When I got my Fender Custom Triple 8, one pickup was open, one was weak sounding, and one was heaven. So:
1) Complete teardown/cleanup but NOT a refinish. I like that gnarly beat-up blonde look.
2) Built a Jason Lollar pickup winder, and tought myself to rewind pickups. Got it right after three rewinds. Practice....
3) The weak pickup was a stumper. After talking with Jason, and finding that he has had this problem in the past, we decided that the pickup magnets had lost some of their gauss. (magnetism)
I hunted for a replacement pickup to no avail. So I contacted Ted Weber (of WEBER speakers, the finest on the planet) and he helped/guided me in building a magnetizer. It took about a month to construct, a week or two to test & tweak, (and replace one exploded capacitor!) and used it to re-magnetize the old AlNiCo end-bell magnets.
It was a long road, but definately worth it! Now I see why steel players love this old beastie.
Now I have to teach myself speaker reconing, to justify the cost of building the magger. Or face my wife and tell her that it cost me around $400 bucks (scrounging/scavenging for parts, mind you) to build a gadget that fixed two pickups, and explodes on occasion.
The learning process never ends.....
-andy-
[This message was edited by Andy Zynda on 08 October 2002 at 06:42 AM.]