Lollar Pickups Blog

Visit Lollar Pickups at the SXSW Guitar Show

We will be participating in the Texas Guitar show, which is part of the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference and festivals. We hope our Texas customers will drop by our booth this coming weekend.

We will be displaying a variety of Lollar pickups. We will have some of our most popular pickups, including our tele, strat, humbucker, and P-90 style pickups. This will also be a good opportunity to check out some of our newer – more specialized – items, like our Supro style replacement pickups, our Melody Maker style replacement pickups, and even a McCarty style pickup / pickguard pre-wire assembly.

Probably the most exciting thing to check out is the re-release of Jason’s pickup winding book. There will be copies of the book available for sale. And, depending on the schedule, Jason might be available to sign it for you.

Yeeeee-haaaww!

As a side note, Jason has been really looking forward to another visit to Texas.  He has taken up a preoccupation with the Armadillo, and is interested in all things Armadillo related.  Including riding them!

Follow this link for more information about the Texas Guitar Show at SXSW.

And follow this link for more information about the Lollar Pickups display area at SXSW.

We’ll look forward to seeing you this Friday or Saturday, March 19th and 20th.

Another set of questions we get on a regular basis goes something like this: Do vintage guitar pickups have a “lifespan?”  Can vintage guitar pickup sound quality change or degrade over time?

In most cases the tone does not appreciably degrade if the coil is still intact. However there are 2 main factors that can affect your guitar pickup over time. A change in either of these can cause a loss or change in the tone of your guitar pickup. We will discuss these factors one at a time.

First, let’s talk about how guitar pickup magnets can be affected over time.

Some pickup designs used magnets that were not made of a permanent magnetic alloy. A prime example is the Rickenbacker horseshoe pickup. These magnets – which are the “horseshoes” themselves - often go dead or “almost” dead. Once they lose their magnetic charge to a sufficient degree, the result will be a loss of output and frequency response.

The U-shaped metal "horseshoes" are the magnets for this Lollar horseshoe style pickup.

The second point about guitar pickup magnets involves AlNiCo based magnet materials. It is important to note that AlNiCo magnets can be easily degaussed, and the way many pickup designs are made allows the AlNiCo to degauss from 20 to 30%. AlNiCo magnets can also be degaussed by rubbing them with a piece of steel, or by placing another magnet in close proximity. As a side note, from time to time we’ll get a customer whose pickup “suddenly had very little output and frequency response.” In a couple of cases it happened “just after a break.” Guess where these customers set their guitars? Right against a large speaker cabinet, right against the back side of the speaker cone. In other words, right against a large magnet! Immediate de-gaussing!

Now let’s talk about how guitar pickup coils are affected over time.

There is a life expectancy for many older pickup designs. For example, P-90’s had a coil former (bobbin) made of a plastic material that can degrade over time. In these cases the bobbin will eventually disintegrate, leaving less substantial material to support the coil. This allows the coil to shift or slump, which affects the sound quality. Gibson also made pickups out of a tortoiseshell plastic. This material can also degrade and fall apart.

Fender pickups that were not wax potted can eventually come apart. In fact, many vintage pickups were not potted with wax or shellac.

This guitar pickup coil was not protected with wax or shellac. This exposed the coil to damage if bumped or dropped.

Answer to your question: Which way do my lead wires go?

We are asked these three related questions on a regular basis:
Does it matter which side of the guitar pickup that the lead wires exit? Does it matter which way I point the lead wires when I install the guitar pickups? Do the lead wires have to be oriented out of the same side for both guitar pickups when I install them?

Generally speaking, the direction the lead wires come out of the pickup has no bearing on guitar pickup phasing. You can rotate the pickup left or right (clockwise or counterclockwise) and it will not matter. The only time left and right orientation comes into play is with staggered pole pickups, and even then there are people that use a reverse from normal stagger.

The only way phasing could be affected is if you installed the pickup completely upside down, which would reverse the phase. In other words, accidentally installing a guitar pickup with the pole pieces pointed into the guitar cavity. But this seems highly unlikely - this would mean the base of the pickup would be pointed toward the strings.

The misconception that the lead wires need to come out of the “same side” of the pickup most frequently comes up when customers are installing humbucker pickups.

If you take a look at this photo, you’ll see that the lead wires are coming out of “opposite” sides of the pickup. This will happen if you are installing your humbuckers in the “conventional” way. That is, installing them with the adjustable poles of the neck pickup sitting closest to the fingerboard, and the adjustable poles of the bridge pickup sitting closest to the bridge.

Our recommendation is to install the guitar pickup with the lead wires oriented whichever way installs the best, easiest, or most conveniently oriented toward the control cavity. Also base your decision on what goal you want to achieve, as with the humbucker example.