Will rewinding pickups help the sound?

[Eric Schmitt]

So here's my situation... I got some cheap humbucker pickups($40 for a pair) to stick in a guitar just to make it playable. I wasn't expecting much of a decent sound from them; as long as they made noise. These pickups were so horrible and muddy sounding they really were unusabel. I wouldn't even give these things away for not wanting to inflict that kind of tone on anyone. So I got to thinking, maybe I can rewind them and make some improvement. All I really know about the pickups is that they have the blade type ceramic magnets like the dimarzio X2N's.

Here's my question, Will rewinding these pickups potentially improve on the sound & tone or do the other materials used such as the magnets play too much of a role where rewinding wouldn't help and be pointless?

[Greg Robinson]

Eric,
Ceramic blade humbuckers are a weird construction type, and I don't have much experience with them, but I've never used one I liked. It'd probably be easier to get a good sound winding a more conventional pickup from scratch.

[David Schwab]

I have found that rewinding those cheap pickups usually improves the tone. Also check to see how strong the magnet is. Some of those cheap ceramic magnets are pretty weak. being that it's an X2N copy, it might be really over wound. So rewinding it with less wire will brighten it up. You can even try unwinding it back to a certain point, but it's hard to keep track of how much wire you are removing.

Most of the pickups I make are blade humbuckers. I like bright pickups, so that's how most of my humbuckers with blades sound. So you should be able to get those brighter.

[David King]

As David says it should be easy to check the DC resistance of them in their current configuration and figure out approximately how many turns they have on them now. If I were rewinding them I wouldn't go over 4000 or 4200 turns and I might stop at 3000 and 3500 just to see what I had. Another trick that might be practicable is to replace the ceramic magnets with an alnico magnet that can fit between the blades. Alnico magnets are usually 1/2" wide or just under so you would need to have at least that much space between the blades. If the blades are too far apart you can fill the extra space with steel shim stock. Alnico magnets can tolerate more turns before they start to sound terrible.

[Eric Schmitt]

The pickups measure at about 16k for the bridge one and around 13.5k for the neck. How would I take that info and guestomate the number of turns that are on there? What guage wire would y'all suggest I use; 42, 44?

I don't have any kind of pickup winder or anything so I'll be literally hand winding these things. I know it'll take a good amount of time but that's fine by me. Is there any kind of technique or winding pattern I should be aware of or at my little experience level should I just go for it, make sure the coil stays tight and hope for the best?

[Greg Robinson]

Those are pretty hot! Might try as David Schwab suggest and remove a few layers of windings, maybe a quarter to a third. Hopefully they're not epoxy potted or anything!

Oh, and if you decide to rewind, 43 gauge is the stuff to use.

[David King]

If they are really that high they may well be wound with 44 (or they would have run out of room on the bobbin). All the wire outfits post the ohms per foot and diameters for the all gauges. You can determine the gauge by unwinding 10 feet, checking the DCR and dividing by 10. While you're doing that you can count the turns in those ten feet and do your math from there. If they are 44AWG I'd be tempted to strip them clean and rewind with 5000 turns of 43.

[Joshua Levin-Epstein]

If I may chime in, if these pick-ups are fitted with 4 conductor wire, you could wire the coils in parallel, giving you more highs and less output. Even if they have single conductor leads, it would be easier to fit them with 4C wire than rewinding them. But the individual coils are still overwound.

Joshua