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Vintage threads from the first ten years

Potting

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9/1/2002 1:46 AM
Dick	Potting Hi all, Speaking of potting, I read on another site about using a potting mixture that does not sacrifice tone like conventional methods. (The 'ingredents' of this potting mixture were secret, though). Do you think that a potting mix (as described) actually exists, or is it just an idle boast? Kind Regards Dick

9/1/2002 7:33 AM

Dick,

I pot all my coils.

I think most players would be very hard pressed to tell the difference between a potted and unpotted pickup, moreover, I have A B tested this with some very good local players using identical guitars one fitted with potted pups and one without - without exception none could tell the difference tonally, but microphonics gave the game away.

I believe the benefits of wax potting far outweigh any perceived drawbacks.

As to the difference between wax and say epoxy -if epoxy is fast cured it will shrink and therefore physically pull everything it encompasses tight and WILL change the tone, however if epoxy is cured slowly over time this effect can be substantially reduced to a point where this effect is almost eradicated.

The cast epoxy pickups I make are cured over 48 hours with a minimum of accelerator/catalyst and shrinkage is less the .025%.

I never pot in anything other than wax, and even my cast epoxy pickups have their coils wax potted before they are assembled and cast.

As to a magic formula for potting compound why?

9/1/2002 7:52 AM
Dick	Hi Andy, Thanks again for your reply and advice. I think that the 'magic' potting mix was not supposed to cut away any high end of the signal- I have heard that potting can 'dull' a pickup a bit. On the pickups I have been winding, I have 'potted' (paraffin & beeswax, 80%&20%), and am pretty happy with the results; I was just investigating other options. Thanks again Andy, Dick

9/2/2002 2:43 AM

I think I know the site you speak of, and I think it's mostly nonesense. I've potted with several different methods (vinyl, laquer, wax, epoxy) and the only one "I" could hear a notible difference in was epoxy, there is a subtle difference in laquer potted when it's fully cured but not significant IMO. I recently had a customer berate me for telling him hard epoxy potted pickups couldn't be rewound, and even if they could it would be cheaper to start from scratch. This was because this website showed epoxy potted pickups "waiting to be rewound"..I also pot all mine in wax now (I was using vinyl, but the cure time was an issue and there weren't any major benefits). Hmm, I'm going to have to post a new question...

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