No more Bardens left!!!! Lets try and make em!

7/16/2004 5:03 AM

Toby

No more Bardens left!!!! Lets try and make em! Hi everyone, I'm in the middle of building my dream telecaster guitar right now and had my mind set on some Joe Barden T-Style pickups. I'm located down here in New Zealand and for the last few weeks have been searching the world almost for a supply of these. Apparently Joe has gone out of business for now and you only need to take a look on ebay to see how the prices for his pickups are going through the roof.     Has anyone ever thought of trying to build a pickup along the same line as Joe's? I plan on doing exactly that and am even prepared to pull one apart to do it. I've got a bid on ebay for a broken one? so hopefully I'll end up with it.     Anyway, I've researched quite a bit about them and already coming from a output transformer winding background, can comprehend to a degree what he's trying to do.     From listening to Danny Gatton alot the pickups are very bright which would suggest they have quite low winding resistance, however not so low to loose the bottom end. On the other hand they are supposed to be terribly hot, with an output voltage very much higher than a typical pickup.     This tells me that the magnetic bar he uses is quite strong and the pole blades are made of a stainless steel with a good content of carbon so as to conduct the magnetic field efficiently.     Correct me if I'm wrong guys. What I want to know is, has anyone done some measurements on them and worked out winding resistance, inductance, output voltage, flux density etc etc??     It's a shame they are no longer available and I do hope he gets back in business however I would like to have a go at doing a set for myself to fit to my new tele.     Sorry for the long post but I'm really keen to do a little experimenting with these.     Cheers, Toby.