Unwinding a hot pickup for PAF tone?

[shreddin_ED]

Re: Unwinding a hot pickup for PAF tone?

Originally posted by hapsh
I got a decent humbucker for $10 but it is a bit more hot than I like. Its DC resistance is 15.8K. I was thinking of unwinding the coils down to 8-9K for a more PAF sound. Has anyone done this? I am not sure of the wire guage, but the magnet looks like alnico V. I just don't care much for the gain and tone of it right now so there is nothing to loose.

first off you have a 15K pickup and it will never sound P.A.F.
a P.A.F uses AWG 42 PE wire and 5000 turns per coil.
hotter pickups with a higher resistance use thinner wire(43 or 44 AWG) they have to have the thinner wire or the windings will not fit on the coils.
if you unwind yours you will have a pickup(IF IT STILL EVEN WORKS! )
that will be so trebley, bright,thin you will want to

[Robert S.]

Except the pickup.

You'll have to take off alot of wire to half that pickups DC resistance and there's no guarantee that it will sound good. The way they wind hot pickups is not nessessarily the same as the way they wind vintage spec pickups and the wire guage is probably different as well.

You'll probably learn a couple of things though.

[hapsh]

I got a decent humbucker for $10 but it is a bit more hot than I like. Its DC resistance is 15.8K. I was thinking of unwinding the coils down to 8-9K for a more PAF sound. Has anyone done this? I am not sure of the wire guage, but the magnet looks like alnico V. I just don't care much for the gain and tone of it right now so there is nothing to loose.