Question for blueman335 or anyone...about A3

B

Bakuna

New member
i tried a3/A2/A4/a5 in 59's no question i'm sticking with this A3's . i'm thinking of waxing pups 'cos on high gain they squeal like a pig . i play low gain most of the time but occasionally crank the gain up . does tone change after waxing pups? if it does in what way it affects the tone? 2nd question, my A3' are are rough cast. nice smooth sound i'm happy with the way it sound on low to very low gain on high gain contrast between B/N is way too much . when switching from N to B in the middle of the song (treble on 10 for B/N) B sound as if tone knob is almost completely rolled of . as i said i'm staying with A3-59 and last experiment would be trying polished A3 in B. I've heard they are brighter , i'd like slightly more definition in N.pos. i'd try without asking here but its not easy to find magnets in UK. i've got to order them from US .

so what do ya say?
 
Re: Question for blueman335 or anyone...about A3

Polished A3's have a sharper high end and a bit more treble. A3's give you mids and treble without a boomy low end. They don't have as much treble as an A5. The Joe Bonamassa PU's have an A3 in the bridge.

What value pots do you have? If you don't already, try 500K's. If you have 500K's you might consider 1meg.

Some guys say wax changes the tone, others say it doesn't The difference isn't a lot.
 
Re: Question for blueman335 or anyone...about A3

500k pots. thats right . i need more treble N . I think i'll try to find polished a3
before waxing . thx for 2c
 
Re: Question for blueman335 or anyone...about A3

Since this is a '59 it should have been potted from the factory.

After you replaced the magnet did you heat it up with a hairdryer to reset the wax?
 
Re: Question for blueman335 or anyone...about A3

There's not a set single answer on the potting. It depends on how thick the wax is and how long it's left in the pot, but the thicker and longer, the duller and more 2-dimensional it will sound.
 
Re: Question for blueman335 or anyone...about A3

GilmourD said:
Since this is a '59 it should have been potted from the factory.

After you replaced the magnet did you heat it up with a hairdryer to reset the wax?
Click to expand...

it was . i did lot of mag. experimenting . wax is completely gone.
 
Re: Question for blueman335 or anyone...about A3

Zhangliqun said:
There's not a set single answer on the potting. It depends on how thick the wax is and how long it's left in the pot, but the thicker and longer, the duller and more 2-dimensional it will sound.
Click to expand...

that discouraging . 2 dimensional ? if the way it sounds now is called multi dimensional then i don't want to lose even 1 dimension
 
Re: Question for blueman335 or anyone...about A3

Bakuna said:
it was . i did lot of mag. experimenting . wax is completely gone.
Click to expand...

Does it have a cover on it? If so it may be the cover vibrating. Experimenting with magnets won't remove wax from the coils (which is the primary source of microphonic feedback in pickups).

What you could do is get a little potting wax and put it in the inner top portion of the cover. Put the pickup back into the cover and make sure that's connected solidly. Then heat up the pickup with a hairdryer. It should cause the wax to keep the cover from vibrating and won't be as involved as fully potting the pickup (which it shouldn't need anyway).
 
Re: Question for blueman335 or anyone...about A3

I once fixed a Scaterbrane microphonic pick up by what I call "half potting". I separated one coil from the bucker, stuck in wax the base, mag, and one coil. Then re-installed the unpotted coil, and microphonics were fixed! Let's say it's a potted-unpotted hybrid which retains 50% of the original tone.
 
Re: Question for blueman335 or anyone...about A3

GilmourD said:
Does it have a cover on it? If so it may be the cover vibrating. Experimenting with magnets won't remove wax from the coils (which is the primary source of microphonic feedback in pickups).

What you could do is get a little potting wax and put it in the inner top portion of the cover. Put the pickup back into the cover and make sure that's connected solidly. Then heat up the pickup with a hairdryer. It should cause the wax to keep the cover from vibrating and won't be as involved as fully potting the pickup (which it shouldn't need anyway).
Click to expand...

it accrued to me that i didn't solder cover back to the base? that and good point about putting waxing inner top portion of the cover .
 
Re: Question for blueman335 or anyone...about A3

Bakuna said:
it accrued to me that i didn't solder cover back to the base? that and good point about putting waxing inner top portion of the cover .
Click to expand...

Well, there's your problem.
IMG_0073.jpg
 
Re: Question for blueman335 or anyone...about A3

Bakuna said:
it accrued to me that i didn't solder cover back to the base? that and good point about putting waxing inner top portion of the cover .
Click to expand...

did that when I put some nickel covers on a few neck pups. just dip 'em in there. I think someone was talking about developing a method of 'spooning' in some wax if the cover was already on... but don't ask me, it was someone else's idea. lol!
 
Re: Question for blueman335 or anyone...about A3

darthphineas said:
did that when I put some nickel covers on a few neck pups. just dip 'em in there. I think someone was talking about developing a method of 'spooning' in some wax if the cover was already on... but don't ask me, it was someone else's idea. lol!
Click to expand...
LOL I forgot to do that once... So I screwed the poles all the way down, put bits of wax in the holes, and melted them with the soldering iron until I couldn't get more wax to flow down inside.

LOL
 
Re: Question for blueman335 or anyone...about A3

after I built a few hybrids (neck and bridge) I was concerned about how some of the wax on the bottom of the flatwork was disturbed where the slugs settled into place. one of the neck pups was quite lacking in wax around there right off the bat. I ended up potting them all for about 10 seconds or so each (consdering projectguitar.com says to go 20 min!). no where near enough to mess with the bobbins, but enough to get a wee bit more around the bottom of those slugs and to make me feel better about it.

but no, it's nothing that need to be done for a mag swap. fire up the hairdryer for a bit.
 
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