Potting Pickups part2 (He's on the pot again!)

It snowed like crazy this week at the Searcy String Works shop. One of these days I'll get better heaters in the shop. Maybe a nice Franklin stove or something. But for now I just suffer through it.

I got a few more emails and a phone call this week regarding pickup potting. Seems there are still a lot of questions out there like "How do I know if my pickups need to be potted?" Well... let's see if I can clear some of this up.

It's not that tricky to figure out. There are really two types of feed back. First there is feed back caused by the guitar strings vibration. This is the good feedback. The kind that Jimi used to good effect. If your getting too much of it on your rig than you may want to look at a good Noise Gate pedal.


The second type of feed back is the kind caused by microphonic pickups. This type of feed back is totally evil and can wreck your day. If you like a high gain sound and you are playing an amp with more than 50watts of power in an enclosed room that isn't the "Enormo-Dome" than microphonic feed back is the devils work! It's caused by lose coil windings in the pickup. The sound in the room cause the the lose windings to vibrate in the magnetic field. This vibration is picked up by the pickup. That noise is sent to the amp which amplifies the sound and sends it out into the room through the speakers. The sound in the room makes the lose coil winding vibrate even more and the whole thing starts over again... thus we have feed back. This eardrum splitting noise will not go away if you mute your strings. It is not controllable. It's not musical and l hate it with a passion.

Now... Lately there is a fad among boutique pickup makers to poo-poo wax potting with claims that it kills the tone or " Those old PAFs weren't potted and they sounded great!" But the truth is most of those guys have never even seen a real 1960's Gibson pickup, let alone an honest to god PAF. It's true that they weren't potted. But what folks have forgotten is that they were considered nearly useless in rock music unless you had one of those magic guitar techs that could make them behave.

Eddie Van Halen made the PAF famous in a 1980 Guitar Player interview when he gave away a closely guarded guitar tech secret and told the world you could tame the notoriously microphonic PAF by wax potting it. Gibson started wax potting it's pickups not long after that . By the end of the 1980's almost all pickups were potted to prevent microphonic feed back.

Now, if you really want me to make you a pickup and skip the wax potting I'll do it. You're the boss after all. But don't fall for hype and don't be surprised if your unpotted pickup squeals like a pig when you crank your amp. Rest easy though, if you bought it from me.... or even if you didn't buy it from me.... you can send your microphonic pickup to Searcy String Works and I'll pot it for ya.

I charge $20 to pot a pickup.

Project Blue Balls

Ok... I'm a bass player at heart and I love to tinker with new gear so I got this Electro Harmonix BassBalls Twin Dynamic Filter pedal because I love envelope filters and... well... it was super cheap. I played around with it for a while and decided it just wasn't all that cool. It's pretty much a two trick pony. One is a wonky filter effect and the other is a wonky filter with crappy distortion effect so it went in the box of old stomp boxes I have.
Then the other day I got the notion to crack it open and see what was inside. This revealed two tiny trim pots on the board that seemed to set the notch for the twin filters. After tweaking them a bit it became clear to me that this pedal could be dialed in a lot better than the factory preset. In fact I was finding some very usable sound hidden in side this little box. That started me thinking that these pots should be easier to get too. Why not mount them on the front of the pedal??

Thus was the Searcy String Works Blue Balls pedal born. You can now get your very own for $130. In addition to the stock Distortion switch and Sensitivity knob I give you two additional knobs to adjust the notch settings to your playing style and your bass. For the low, low price of only $130 plus shipping and handling you get a new Russian made Bass Balls pedal with all new pots!! But that's not all boys and girls! You also get, at no additional cost!! three brand new, easy to read, easy to adjust chicken head knobs in beautiful corn flower blue!!! But wait!! There's more! We also include absolutely free, a brand new, smooth working mini switch to replace the clunky Russian made one that comes with the pedal. Now... how much would you pay for these exciting stomp box option? Don't answer just yet because that not all you get! Searcy String Work is also including, absolutely free to the consumer this cool Blue LED to replace the boring old Red one that comes stock on the pedal.

The result is an envelope filter that is unlike any other. It will make all the cool sounds the Bass Balls is known for but this improved adjustability makes what was a gimmicky toy into a far more versatile tool. Tweaking these knobs just a degree or two can make a big difference in how responsive it is it is to your playing. It can also be used with guitar to good effect. Here is an MP3 of my playing around with the new Blue Balls on guitar and bass.

The new guy... (Willian Jeffery Jones guitars)

I have been talking lately to Jeffery Jones. He is a ridiculously talented sculptor and luthier out of Neosho Missouri. His fretless guitars are starting to generate a buzz in the jazz end of the pool and he is now looking for someone to make some pickups that are more to his liking. His comments to me were very specific ... he needed P-90 and he needed them to be humbucking.

This got me thinking about a similar request I had about a year ago. George Thorogood tours with about 6 guitars. These are specially built Gibsons and all of them sound very different. Sometimes this can lead to strange issues. One of the guitars his tech was working on just sounded too bright and thin no matter what they did to it. I was asked to try to build something to beef up the tone of this guitars in a Dog Ear P-90 style and it needed to be humbucking. I came up with 3 different designs for George to try out. In the end he decided the guitar was just too bright sounding for any pickups to fox and he opted to use a preamp to shape the tone of that problem guitar. Since they didn't use the pickups they sent them back and thanked me for trying to tame the beast.

I was disappointed... I always am when I fail to give someone exactly what they want. But what can you do? They are good pickups... just not for this guitar. So the humbucking P-90s went in a box in the shop and have sat there ever since.

Until now ! I have resurrected two of these pickup designs to see how they sound a WJJ guitar. I am very excited at the prospect of seeing some Searcy String Works pickups in the William Jeffery Jones guitars. After talking to him on the phone I can tell you that he has some big surprises in the works. But we'll talk about that later.

I would like you to meet Leif Renwall (Le-Re pickups revisited)

Maybe some of you have read the epic saga of how I was asked to rebuild two very strange 1950's lap steel pickups for a guy named Kari "Max" Laine in Finland. The guitar was made in Finland by a company called Malmström. The pickups were made for Malmström by an other Finnish company called Le-Re. Le-Re is short for Leif Renwall. Well, Max has been busy tracking down as much information on these remarkable instruments as he can. He has found them as far away as Australia. Every once in a while Searcy String Works gets up dates from him. His latest fine is nothing short of amazing! But don't take my word for it...

Hi Clint, I visited Mr. Leif Renwall, the maker of those Le-Re pickups, yesterday at his home in Helsinki. He is 82, and still doing fine. He told me he actually used to buy earphone sets (he thinks the brand was "Olympia") and dismantle them to get the coils/magnets. So we were right about the source. He thinks he made around 30 of such pickups, so that would probably be the total production of those guitars. I know the whereabouts of six, I wonder where the rest are... He has long lost his own guitar, but was delighted to see mine with the restored pickup. See attached picture! The both pickups are still working fine, so thanks again!

Regards, kari

How cool is that? I am very happy to know that my rebuild met with the approval of Mr. Renwall. And remember, if you have one of these fine historic guitars be sure to drop me a line. Max and I would really like to hear from you.

Wax Potting (did you just double dip?)

Wax potted pickups, vacuum potted pickups, double wax vacuum potted pickups, potting wax, bees wax, paraffin wax, pickups potted with magic beans... What does all this mean?

Pickup makers are always looking for technical explanations of their product that makes it sound fancier then the next guy. Take the simple act of wax potting a pickup for example.

Potting a Pickup is the process of solidifying a coil against microphonic vibration by submerging it in a 130-F (54-C) to 140-F (60-C) degree bath of wax comprised of 80% paraffin and 20% bees wax. This ratio is something of an industry standard. It’s a good mix that insures the wax will saturate the coil well and will harden yet won’t become brittle.

Double Potting a Pickup is the same thing as above accept that the pickup is potted a second time after it's had metal parts added like the chrome covers of a PAF or the steel base plate that's on a Tele bridge pickup. This insures that the metal parts can't vibrate and cause microphonic feed back which has been known to happen. Teles bridge pickups are bad about this and some folks like to have the entire bridge potted with the pickup to prevent rattling springs or screws.

Vacuum potting is potting the pickup in hot wax in a vacuum chamber . This can speed up the potting process and some believe it allows for better saturation of the coils because the vacuum forces the air out of the coil and wax into it.

While there are some rules to fallow it isn't rocket science.

Now... what to use to melt the wax. I have seen many people over the years claim that this is a simple matter and you can just heat the wax up on your stove....


WRONG!


Hot wax is very combustible and heating it on a stove is a good way to burn your house down. Using a stove burner to heat wax also allows no good way to control the temp of the wax and over heating your pickups can destroy them. Wax should only be heated in a device specifically designed to melt wax like the one in the picture here. I have about 8 of these wax pots of different sizes and types. The best ones have built in temp controls that prevent the wax from over heating. If your not willing to use one of these pots to do the job then send your pickup to a pickup maker that can do it right. Even if you don't burn your house down you could ruin your pickup by potting it incorrectly. I charge $19.99 to pot a pickup including shipping. A pound of bees wax is about $12... Paraffin wax is about $6 a pound. Then you need to get the wax pot. How many of these are you going to do? It's probably cheaper to just let me do it. Drop me an email if you think your pickup needs to be potted. I will help you decide and let you know if Searcy String Works can pot your pickup.

Ever Learning
Clint Searcy

Gretch FilterTron

The Gretch Filtetron. The Gretsch line of guitars were well received in the 1950's but was soon eclipsed by the likes of Gibson and Fender. Since then it has always been a bit of an obscure and rare bird despite enjoying the attention of the likes of Chet Atkins, Brian Setzer, and even the Beatels. Recently Fender bought the company and is trying to return it to it's 50's glory.



A little while back I was sent the neck pickup from a 1998 Gretsch. It had a dead coil and was only reading 4K Ohms. I rebuilt it to the vintage 1950s specs.



First thing we gotta do is pull the cover off. It's not so different that a Gibson PAF construction wise. But it's much smaller. This 1998 version also used a huge ceramic magnet. In the 50's this would have been an Alnico magnet.


Perhaps one of the most unusual aspects of Gretsch pickup construction is their use of these top plates. The top plate uses the pole screws to hold the bobbins together.



The original Filter trons were very low output pickups. Because of the small bobbins about 4K ohms was all they could reach with 42GA wire. In the 90's they started using 45GA wire and made pickups that read about 8K ohms.



When it comes to fixing a dead pickup there's nothing like a good set of dikes and an Exacto Blade.



Once it is loaded up with the 42ga wire and taped it's time to solder the connections back.



Ray Butts invented this thing. He and Chet Atkins worked together on the design for the Filter-Tron. It seems that Ray came up with his design without any prior information of Seth Lovers work at Gibson. His claim was that he knew about hum canceling coils because of his work making transformers for his line of amps. So it's possible the Ray invented the humbucker.




Once it's all back to normal it gets a test ride in "The Booger". My pickup tester guitar.



Then it goes back to Cali to the tech that sent it to me so it can be returned to the guitar it came from.

Willow Guitars

My buddy "Hurricane" Andy Barth at Willow Guitars way up there in Canada is a mad man. When looking at his art work you are captivated by his astounding ability to look into a hunk of wood and pull out sculptures that you didn't know where there. His masterful eye and skilled hands work to intertwine carved lines, natural imperfections, inlays and wood gains into works that are so at home in an art gallery that it's sometimes easy to forget that these are fully playable guitars. When most luthiers build a guitar thay call a trusted wood suppler and place an order for dried and properly dimensioned wood but not Andy. He is in the heart of Rock Maple territory so he picks, cuts, dries, and dimensions much of his own stock. His eye can pick a board that will render a neck that will sustain for days. His ears know the sound of a body blank that will have a singing soul. When it comes to hardware he uses only the best parts and in some cases custom orders the parts to his exact specs. That's how he and I came to work together. I sent him a big pile of humbuckers a little while back for some of his new guitars. He winds his own single coils so he knows what he's talking about when he places an order. I was only too proud to know that my pickups would be a parts of some of Andy's master creations.

If you are looking for a rare work or art or a tone monster get a hold of Hurricane Andreas Barth at Willow Guitars