very nice! sometimes you just have to open things up to see whats inside! eventually it became a business for us haha!

Good to hear! Some if them are really caked with wax and when cleaned off, they can really open up

PorterPickups it sure has cleared it up, raised the pickups slightly too. Its an epiphone black beauty.

my epiphone pickups was drowning in wax.. any tips to start removing it?

you0nlylivetwice or wick

@@liljuanito123I came to say this. It is def the best way.

some bobbins are going to have trouble with heat for sure. We've seen solder joints that are pretty trough to get through and that might be time for a small saw or something like you tried. Sorry to hear about the pickup.

that works for some of the joints for sure, sometimes there's some that gets down on the inside edge of the baseplate so it can be helpful to have a few different approaches depending on what you run into.

yikes! seems like that could go wrong a number of ways! haha

it can work in some cases and for others it's down in the seam and need this method.

You should never use A soldiering gun near the electronic of the guitar.

happy to help!

thanks!

a small more open/airy sound slightly cleaner but its not super drastic

The history on that was Leo Clarence Fender believed the Metal (causing a Faraday cage) would attenuate Icepick spikes in Neck Position of Telecasters. Even utilized some metal called German Silver which would allow soldering top to base. Apparently PAF's Seth Lover (over at Gibson) was on the same program for some sonic enhancement.

you can try just light scraping off with something that won't scratch the coils, like a old credit card or something!

​@@PorterPickupsor a guitar pick

Julian Wells it is! Sometimes the solder gets down in the edges, so the blade can help. Otherwise the braid is an excellent method!

Ideally, re-waxing is a good idea to make sure any voids have something in them. If it's one of those humbuckers thats really caked in wax, you might be ok. If you do wax pot, install the new cover first, soak in paraffin wax for about 10-13 mins. Let it dry upside down on some wax paper, frequently cleaning off excess that spills out with a paper towel, but always keep the humbucker facing down.

also a good method! we use a rigid razor in the shop all the time

We highly recommend the hakko fx 888d. It’s a little more cost wise, but if you plan to do a lot of soldering it’s well worth it for quality and adjustable heat levels.

@@PorterPickups Any tips on heat/temp to do this? I'm new to soldering, my covers have gigantic blobs of factory solder I turned mine up to 750F and still couldn't really get the blobs to fully liquify - I must be doing something wrong lol 🧐

@@jarcidiacono1 we often use a box knife and you can do it with little to no heat even if it’s a sturdy one

@@PorterPickups Appreciate the response, I’m really just wondering though what temperature you guys are using on the soldering iron?

@@jarcidiacono1 at least 600, and some we run higher on the production stuff. The a larger pools of solder some times need to be cut vs trying to get it all to melt

not a bad question at all. Some say it sounds more open or more high end. We feel it's subtle but a lot depends on how the pickup is wound underneath.

you don't have to, just make sure you protect the guitar, and the heat can cause issues with parts

Flying V idk

+Koki Zuniga Make sure the string spacing is right and that you can attach the cover with solder (You might need to scratch the inside of the cover's plating near the baseplate to get a good connection). you'll need to raise the pole prices a bit, and depending on how potted the pickup is, you might need some new wax to prevent extra noise with the new cover.

Dave Saenz we are not sure what’s under the cover on other brands, it usually varies. Contact us if you’d like us to build a zebra set

Some of them are i think it really depends!

+ArcaneStrawman You'll want to wax it after the process to keep down on the noise

with the humbucker facing down i suppose?

+ArcaneStrawman yep!

Yes as long as you make sure you know the string spacing of the poles. Ideally you will want to wax pot it as well, but it’s optional.

It would be good to have to be a thin blade, we often use a box knife as well with no heat.

I own a set of pickups with cover and split coil can those pickups be witout splitcoil

@@jonatanblundguitarchannel6857 they can wired to stay full humbucker if you just leave the coil finish wires soldered together.

you may need to get a higher wattage iron, or get a smaller/thin saw blade to cut through it. Sometimes a larger box knife can work, just be careful lining it up to cut through the solder

It can seem strange, but sometimes it helps to add new solder to help melt the old solder.

Sounds like there was some potential damage to the coil.

@@PorterPickups What would cause that though? I didnt press hard at all when removing the solder with a knife.

@@techgamer1597 it's hard to say, sometimes even some solder joints get cold when things shift around with the wax heating up. We always run into a couple mysteries a year even after building a lot it pickups. You can check the pickups with a multimeter and see that they are reading

HOLY MACKERAL Buying cream pickups is your best bet. You can buy some cream colored vinyl wrap and do it that way. You can get good coverage with the wrap if you use a cigarette lighters to lightly hit the edges the shape the contours. A heat gun is best. But not everyone has those laying around. But hobby lobby, michaels, or eBay. Should be able to find cream or bone wrap. Just gonna be some work exposing the bobbins. Better be crafty with an x-acto knife or have a hole punch and hope it’s the right size. It’ll still play fully covered. But won’t look all the great. Or maybe it will? But new pickups can be found at a reasonable price if you’re not feeling it. I think they might even sell colored decals for pickups. Good luck

you can do some type of insert over them possibly!

Someone should make them. Find a need and fill it. Huh?

@@holymackeral456 yeah, we do some pickguard and wood inserts over our pickups with an open top ring. it looks pretty sweet!

@@holymackeral456 get a 3D printer or find someone online who you can pay to print them and send them to you

theArchive1O It may be possible to change the cover if you know the string spacing and can find a direct replacement. If its a more non-traditional type or measurements on the cover, you may find limited options out there for a new one. Feel free to email us at info@porterpickups.com and we can guide you through a few things to check before you go digging!

Thanks for the feed back!

many of those have epoxy attached covers so they aren't coming off anytime soon :)

+Sean Antley Electrical tape is fine, pickup tape is nice since it's already correctly sized!

+Saúl Espinoza you can if you know the string spacing for the holes and dimensions of the pickups to make sure replacement metal ones will fit

Thanks a lot !!!... You guys rule !!!...

a wire from the hookup wire should be connected to the baseplate. There could be something else going on there, but it's hard to tell.

so when I broke the solder from the cover and plate should I have ground the pickup baseplate

The hookup wire should be connected to the baseplate for the ground. You can see if thats the case by looking under the bobbins, or gently unscrewing the coil. The solder to the cover is on;y to connect it with the baseplate and hold it in place.

if you just want to remove the cover, the pickup can stay in tact without any disassembly. When you are removing it, you just need to be careful you don't puncture the side of the coils underneath.

I removed the cover because bobbins looked cool. Help. Bro.

hard to say what may have happened. Do you have a multimeter? you can check the pickup resistance and see if anything has changed.

maybe you got the magnatic parts too hot for too long and they lost magnetic strength?

same thing happened to me

ideally you should re-wax if you're keeping a metal cover, but if you are just removing it, you shouldn't need to re-wax. Just paraffin is fine!

@@PorterPickups Ok thanks..replacing a pair worn out 1998 paf gold covers.

sometimes its hard to know whats underneath!

it depends on if your wiring has enough slack to get safely out of the way. It's not the ideal way, just to protect the guitar finish it's usually good to un solder and work on it away from the guitar!

that may be a bigger challenge there. not sure other than a small saw, but even still you may not have luck!

+Guitars 77 some pickups are VERY heavily coated in wax. It's possible to re-melt it in new wax to get most of it off, but that will still require clean up. It's maybe a longer process that way, but easier to get the heavy wax removed. Otherwise it's just chipping away gently with some non sharp tools/rags but that is very time consuming!

+PorterPickups Thanks so much. :)

***** I used musical notation and created wax paper... I forgot the paper towels when i did this... it was messy.

that also works well!

Brian Holden we use paper towels for that, Making sure they are nice quality so they won’t scratch anything. I Deleigh you can remove that when the wax is warm

I used paper towel and a Q tip to get around the poles.

that would be nice in some ways!

havne't tried that, as long as you have some padding and don't cause any other damage with bad coordination (That would be our luck) ha!

That's standard way that all the pros have been doing it. Generally done with a new blade for a utility knife.

were they?

we find the uncovered is a little more open/airy sounding but it's not a huge difference. Less wax is generally good in our opinion, sort of the best of both worlds.

many of them are vacuum potted with wax which fills them completely. It's amazing how much can be in there sometimes!

sounds like a mess. wonder why it was red? we've also seen some that were absolutely stuffed with wax. it gets a little crazy!