Question for pickup winders

[dazco]

I have a tele with fender wide range humbuckers. You probably know of telenator's mod where he removes the bar magnet and puts alnico rods in place of the steel screw polepieces. Well, i did that mod and it's certainly an improvement but i'm still not real happy with how humbucker like they sound. Even my old MIM thinline with the older WRHB's had a much more "HB meets single coil" tone once i did the mod to them. This one sounds much too middy. I have tried one coil but it;s too weak. Also tried 3 rods per coil, one coil with mags only under the plain strings one coil under the wounds.

I only went into detail so you'd know all the things I tried and wouldn't need to keep posting to say tried that. But i have one more idea but i have questions as to how to do it. I want to try running the coils in parallel so it would be like 2 single coils in parallel in the same shell. I think the answer is obvious but i wanna ask anyways in case i'm missing something. If i do this i should change the alnico poles so both coils are the same orientation, right? In other words, both north or both south. If i did them one coil north and one south wouldn't that create an out of phase sorta sound, or at least weaker then if both coil's magnets were oriented the same?

 

[gmann]

I have a tele with fender wide range humbuckers. You probably know of telenator's mod where he removes the bar magnet and puts alnico rods in place of the steel screw polepieces. Well, i did that mod and it's certainly an improvement but i'm still not real happy with how humbucker like they sound. Even my old MIM thinline with the older WRHB's had a much more "HB meets single coil" tone once i did the mod to them. This one sounds much too middy. I have tried one coil but it;s too weak. Also tried 3 rods per coil, one coil with mags only under the plain strings one coil under the wounds.

I only went into detail so you'd know all the things I tried and wouldn't need to keep posting to say tried that. But i have one more idea but i have questions as to how to do it. I want to try running the coils in parallel so it would be like 2 single coils in parallel in the same shell. I think the answer is obvious but i wanna ask anyways in case i'm missing something. If i do this i should change the alnico poles so both coils are the same orientation, right? In other words, both north or both south. If i did them one coil north and one south wouldn't that create an out of phase sorta sound, or at least weaker then if both coil's magnets were oriented the same?

You could actually ask Telenator, he's pretty forthcoming with info.

 

[dharkon8]

I had the wide range pickups in my starcaster and had them rewound by bare knuckle pickups. Super happy with the result.

 

[dazco]

I had the wide range pickups in my starcaster and had them rewound by bare knuckle pickups. Super happy with the result.

Yeah, but there are many options if i wanna put out the $. Theres one i'd try before that called brandonwound pickups where he goes further than anyone else by not just changing magnets or rewinding, but he tosses it all out and uses only your fender plate and cover. He uses larger coil bobbins unlike the standard sized ones they come with and like the ones in the original 72's, then he winds them to original specs and uses threaded magnets. $80 each which is cheaper than telenator and much more like the originals. So if i were to go with a modding service like telenator or buy a aftermarket WRHB, thats the way i'd go. But the problem is the guitar cost me $300 and i'm not sure i'll be happy with any WRHB. I may be better off with standard size HB's in a custom pickguard ($20 ebay) or make one myself for regular single coils. Any way i go abut it i'm throwing away a lot of $ if i don't like the results.

So before i go that route i want to try this last thing. Doing the telenator mod (myself, not by him) helped a lot and i feel this could potentially take them all the way to what i want. I just want to get the answer to my question before i do it so i don't have to go in twice.

 

[redmonda]

I have a tele with fender wide range humbuckers. You probably know of telenator's mod where he removes the bar magnet and puts alnico rods in place of the steel screw polepieces. Well, i did that mod and it's certainly an improvement but i'm still not real happy with how humbucker like they sound. Even my old MIM thinline with the older WRHB's had a much more "HB meets single coil" tone once i did the mod to them. This one sounds much too middy. I have tried one coil but it;s too weak. Also tried 3 rods per coil, one coil with mags only under the plain strings one coil under the wounds.

I only went into detail so you'd know all the things I tried and wouldn't need to keep posting to say tried that. But i have one more idea but i have questions as to how to do it. I want to try running the coils in parallel so it would be like 2 single coils in parallel in the same shell. I think the answer is obvious but i wanna ask anyways in case i'm missing something. If i do this i should change the alnico poles so both coils are the same orientation, right? In other words, both north or both south. If i did them one coil north and one south wouldn't that create an out of phase sorta sound, or at least weaker then if both coil's magnets were oriented the same?

I believe your polarity assumption is correct - you want both of the parallel coils to have the same magnet polarity.

However, I'm not sure what you're trying to get to with parallel coils. By putting the coils in parallel, you are lowering the inductance and are creating a lower-impedance pickup. This means it will be LOWER output than a single coil by itself. I'm not sure that's what you're going for....

 

[dazco]

I already did it, and what i was going for is ANYTHING thats as different as possible from the way they are stock or one of several other configurations i have tried. I hate them and wanted to make them sound as different as i possibly could. The result wasn't as different as i had hoped but it IS better. Lower output is fine, i like low output. Plus they are so compressed sounding that the lower the output the better. They have several sonic properties that to me are total cr@p so the more change the better. I'll probably just end up with a custom pickguard and tele single coils or maybe low output standard HB's like dimarzio EJ or something. Anything but these POS WRHB's.