Back around 1950 Leo Fender designed a pickup that became his personal favorite. This was the 'trapiziod' lap steel pickup.
This pickup shared a lot in common with early Rickenbacker lap steel (and even bass) pickups. - in that the strings ... in this pickup's case eight of them, go through the centre of the coil, and the coil is charged by huge flanking (or in Rickenbacker's case horseshoe magnets.
These things are part miricle of enginearing and part crude as f**k ... oh and this one was dead as a dodo with no output wires either.
Off with the lid and here's this pickup's big secret ...
The lacquered cardboard bobbin was allegedly made from scrap Fender factory clocking in cards and the unevenly sized magnets are HUGE and super powerful.
So off came the old wire .... which was unusual in that it was 43awg Heavy Formvar ... not something every pickup winder has on his wire stock shelves. I was lucky in that I regularly use 43awg Heavy Formvar on pickups I wind for Doug Campbell at Blackmachine.
Mounting the trapezoid bobbin in the winding machine requires a custom made jig ...
comme ça ...
And the coil mounts thus-wise
Now these card bobbins can't be 'dip potted' or they will go soggy and fall apart ... I have to do it exactly as it was done in 1950 in the Fender factory.
A few hundred turns are laid up ... all hand guided ... then the coil is brushed with nitro lacquer on both sides to soak the coil ... then a few hundred more turns are added ... and the whole process is repeated. As this pickup takes around 9000 turns that takes a long time!
Finally the hardened core has its output leads added
And I add a layer of paper tape to physically protect the coil for another 70 years or so :-)
A lovely bit of kit brought back to life :-)
Comments
Interestingly the pickup incorporates the bridge saddle too ...
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
Thanks for sharing, Ash.
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
I know it takes a huge amount of time and effort but the work you do would be a great basis for a very popular YT channel.
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message