Messing With Old Teisco Pickups

[avengers63]

Here's my stash....

Some of them are only pressed into the cover, some of them are glued. None of them are soldered.

My eventual want is to have 4 of them on one guitar wired up with something similar to this.

I'm wanting to figure out how/if I can wire two of them together and have them act like a humbucker. The obvious issue is that I'm sure none of them are reverse-wound. Even if they were, I'd not know how to find this out. So unless one of you know how to determine the polarity with a multi-meter, let's presume they're all wound 'forward'.

My only idea, and I'm sure this will display my extremely limited understanding of electronics, is to take one of the coils out of the cover and flip it over. My gut says that won't do anything, but that's all I have.

[SwedishLuthier]

One thing that intrigues me is that you have three wires from each pickup. Check with a multi meter if one is ground. If so you can do this quite easily… or maybe not. OK, lest go on here:

First of all you need to have one of the coils reversed (more on that later) but you also need to have the magnets reversed too. On some pickups yopu can flip the magnet, like on a humbucker or a cheepo asian strat with a bar magnet glued under steel poles. But a genuine single coil often have the wire wound directly around the magnets and you will directly destroy the magnet wire in the coil if you try to push the magnets out, not to mention it will collapse the coil completely (remember that this is focused around fender pickups and I have not had my hand on pickups like yours. In a fender type single coil were you cannot flip the magnets you can actually change the orientation of the magnetic field. Slide the magnets between strong neodymium (rare earth) magnets and the polarity of the magnets will change and in addition be fully charged (if the magnets ar OK that is). So check the polarity of the magnets with a cheep compass or this:

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics,_p...3&xsr=11041 (very handy). If you have two of each polarity, well congrats, if not you need to change the polarity of two of them. If you can flip the complete coil/magnet assembly there is no need to change the polarity of the magnets, just flip away…

Next:

The obvious issue is that I'm sure none of them are reverse-wound.

That is a quite common misunderstanding. The “extra” coil doesn’t have to be reverse wound. It only have to have the “path to ground” reversed. How is that done then? Well, simply flip the cables and you have changed the path to ground, meaning that the most outer turns of wire that was say closest to ground in a schematic way of looking at things now is most far away from ground. And the coil will work like a reverse wound coil. To be honest, in the early days and all through history even up to today a reversed wound pickup is very seldom reversed but simply have the lead wires flipped.

Even if they were, I'd not know how to find this out.

Here’s a neat trick I learned but still have not tried myself. Take a cheepo analog multimeter (a digital might work but I doubt that the result will be as good). Now lay down the two pickups (with different magnetic polarity) that will form a humbucking pair “on their back” and hook the meter up. Set the dial to DC voltage. Lets say that you use red as hot and green ad ground. Not take a piece of magnetic steel (not a magnet, just something that stick to a magnet) and push it quite quickly down against the face of the pickup. Note the direction that the pointer mover into. Now do the same thing with the other pickup. If the pointer mover in the same direction the two pickups are “in phase” with eath other and will form a humbucking pair. If the pointer moves in the opposite direction they will be “out of phase” and the sound will be nasal and thin.

[WezV]

One thing that intrigues me is that you have three wires from each pickup.

surely the extra is just the covers earth connection... i would assume green and black to back of pot and red to switch/pot tag for normal wiring. green and red being the pickup leads, black being the cover

i would dismantle one to see whats going on, and take some photos as you do it so you can ask. if the magnets seperate everything gets easier

I would also consider learning to wax pot them once you have the wiring sussed out - or sending them to someone to do it for you, especially if the windings appear loose if you dismantle one. i love these old teisco pickups, but they are often microphonic from loose windings and the wax helps no end. Its also worth playing with pot values to get the best sound, similar to how danelectros use 100k pots to compensate for the tone of the lipsticks

just playing with a nice old rickenbacker toaster pickup at the moment myself... quite badly made, low powered and generally quirky but it doesnt half sound nice