Rewinding Squier Pickups

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soggy mittens
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Rewinding Squier Pickups

Post by soggy mittens » Sat Jul 13, 2019 10:09 pm

Has anyone had a go at rewinding the Squier jazzmaster JM-101N and/or JM-101B pickups? They have Alnico 5 Magnets are they good enough as a platform to get them to sound closer to SD Antiquity iis that also have the Alnico 5 Magnets? Putting aside the quality of the wind I'm talking ballpark sound.
If OSG has tort me anything...

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epizootics
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Re: Rewinding Squier Pickups

Post by epizootics » Sat Jul 13, 2019 11:34 pm

Never actually rewound those pickups in particular, but:

-The beauty of scatter-winding is that you'll end up with a nicer-sounding pickup unless something goes really wrong in the process
-As for how they will sound, I haven't seen those in the flesh - how thick is the winding area? One of the things that make a JM pickup sound like a JM pickup is the correct 1/8" thick bobbin.
-SD 'age' their magnets, ie. they degauss them to take some of the treble out and slightly lower the output. You can actually do this at home - once the pickups are mounted on the guitar, use a stronger magnet and take a few passes over the top of the polepieces with whichever polarity makes the magnets repel. You can use neo or ceramic, but I'd recommend the latter as neos are really strong and can totally demagnetize the polepieces (or even invert their polarity) if you're not careful. Keep going until you like the sound you hear.
-Even then, the actual alnico alloy is unlikely to be the same as SD's, so there will always be a slight difference, but once again, you can get close.
-The problem with rewinding JM pickups is that you don't have much room to fit a blade between the flatworks to cut out the old wire. You usually end up leaving cutting marks on the forbon flats. Make sure you sand the edges really well before your winding so you don't snap the wire.

Hope this helps ::)

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