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Topic: Troubleshooting low pickup output |
Jim Rossen
From:
Iowa, USA
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Posted 25 May 2012 5:32 am |
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My newly arrived Fender Dual 8 Pro with trapazoid pickups has lower volume and thinner tone on the far neck (as accurately described by the seller). I'd like to trouble shoot this myself and have experience with tube amps but not pickups.
What should I do?
Looks like it is straight forward to get to the innards of the neck selector switch and tone/volume controls. Getting to the pickups is not clear to me. How do you get to the pickups? Can I learn anything about the pickups with multimeter measurements?
Thanks |
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Danny James
From:
Summerfield Florida USA
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Posted 25 May 2012 7:15 am
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Dina,
I recently bought a Fender Dual Pro. There are some really good posts on the Pedal Steel side of this forum right now concerning checking the OHM's of pickups.
Your Fender Dual Pro should check in the vicinity of 10 K ohms for each pickup.
I took the pickups out of my Dual Pro, and sent the magnets to Rick Aielo to have them re-magnetized and the pickups are very strong on mine.
The pickups are mounted on a stainless steel plate held to the guitar body with six phillips head wood screws. Be careful not to bend that plate when removing it from the guitar. The pickup itself is held together by nuts underneath that plate on studs coming from the top plate of the pickup coil housing itself. You need to be very careful in trying to remove them as some people have either broken the studs loose from the top housing or broken them off because the nuts are sometimes frozen. Fortunately mine were not frozen. Some people put some W D 40 on the nuts before trying to remove them. I would be careful not to get any of that stuff on the coils.
If your very careful the pickup housing can be taken apart to get the magnets out without cutting the wires or damaging the coil wires.
Rick Aiello can give advise you as to who can rewind the coils if the ohms do not check out as they should, and he does a good job of re-magnetizing the magnets. He can be reached through his website here-- http://www.hsga.org/RickAiello.htm |
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Steve Ahola
From:
Concord, California
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Posted 26 May 2012 11:10 am
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I just ran into something interesting in the old Fender trapezoid and boxcar pickups: two of them produced sound although ohm readings indicated that the coils were open. The boxcar was thin and weak as you described but the trap sounded fine. Evidently there is some sort of inductive coupling going on which allows for any sound at all from open coils.
Seymour Duncan's custom shop will rewind trapezoids with the price starting at $105 (I think that might depend on whether or not the old bobbin is usable.) Another thread here mentioned someone in Hawaii who rewinds them, too.
Steve Ahola
_________________
www.blueguitar.org
Recordings on electric guitar:
http://www.box.net/blue-diamonds
http://www.box.net/the-culprits |
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Jim Rossen
From:
Iowa, USA
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Posted 26 May 2012 2:46 pm
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| Weaker pickup measures 10.3 K, stronger 9.7 K, so will see if remagnetizing helps. Thanks for the tips! |
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Danny James
From:
Summerfield Florida USA
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Posted 27 May 2012 10:46 am
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Dina,
Your pickup ohms check just about the same as both of mine, and after having Rick Aiello re-magnetize my magnets, both of my pickups are very strong.
Before I took mine out of my guitar to send to Rick, I did notice some buzzing in one of them. The bobbins the coils are wound on are made of forbon, a cardboard like fibrous material that sometimes are prone to shrink a little with the age of a 50 yr. old Fender Dual Pro.
I took Rick Aiello's advice and when I put the pickups back together after Rick had sent my magnets back to me, I put a little silicone sealer where the edges of the bobbins sit in the top & bottom of their housing. I recommend doing that. That stopped the buzzing,(vibration) and I have a really good sounding guitar. I am very pleased with my 53 Fender Dual Pro. and the trapezoid pickups   |
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