Oil City Watkins/Wilson pickup rebuild

OilCityPickups

Above:Not the actual guitar the pickups of which are featured here ... but an image from the wonderful http://www.watkinsguitars.co.uk  

A history lesson: In the beginning there was Charley Watkins ... the legend behind the development of modern PA systems (he supplied the PA for many of the late sixties pop festivals, was a personal friend of Jimi Hendrix, built the famous 'Copycat' tape echo, a range of innovative amplifiers, and last but not least ... from 1959 he made guitars. From the early Dallas Tuxedo through the Watkins Rapier (substitute for many a British kid who wanted a Strat but couldn't afford one) to the last of the breed, the 1970s Wilson Super Six.
This guitar was fitted with a pair of quirky but high output German built Schaller humbuckers and it is the rebuild of a pair of these that I'm going to let you in on :-)

In contrast to the British built pickups that had been fitted to previous Watkins, and that other famous UK maker Shergold, the Schallers were made with purpose moulded and well fitting plastic components ... not the sort of garden shed enginearing that had been the hallmark of British pickups ... and the emergence of DiMarzio in the US had spurred Schaller into producing a 'Super Distortion' style pickup. The problem was that The Schallers were hot sure ... but not as clear as the US pickups ... not even as clear as the other Super Distortion copyists Mighty Mite ... legend says early Mighty Mites were actually wound by Seymour Duncan before his own success as a pickup builder.

Right onto the job in hand ... a rather sad pair of Schallers ... one dead as a dodo, the other as muddy as an orgy for hippos!



Very solid and well made inside ... the customer had already stripped the wire from one pickup, so I had a bare shell to work on.

A very early DiMarzio like structure ... narrow ceramic magnet and a big steel spacer ... more of the similarities and differences later.
The wiring on the still working neck pickup was horribly manky, and I had to giggle at the knot in the hookup wire to act as strain relief. The hookup wire was to be replaced with four conductor, so all that was removed and the baseplate cleaned up.

My new strain relief will be shrink tube to fatten the wire to the extent it can't be pulled back through the baseplate, and a healthy dab of hot melt glue on final assembly. 

I decided not to remove the pole screws for rewinding, and used my U section faceplate adaptor and some scrap mahogany to secure the bobbin for mounting in my winder. I am always having to build little jigs and tools for work on old pickups ... it's quite therapeutic really :-)


As an interesting aside ... the original Schaller wind was loose and messy beyond belief and unpotted ... no wonder the pickups had a reputation for being microphonic! You can get away with a tight wind and no potting (witness PAFs) but a loose one is courting the 'squeal beast'!


Two of the four bobbins rewound ... nice and neat, and with a coil offset to open up the tones.

Because of the unknown heat/distortion characteristics of the plastic used in these pickups, I chose to pot the coils before assembling the pickup rather than pot the whole pickup The tight fitting nature of the pickup components should keep the squeal at bay. 
Coils neatly taped off and reunited with the magnet and spacer.


Those of you who have had a DiMarzio apart will see the huge similarities, except the Schaller pickups use beautifully made plastic spacers to keep the bobbins level ... whereas Larry just squidged the poles down into a bed of gunk that looks like cavity insulation foam ... and breaks down over the years (in early DiMarzio SDs).
 
And finally ... on with the covers for another 40+ years of rocking out.   

impmann

Love it!

OilCityPickups

I really lusted after the Wilson Super Six when there were full page adverts for them in International Musician in the late seventies. I have the other guitar I lusted after: the Kawai Rock n Roll Star (courtesy of @TTony)  ... but like that, the Super Six is a rare beast indeed, so hope of me tracking one down for the 'Oily Towers' guitar collection is slim.

normula1

Good call on the potting. I managed to destroy a Schaller 2in1 SD type when I was but a lad trying to pot it in a little tin of wax on my mum's stove. 
Who knew that excessively heated wax would melt plastic bobbins? At least the wax didn't catch fire and burn the house down

OilCityPickups

normula1 said:

Good call on the potting. I managed to destroy a Schaller 2in1 SD type when I was but a lad trying to pot it in a little tin of wax on my mum's stove. 
Who knew that excessively heated wax would melt plastic bobbins? At least the wax didn't catch fire and burn the house down

I thought all the plastic looked very dodgy, but it's a rock pickup so had to be potted really. My wax bath has a thermostat so I turned that right down for the bobbins ... I mean I could fairly comfortably put my fingers in the bath, so the bobbins should be okay. The covers being a bigger surface area of flat plastic, I was a bit more concerned about distortion, so I left them. You develop a sixth sense about bobbin plastic after a while.