Do I need wax potting if I only play at home?

Zoolooter

Apart from a little bit of 60 hz hum I don’t seem to get any other interference. So far I have only played teles. But, I’m putting together a strat and may put a Humbucker in one of the teles.

springhead

Only if you play loud enough to make your pickups feedback and squeak.  Not the same as string based feedback. 

Funkfingers

Double wax potting of covered pickups is intended to minimise microphonic squeal.

At modest domestic sound pressure levels, it would take fairly extreme overdrive or distortion to induce any squeal.

There is an argument for learning to control squeal and howl. Embrace them and integrate them into your playing style.

Zoolooter

Cheers, that’s a no then.

John_A

But why would you want unpotted pickups?

ICBM

John_A said:

But why would you want unpotted pickups?

Because they sound more lively, due to the microphonics picking up the body resonance.

Zoolooter

John_A said:

But why would you want unpotted pickups?

I suppose because most of the time when buying there’s an option. Also I play mostly clean and always looking for the cleanest most airy sound. 

I recently installed some expensive Tele pickups and judging by their description, magnet type and wind should have been bright and airy. They were the worst pickups I’ve ever tried. Just plain dull. Can’t help thinking it was down to the potting. Put the originals back in and it sounded ok again.

TINMAN82

ICBM said:

John_A said:

But why would you want unpotted pickups?

Because they sound more lively, due to the microphonics picking up the body resonance.

And yet according to other recent threads most of us would mistake them for single coils.

ICBM

TINMAN82 said:

And yet according to other recent threads most of us would mistake them for single coils.

Yes . But not when you're actually playing the guitar.

Actually not when you're listening to it in a room either - the guitarist in my band had the P90s in his Les Paul Special potted because they were unusably squealy at high volume... it stopped the squealing, but didn't sound as good.