Coating or covering pickup springs

dpaterson

New member
Yeh. It's me. Still here.

Anybody ever thought to try coat or cover their pickup springs (in much the same way as some of these Floyd Rose tremelo springs are coated or covered)??? If so: any ideas??? Don't want to use tubing for a variety of reasons.

Reason for asking:

I replaced a stock Jackson bridge pickup with a Dimarzio Super Distortion a little while ago. Ever since then I've been getting some really weird "shrill overtones". After much fault finding (including putting BACK the stock Jackson Floyd Rose) (although had other reasons for doing this) the cause, it turns out, is one of the flipping pickup springs. If I tap on the pickup screws on any of my guitars with a screwdriver: you can clearly hear the tapping but that's it. On this guitar and on one of the pickup screws: the tapping results in a sort of "springy reverberation" sound. So I figured that when I put my SD Invaders in (hopefully will have the bridge pickup before Christmas Day) I'd maybe try coating or insulating the pickup springs to avoid this happening again.

From reading around the Internet: I realise this is not a common problem. But what the hell i.e. if I can do it then why not. Certainly not gonna do any harm.

Was thinking of trying some of that heat shrink stuff i.e. get some that's very close to the diameter of a spring and heat just enough to tighten around the spring. The heat shrink stuff is flexible enough to be able to contract and expand with the spring without cracking. Another thought is to melt some of that hot glue (the type of stuff that you use in hot glue guns) in a pan until it's a runny liquid and then just dip the springs in and out so that they're coated lightly with the glue (this glue never hardens after drying i.e. always has a slight rubbery feel to it after it has dried). Hard way: take some very thin insulation (from, say, pickup type wire) and thread the spring through the insulation (could take a while though).
 
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Re: Coating or covering pickup springs

The springs are generally very compressed. I doubt they could contribute any noise to the pickup.

You can just wrap some tape around them. Or get surgical tubing which is sold as pickup springs


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Re: Coating or covering pickup springs

You can just wrap some tape around them.
Now that would be WAY too easy and would take only a FRACTION of the time!!! LOL!!! (Never thought of that!!! LOL!!!).

This "shrill springy reverberation" is definitely coming from the one pickup spring (and/or pickup screw maybe). I have no doubt about that. In this case: COULD be that I had to use the much thinner screws that came with the Dimarzio but used the Jackson springs (the Dimarzio springs MUCH longer than the Jackson springs and much thinner in diameter too but didn't want to cut them as I don't know where this pickup is eventually going to end up). Truth be told I was not impressed that the Dimarzio screws are totally different from the stock Jackson pickup screws and SD screws (color, diameter, and head). If nothing else and because of the smaller diameter of the Dimarzio screws: they're a very loose fit in the pickup rings. But hey: you live and learn.
 
Re: Coating or covering pickup springs

A couple spritzes of Plastidip should damp the springs reasonably well.
 
Re: Coating or covering pickup springs

Wow. Thanks. Just looked it up. Didn’t even know such a thing existed until now. Looks like it could do exactly what I was trying to do and elegantly as well. Best part: I can get it locally it would seem. Thanks again.
 
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