come apart and we get ...


Now I simply fill in the tape covering and .... 


Hey presto 
ready to rock for many more years


Professional pickup winder, horse-testpilot and recovering Chocolate Hobnob addict.
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups  ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message  

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Comments

  • impmannimpmann Frets: 12649
    Excellent job, mate!
    Never Ever Bloody Anything Ever.

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  • OilCityPickupsOilCityPickups Frets: 9986
    edited June 2019 tFB Trader

    A fascinating post script to this story emerged with the 'thank you' note from the customer.

    'Hi, Many thanks for the pickup. I had it installed and it sounds great, I'm very happy to be able to play this really rare guitar. I checked the impedance of the neck pickup, and indeed it was around 13kohm. It also sounds very deep in contrast with the bright and trebly rewound bridge pickup, but they sound really good when combined. I emailed a Burns collector and he told me the following: "The original Burns REZ-O-MATIK neck-P.U. is a double coil stack P.U. with both coils in Serial-mode. This explains the warm deep bass sound of this neck P.U. and also the impedance of 13 KOhm. The impedance of Burns single coils are around 6.0-7.0 KOhm." So I think this explains the mystery of the super-high impedance neck pickup and the treblier bridge pickup. Your rewinding of the bridge pickup seems to have been spot-on. Anyway, many thanks for all your work and expertise. Kind Regards,
    Santiago'

    It appears that Burns may well have been among the very first to introduce 'stacked humbuckers' back in 64/65!!! This information is like gold dust to both collectors and pickup winders ... but there seems very scanty writing on line about any of it ... pleased to say we seem to be expanding the knowledge pool :-)
    Professional pickup winder, horse-testpilot and recovering Chocolate Hobnob addict.
    Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups  ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message  

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  • normula1normula1 Frets: 639
    Fantastic job.
    I wonder why Burns made them this way in the first place as it seems to me to be harder than using a bobbin.
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  • OilCityPickupsOilCityPickups Frets: 9986
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    normula1 said:
    Fantastic job.
    I wonder why Burns made them this way in the first place as it seems to me to be harder than using a bobbin.
    Hofner did Air coils on early pickups too as well as a couple of early US lap steel pickup makers.
    You have to remember ... at this time pickup makers in the UK couldn't just buy bobbins as we do these days ... and fabrication from vulcanised fibre etc required expensive dies to be made for stamping (and that needed a press) ... oh, and injection moulding was super expensive ... as it still is for small runs.
    Professional pickup winder, horse-testpilot and recovering Chocolate Hobnob addict.
    Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups  ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message  

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  • normula1normula1 Frets: 639
    Thanks Ash.
    That's what I love about this place. I learn something new every time I come on
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  • OilCityPickupsOilCityPickups Frets: 9986
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    normula1 said:
    Thanks Ash.
    That's what I love about this place. I learn something new every time I come on
    Oh and air coils also have a particular 'sound' ... hard to define ... sweet but gritty.
    Professional pickup winder, horse-testpilot and recovering Chocolate Hobnob addict.
    Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups  ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message  

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  • FelineGuitarsFelineGuitars Frets: 11497
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    normula1 said:
    Thanks Ash.
    That's what I love about this place. I learn something new every time I come on
    Oh and air coils also have a particular 'sound' ... hard to define ... sweet but gritty.
    Brian May's Trisonics are like that......

    Many guitars have a re-sale value. Some you'll never want to sell.
    Stockist of: Earvana & Graphtech nuts, Faber Tonepros & Gotoh hardware, Fatcat bridges. Highwood Saddles.

    Pickups from BKP, Oil City & Monty's pickups.

      Expert guitar repairs and upgrades - fretwork our speciality! www.felineguitars.com.  Facebook too!

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  • OilCityPickupsOilCityPickups Frets: 9986
    tFB Trader
    normula1 said:
    Thanks Ash.
    That's what I love about this place. I learn something new every time I come on
    Oh and air coils also have a particular 'sound' ... hard to define ... sweet but gritty.
    Brian May's Trisonics are like that......
    Exactly
    Professional pickup winder, horse-testpilot and recovering Chocolate Hobnob addict.
    Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups  ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message  

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