Un-potting pickups

NPP

my late-70s Strat's original pickups were crudely wax-potted by a previous owner - I think he just melted up a red Christmas candle, not even made of proper wax, and dumped the pickups in. How can I get the stuff - or at least some of it - off without destroying the pickups? 

To add some background, I took them out and replaced them with vintage-spec staggered Duncans some 20 years ago to make the guitar sound more like a proper Strat, but inspired by @p90fool ;'s recent NGD thread I think I may want to put them back and give them another go (at least the neck and middle one, I'll stick with the Tele pickup that's in the bridge position). 

Edit: tagged someone else as the recent purchaser of a 70s Strat by mistake

Funkfingers

Assuming the stock pickups still give D.C. resistance meter readings, it might be worth handing the job over to a professional maker.

One hundred per cent wax removal is impossible. Hopefully, the red wax job is sufficiently bad that it did not penetrate the coil very deeply and can be extracted. 

LastMantra

Suppose you'd just need to heat the suckers up?
I'd probably try putting them on a hot radiator for a bit to see what happens. 

Something to soak in up, absorbant paper?

ICBM

I would heat them with a hair dryer until you can get most of it to melt and run off - just put them on some kitchen roll to absorb it. You probably won't be able to get more of it out of the windings than that, but it's unlikely to matter.

NPP

 ICBM said:

I would heat them with a hair dryer until you can get most of it to melt and run off - just put them on some kitchen roll to absorb it. You probably won't be able to get more of it out of the windings than that, but it's unlikely to matter.

thanks! I only want the excess off anyway, without killing the pickup. 

LastMantra

ICBM said:

I would heat them with a hair dryer until you can get most of it to melt and run off - just put them on some kitchen roll to absorb it. You probably won't be able to get more of it out of the windings than that, but it's unlikely to matter.

Good call. I should have thought of that I have an ancient hairdryer in my tool kit exactly for this kind of thing. 

Should wick to the paper. 

CasperCaster

NPP said:

 I'll stick with the Tele pickup that's in the bridge position). 

Cool, very Lowell George! 

NPP

CasperCaster said:

NPP said:

 I'll stick with the Tele pickup that's in the bridge position). 

Cool, very Lowell George! 

I don't think I knew he had that setup when I installed mine, I just had moved away from Strat tones a little and - I hope admitting to this won't get me expelled from tFB - did not want to buy another guitar. 

That said, Little Feat are great!

NPP

and here (hopefully) are the offending items, and the guitar they have been extracted from:

 https://imgur.com/Smo73UK

 https://imgur.com/NA7EAOx

Well, actually, I still can't post pics, despite re-reading the instructions on here. So frustrating!

LastMantra

Actually, I'd try and, carefully, see what will come off before heating. It might not have got into the windings but if you heat them up it will run in further. If you rapped some kitchen roll round a soldering iron, or something, then dab it off.

If it is right into the wire then it won't matter. 

ICBM

Those are not 70s pickups, they're more modern USA Fender ones with moulded plastic bobbins. If you heat them there's a good chance you'll melt or at least distort the bobbins and ruin them (more!).

Given that they're nothing special, it's probably best to either live with them as they are or save time and just bin them...

FelineGuitars

Safest way to get the old wax off is in a hot wax bath , however I wonder who wants to get that read wax mixed up with the "good wax" in their wax bath.

ICBM said:

Those are not 70s pickups, they're more modern USA Fender ones with moulded plastic bobbins. If you heat them there's a good chance you'll melt or at least distort the bobbins and ruin them (more!).

Given that they're nothing special, it's probably best to either live with them as they are or save time and just bin them...

+1 to what ICBM said though, not the binning them , but rather not getting too obsessed as they aren't old 70s ones.

NPP

ICBM said:

Those are not 70s pickups, they're more modern USA Fender ones with moulded plastic bobbins. If you heat them there's a good chance you'll melt or at least distort the bobbins and ruin them (more!).

Given that they're nothing special, it's probably best to either live with them as they are or save time and just bin them...

interesting. They were on the guitar when I bought it in 1986 (when it would have been a second-hand beater rather than borderline vintage). 

This site https://www.strat-central.com/70sstrats/index.htm#specs dates the serial number (S 869649) to 1978, but the fully shielded pickguard and pickups would date it to 1980. One of the pots which is out of the guitar has a 1978 number. Won't take the neck off to check the stamp but if the serial is '78 the neck stamp is likely to be the same ... I've read somewhere that lefties were just thrown together from what they had lying around and thus often have parts from various years. So I have a 1978-80 factory partscaster perhaps. 

Do you know what exactly is different between 70s and 1980 spec pickups? This is purely out of interest, the guitar has been bastardised beyond all recognition (it was sunburst until I took off the finish a few years ago) and I'm not selling it anyway.

Funkfingers

ICBM said:

Those are not 70s pickups, they're more modern USA Fender ones with moulded plastic bobbins. 

Those pickups could even be Japanese. Photographs of the undersides of the pickup bobbins and inside the pickup covers would clarify matters.

ICBM

NPP said:

Do you know what exactly is different between 70s and 1980 spec pickups?

All 70s pickups have the vintage-style fibreboard bobbin construction.

I think the earliest they could be is a set from a 'The Strat', from 1980-81 - they had plastic-bobbin pickups with the bridge being the slightly hotter X-1, with a yellow wire. As far as I know those pickups weren't used on the standard Strat though.

NPP

this is the underside of the pickups:

https://imgur.com/6AlZuvP

not much to see with the wax still on them, but the bridge PU (in the middle)does have a yellow wire

Funkfingers

The pickup on the right has the tell tale square "gap" holes of the Fender plastic bobbin. The output conductor insulation is correct for that pickup type. All three pickups are wound clockwise. (No Reverse Wind / Reverse Polarity shenanigans.) The yellow/black plastic insulation of one of the pickups is correct for an X-1 bridge position version. 

Wiz duly awarded to ICBM.

NPP

thanks @ICBM and @Funkfingers for solving the puzzle!

Alegree

What are you trying to achieve by removing the wax?

NPP

Alegree said:

What are you trying to achieve by removing the wax?

returning them to a state closer to factory spec.

They may have been potted for a reason, but lots of things were being done in the 80s for reasons that, from today's perspective, weren't very good reasons. 

I haven't got sufficient experience to know whether unpotted pickups really sound more open etc. than potted ones (for lefties, it's always difficult to just check out stuff) and I wouldn't expect any magic transformation to occur just because of the removal of a bit of wax from a run-of-the-mill pickup. 

Alegree

NPP said:

Alegree said:

What are you trying to achieve by removing the wax?

returning them to a state closer to factory spec.

They may have been potted for a reason, but lots of things were being done in the 80s for reasons that, from today's perspective, weren't very good reasons. 

I haven't got sufficient experience to know whether unpotted pickups really sound more open etc. than potted ones (for lefties, it's always difficult to just check out stuff) and I wouldn't expect any magic transformation to occur just because of the removal of a bit of wax from a run-of-the-mill pickup. 

You're certainly not going to make any audible difference from any possible solutions to your issue.

Whether wax affects the sound of a pickup at all is an entirely different, and irrelevant, can of worms, but you're not going to end up with an unpotted pickup regardless. I'm afraid this is a futile endeavour for you.