NPD Sigil Pickups Holy Grail LTD 1958 vintage Wire

[ARandall]

^^ Star Trek auditioning for spots in The Village People.

 

[morbidalex666]

58 LTD in my RO

That's one of the nisest R0s I've seen ever!
I just discovered that you had a clip of the 58s in your thread.
Really nice sounding clips man!

 

[Skit]

Congrats! I just ordered a set of the 58's. I can't wait to try them, they sound great in the vids.

OK, I ordered the 59 set too. It is nice to have choices.

 

[bp-plickner]

That's one of the nisest R0s I've seen ever!
I just discovered that you had a clip of the 58s in your thread.
Really nice sounding clips man!

Thanks

 

[TM1]

The old wire has a lot of impurities in it. It is Not pure copper but has traces of silver & iron and other metals in the mix. My friend Tom(TV) Jones was telling me that the wire used for the original and early Gretsch FilterTron's has a lot of impurities. He was gifted spools of un-used wire by Ray Butts' daughter and he had it analyzed (along with all the other parts used to build/wind FilterTron's). So almost all magnet wire used today is pretty much pure copper, but the old wire was unique due to an inconsistent mix of other materials. Another thing is the un-evenness of the enamel coating. I would bet that trying to unwind the old wire can be trying to ones patience, but yes, the old wire will sound different and most likely no two spools will sound alike unless they came from the same batch and same company. Personally, I like old wire!!!

 

[ARandall]

^ Also the wire itself has an impurity of size too.
Its why the old pickups seem so full yet sweet....its as if there are several different winds all in one bobbin. Modern pickups tend to sound a bit more one-dimensional unless the winder has some special tricks up their sleeves.

 

[d1m1]

50´s wire seems to make the difference. I do have 3 sets of Wizz LTD 50´s wire and they are by far the best clones i ever played. They are even better than most real PAF´s i had till now.

 

[morbidalex666]

OK, I ordered the 59 set too. It is nice to have choices.

Please send us your impressions of the 2 sets!
Man, I wish I had the dough to get both!!

I can safely say that the honeymoon period is over with these 58s and I am still grinning whenever I bend notes on my Edwards...

 

[CheopisIV]

The old wire has a lot of impurities in it. It is Not pure copper but has traces of silver & iron and other metals in the mix....

So almost all magnet wire used today is pretty much pure copper, but the old wire was unique due to an inconsistent mix of other materials. Another thing is the un-evenness of the enamel coating. I would bet that trying to unwind the old wire can be trying to ones patience, but yes, the old wire will sound different and most likely no two spools will sound alike unless they came from the same batch and same company. Personally, I like old wire!!!

The old wire is incredibly inconsistent compared to modern manufacturing. I wound these pickups to turn count with the same tension, pattern, speed, etc and from one coil to the next there are pretty significant reading changes. The lowest I've measured so far for a 59 neck was 6.9k and the highest was 7.6k. That's a big difference within a single spool with all else being equal!

The impurities and inconsistent thickness play a huge part and can't really be replicated. You can alter the tension on the fly and if hand winding you can change the pattern but otherwise the wire is the wire.

 

[morbidalex666]

...the wire is the wire.

That is what I've concluded about the old wire as well.
I own 2 Sigil sets with vintage wire and I also own a 8.7k pickup built with wire from two old Melody Maker pickups.
Even the last one, which is quite hot, has a quality that pickups with modern wire don't have.

From my point of view, the above conclusion is saddening.
I hope I am proven wrong in the future.

It seems that sustainability is a big issue with almost everything guitar related nowadays (CITES anyone?).
I hope somehow the vintage wire problem gets solved so that old fragile and incredibly incosistent copper wire from the 50s doesn't get elevated to pink unicorn status.

 

[ARandall]

^ The modern way of manufacturing kind of takes the nuance out of something more artistic......generally speaking.

Not only is everything now made to engineering standards seeming more fit for the space shuttle, but the general standard that wooden instruments must now be made to be acceptable is more like you'd find with a German luxury vehicle. QC failure aside, just looking at the typical vintage guitar it would probably be picked to death on the general forum as a QC disaster.

I too have used not only similar pickups with modern vs vintage wire, but I have old pickups where mag swaps to modern castings have yielded very unsatisfactory results, and then newer pickups where old mags have really added depth to the tone. Needless to say the old wire, unless it can be really replicated, does start to become the 'real deal but no longer attainable'

 

[DarrellV]

My brain is upside down

Oh, you come from the land down under!?

 

[ARandall]

Oh, you come from the land down under!?

No, thats me

 

[DarrellV]

No, thats me

I guess I never picked up on that yet!
I caught that it was Allen, not Alex in another thread but not the Aussie part...
G'day, then, Mate!

 

[TM1]

^ The modern way of manufacturing kind of takes the nuance out of something more artistic......generally speaking.

Not only is everything now made to engineering standards seeming more fit for the space shuttle, but the general standard that wooden instruments must now be made to be acceptable is more like you'd find with a German luxury vehicle. QC failure aside, just looking at the typical vintage guitar it would probably be picked to death on the general forum as a QC disaster.

I too have used not only similar pickups with modern vs vintage wire, but I have old pickups where mag swaps to modern castings have yielded very unsatisfactory results, and then newer pickups where old mags have really added depth to the tone. Needless to say the old wire, unless it can be really replicated, does start to become the 'real deal but no longer attainable'

Have you tried using Jon @ThroBak's magnets? His magnets pretty well duplicate the originals used in the 50's & 60's and are all poured here by mostly the same companies that Gibson used and the magnet mix is what was used back then.

 

[TM1]

Oh.. BTW, Cheopis IV, are you still taking orders for old wire pickups?
Cheers!

 

[ARandall]

Have you tried using Jon @ThroBak's magnets? His magnets pretty well duplicate the originals used in the 50's & 60's and are all poured here by mostly the same companies that Gibson used and the magnet mix is what was used back then.

I have a few of Jon's mags. Mainly the A4 and 2 UOA5's. They have gone into a few pickups that I found troublesome to finetune.

 

[CheopisIV]

Oh.. BTW, Cheopis IV, are you still taking orders for old wire pickups?
Cheers!

I still have a few sets left, they're listed on my site. 1x 1959 set and 5x 1958 sets still remain.

 

[TM1]

I have two sets of the early ThroBaks with NOS wire Jon used. I'll have to stick some A-4 mags in them. I've gotten to the point with my L.P.'s that they're all pretty well done. My 2002 R-0 has a '59 zebra PAF in the bridge and a '61 in the neck with an old long Gibson magnet. My R-7 Custom has another '61 in the bridge and a T-Top in the neck & middle with A-4's & my R-4 has vintage P-90's. All three guitars have had the RDS upgrades from [email protected] Historic Makeovers as has my first run ES-339. But it's the only one I'm not thrilled with so I will probably try the early ThroBaks in it..

 

[Brutus]

I still have a few sets left, they're listed on my site. 1x 1959 set and 5x 1958 sets still remain.

David, do you have a covered 58 set available?