Mosrite trems and pickup molding???

[oipunkguy]

ahh, like an antique. well I got those around, I run an antique store

[raygun85]

Aha! Perfect! Now you can make vintage-style pickups with a vintage winding machine!

[oipunkguy]

i remember reading on Tym's website (www.tymguitars.com.au/) that the original mosrite pickups didnt use eyelets building the pickups. is this true? and do you guys use them on the m-3 versions?
also did the original mosrite pickups use a maple bobbin? do you guys carve them out yourself?

[raygun85]

I'm not sure if Mosrite pickups ever used the eyelets at all. The pickups that we used to pattern our own after were taken out of a 1965 and certainly didn't have any eyelets. The coil wires are solderred directly to the lead wires. The whole pickup is held together with epoxy. And yes we do make our own bobbins out of maple. I've played a few of the modern Mosrites and, at least to me, they just didn't quite nail the tone. After seeing Curtis Novak's pictorial on disassembling one of Fillmore's pickups I can see why. They're underwound, they use a plastic bobbin, and ceramic magnets. I've read some Seymour Duncan's research into bobbin materials and am convinced, just as he is, that the material of the bobbin affects the tone. However so slight. I think together with the Alnico V magnets and 43-guage wire you can replicate the tone of vintage Mosrite pickups extremely closely. I'm happy with the pickups we're making, I couldn't believe my ears the first time we tested them.

Something else to watch out for is the screws. You'll have to line up the nuts, screws, and magnets on the bottom so that they're all straight (especially on the top) before epoxying everything all together. Its tedious work but well worth it!

[oipunkguy]

the mosrite humbuckers I have screw straight into two metal spacers, kinda like these: http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics ... pacer.html

I don't know if theres more then one magnet, like a pair of gibson pickups I have. do you think mosrite humbuckers would also have maple bobbins?

[raygun85]

Hmmm...those spacers on StewMac aren't threaded. They're literally just spacers. I'm guessing they either made an aluminum bar (similar to the height bar underneath the pickups) and threaded holes the same size as the pole-piece screws for height-adjustment. OR, perhaps the nuts are underneath the bottom of the bobbin like you'd see on a more traditional single-coil version and perhaps they used a spacer underneath them to line everything up and keep it straight. In the process of epoxying the whole thing together they probably left the spacer on. IF thats how they did it.

If my memory serves me correctly, PAF's used only one Alnico V magnet. If you have a straight bar magnet, theoretically, you might be able to figure out if it has more than one magnet by placing the North and South poles on each side of the pickup. I'd really like to make a pair of Moseley-style humuckers but until I find one I can disect (such as a non-working HB that needs repair or rewinding) I'm kind of in the dark. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say I THINK they would've used maple bobbins. I don't see any reason for tooling up for another style of bobbin if they already had system. But again, I'm theorizing heavily...

[oipunkguy]

original PAF's used an alnico II with a maple spacer and no wax or epoxy potting. later on, gibson switched to an alnico V, but I'm not sure when. I do know it was after the 1950's. i only know this because I helped out a customer with making a 59 burst les paul clone last year.
the original pickups on my first guitar (a 1992 les paul) have 496r and 500t pickups in them. the pickups went bad so i took them apart to examine the construction. they were ceramic magnets, three for each pickup. I have a picture of them somewhere....

[raygun85]

Yes, you're right about the Alnico II's. I completely forgot. Thats very intriguing about the three ceramic magnets though...do you happen to know which poles were facing up/down?

[oipunkguy]

Yes, you're right about the Alnico II's. I completely forgot. Thats very intriguing about the three ceramic magnets though...do you happen to know which poles were facing up/down?

lol not a clue dude. I'm still a little clueless on pickups when it comes to that stuff, but I'm learning. Kinda hard though when you don't have a teacher, I've learned everything on guitar building basically from trail and error and reading here on the forum and else where. I guess so far I've done well.
Oh by the way I'm sending you a pm.

[dubtrub]

Raygun,

I'd suggest to get in touch with Artie at Front Porch Music. He has a couple of dead Mosrite humbuckers lying around his shop. He might be inclined to sell one for a nominal fee. I saw one there that someone had taken some side cutters trying to chip away the epoxy. He's on the forum as bakeoboy.