Ben, i have seen a Luthier i know, use a wax pot to melt the mix, then he pours it into a vacuum jar, where the pickups are waiting, closes it, then pumps out the air. Result; no air trapped in the pickups. None of it is expensive gear, so you might check it out.
No, it is 20% bees wax and 80% parafin wax that I use to pot my pickups.. there are others who swear by different options though with some not using bees wax at all or adding in a little caranuba.. experiment and have fun finding out what works for you is all I can say.
They should still be potted once you take the covers off, it is a bit hit and miss though, the process of removing them may vibrate the wax internally and create gaps and thus microphonics.. you certainly would have to repot them if you decide to put the covers back on at a later date though.. good luck sir!
Not quite, they work and make sound fine but air in the coil or under a cover can cause microphonic feedback.. high pitched squeels through your amp and that's not ideal..
You only need to pot the pickup once, solder the cover on first then you're good go.. The feedback is caused by air gaps between the new cover and the pickup and chances are the pickup itself has already been potted by Seymour Duncun.. Good luck :-)
@aedvark good point, the main reason is space.. prior to melting the wax there was a lot of air in there and the wax took up more space, it would have meant adding the wax in in three stages rather than two. But, frankly, rocks in first would probably have been the better way to do it now I think about it!?
Interesting video. Maybe I'm missing a link, but is there another video testing these pickups you just potted? Kinda curious how they sound. Thanks!! Clay
It's pretty straight forward, the covers will be soldered on at the back, you'll need to break the joint or de-solder it and gently remove the cover. Putting the new cover on is straight-forward but will leave an air gap that will cause microphonic feedback, you'll have to wax pot the pickups before putting them back in the guitar.. But that's what this video is for :-)
My pleasure! You absolutely MUST pot the pickups with the covers on, when you take it out of the wax rub them down with tissue and the excess wax will come off perfectly. Enjoy!
Your problem is definitely not the pickups, your guitar is not shielded properly and it sounds like you need an earth/ground lead from your bridge/trem.. basically you need to tell this to an experienced luthier or repair guy, unless you're comfortable ripping out your wiring and shielding your guitars cavity..?
If there are air bubbles in the coil or between the pickup and the cover you can get nasty squealing feedback.. using this wax-potting process fills those gaps with wax and stops the feedback :-)
I bought some Chinese knockoff EMG's and I'm having the same squeal sound. Is it possible to do this on humbucker with a sealed plastic shell or should i shoot for some IronGear pickups?
great video and great work (obviously, you dont need me to tell you that, but i felt like saying it ..) I just learned from someone that potting is actually sealing the coils in a solid material, and using wax to actually penetrate the coils is called "coil immersion".. so its one of those things, all coil immersion is potting, but not all potting uses coil immersion. hahah nice.
I did my pickups last night. I had Dimarzios but I added covers to them. They squealed so bad it was unusable so I did the wax potting. Man what a difference and the sound is great now. I used a $10 crock pot from Wally World and hung them in the wax. It took 20 minutes for the bubbles to stop When pulling them out I did not drain them to keep as much wax in the covers a possible. They look great and sound great! Thanks for your video though it helped.
I've seen a number of videos on HOW to properly wax pickups, but this is the first I've spotted that explained WHY. Thanks Ben, as always you've done a great video. I did love the orgasm comment... ;)
great video! just want to know, some pickups come with their coil windings covered with adhesive tape, should this be removed before potting the pickup?
It's so cool watching Ben's older videos and see how far he's come. I admire his work, I hope one day I can afford one of those beautiful instruments they make over at Crimson.
Thanks for the tutorial. I have a question. I potted my pickups step by step like you said but they still do the noisy squeal, specially the neck pickup and when the distorsion it's on Heavy and it gets worse with a chorus or some effect, but they get better when I turn the volume or the tone. They are epiphone's probucker and My Guitar it's also an Epiphone Les Paul Standard Plustop Pro, Is there something I'm missing? or I need to change them?, I need them to play Heavy Metal and I can't.
a little bit of good info...... But did we really need to spend 6 out of 12 minutes watching wax melt and pebble insertion? Not trying to be a dick, just saying. Those covered one's should have been upside down to remove all the air.
I love it, since I have never heard of this until today, strangely, and I recently started building all kinds of things from scrap- i made a guitar, coils AND strings, from wire from a computer monitor, the magnets, other pieces, pretty much everything.. you can make an entire guitar from an old tv, a computer, a monitor.. isnt that crazy!!.. Im going to try to pot and immerse my coils in wax.. I did have some feedback (undesirable) and when you tap the guitar neck, it goes to the pickups..
Excellent video! Thank you for teaching us all. Can you please explain why some companies do not pot their pickups and why some do? Does potting vs. no potting have anything to do with the resulting tone of the pickup? Thank you Crimson Guitars.
OMG! Eleven years ago! Yep, under 60 degrees C, or 50 degrees C is my aim. I suspend my pickups. I found using an "InkBird" temperature controller with a single electric stove hob, a fine balance of thermostat and InkBird controller set points tends to do a very good job. I found thermostat control lets the temperature run over temperature so the dual setup works really well. I once dropped a mini humbucker in hot wax only to see it shrivel up and get busted. So, good temperature control is essential.
I have a set of covered gold plated humbuckers from Guitar Madness that squealed like a S.O.B. The guitar was unplayable. I just did this last night, and let me tell you, it was stupid simple, and it did what it was supposed to do. I got my wax at Menards. Cost a little under $3 for a 16oz box. I put 1 bar in a small glass bowl, sitting in a pan of hot water, 140 degrees, dunked the pups for about 10 minutes, DONE! Yes you can do this yourself! Thanks for the vid.
Thank you for making this video. I have a question that may have been answered but I couldn’t find it. If the covers are on your humbuckers, aren’t they going to trap air?it seems like you would want to invert them.
I have a stacked humbucker (strat size ) canno take the plastic cover off, can I dip the entire pickup with the cover as well ? Assume I can but wanted to get your feedback, Thx
oh shit how much do i have to pay to pot them cause i have gus g blackouts which are passive but by using the modular preamp it makes them active and whenever i turn the lights on in my house they start to have feed back whats the problem please help and when i let the strings and i dont touch them they start to squel so much
yeah im ok with taking the wires off and putting them back together i have copper wire for the cavities but what is this thing about ground lead from tremolo cause i have a floyd and you know that they put the ground wire on back where you adjust the springs so do i have to get an other wire and replace the one i have?
I had a go at potting pickups today for the first time and have been at it all day. My finding was the time scale was not critical and in the end there was no need to stand byt it and inhale the fumes lol because the time it took for the bubbles to stop could take upwards of 20 mins to 30 min! Also The wax I used appeared to cool quickly/ have a fairly high melting pount I found 65c was minuimum really actually found this proces was best at around 70c and no I did not melt any plastic! This may help some one :)
I would like to know if the waxing alter the sound of the pick-up or there's no coloration of the sound at all? By the way... I got a pickup that is very noisy with high gain on. A kind of white noise/hiss. I compared it with the same guitar model with the same settings and the noise of my guitar was much more audible. Does a microphonic pickup can be responsible for this poor signal-to-noise ratio too? Maybe the problem is somewhere else too...
you should rig a rice-cooker with a rheostat/thermostat to regulate temp. just leave your wax in it with the rocks and put the lid on it. Set it for 150 permanently, and just switch it on first thing in the morning on pickup potting day. (with a big red LED that reminds you there's a small vat of hot wax in the vicinity).
I may have missed it somewhere among the many videos, but I was wondering if you had any views on cavity shielding methods - shielding tape vs shielding paint - and perhaps the benefits that shielding provides?
That was what I was thinking. Being "right-side up", the covered pickups would be trapping air under the covers......putting them into the wax upside down (or sideways) would eliminate that trapping issue.
Hey CrimsonGuitar, i want to place a pickup cover on my seymour duncans, should i solder on the cover first then wax it? or wax pot the open coil pick up, then put the cover on, solder it down then wax pot it again?
I'm sure a new improved setup is in development, watch a few seymour duncan videos & you'll see the sealed potting fixture that SD uses.. Could be made for around $100 including the vacuum pump..
your right i agree with that and will may not make flashy guitars.. but his guitars sound alot better too and ben relies on.. hey look at this wood its mahogony it sounds way better than alder.. but in electric guitars it doesnt matter.. pretty woods are just for show nothing more.
I leave the pickups in the wax (155f) for 15 seconds. I work on one at a time, moving them around until the bubbles stop. I'm not dangling the things. They're never microphonic, it does change the tone though.
I did not experience any tone change when I did this. Been playing for 36 years here so I know what I’m listening for. If your pups squeal, you need to do this.
My Fender Stratocaster has this unpleasant squealing sound when I turn on any distortion so I'm guessing it's because the pickups have become microphonic. The problem is that no one here seems to know how to do this procedure, so I'll have to do it. Where do I find a resource that has every single step broken down so I don't ruin my pickups?
Funnily this technique that every pickup winder on the globe uses, if they do not use a vacuum system, is being touted by Radioshop pickups as something they came up with. Ha hah ha.
No, the melting temperature is much warmer than anything we experience in normal life.. Put it this way, if the wax is melting in your pickups you're on the way to being cooked alive yourself! B
I was just quoting the video. I don't pot pickups that often, but when I do, I am repotting factory pickups. And the process i use is for MY pickups only. I would never do this to someone else's. I take mostly paraffin (if any bees wax) and i melt it in my oven. I remove it far away from my oven wait until the temp of the wax reaches around 130-145 degrees and i lower them into the wax and leave them there until it starts to re solidify, yep. then I remove it, clean it, install it.
Wax potting pickups has 2 primary purposes. One is to get rid of microphone like qualities. For example if you plug in to an amp, mute the strings, and talk into the pickup and it amplifies your voice, wax potting cures that. Meshuggah uses it to get rid of feedback from all of the gain they use. Also, yes you do need to remove the tape from the pickup prior to wax potting, so make sure you get new tape!
I did this and didn’t remove anything. I just dunked the entire gold covered pup for 8 to 10minutes, until the bubbles stopped, then tested afterwards and they work fine.
but then again, that defect actually adds something interesting like a new feature to my diy instrument made from scrap.. like an electronic drum slash guitar thing. you can even hear your voice go through the pickup if you're close enough.. but anyways, i want to make a nice one, with 60hz canceller once i get the proper equipment..
Why didnt ben put the solid covered ones in upside down...
Ben, i have seen a Luthier i know, use a wax pot to melt the mix, then he pours it into a vacuum jar, where the pickups are waiting, closes it, then pumps out the air. Result; no air trapped in the pickups. None of it is expensive gear, so you might check it out.
This is how seymour duncan does his, just a vacuum pump like what is used in HVAC work..
I was wondering if a little vacuum treatment would be helpful. :-)
Maybe put the pebbles in before you heat the wax to avoid splashing?
No, it is 20% bees wax and 80% parafin wax that I use to pot my pickups.. there are others who swear by different options though with some not using bees wax at all or adding in a little caranuba.. experiment and have fun finding out what works for you is all I can say.
They should still be potted once you take the covers off, it is a bit hit and miss though, the process of removing them may vibrate the wax internally and create gaps and thus microphonics.. you certainly would have to repot them if you decide to put the covers back on at a later date though.. good luck sir!
I had a Gibson SG with horribly squeely hum buckers and I potted them in wax and afterwards the pickups sang sweetly!
Not quite, they work and make sound fine but air in the coil or under a cover can cause microphonic feedback.. high pitched squeels through your amp and that's not ideal..
I like exact approximations.
with the last 2 you put in, wouldn't those covers hold air? shouldn't they have been put in the other way to allow all the air out?
Yep.
That's what I was thinking
You only need to pot the pickup once, solder the cover on first then you're good go.. The feedback is caused by air gaps between the new cover and the pickup and chances are the pickup itself has already been potted by Seymour Duncun.. Good luck :-)
@aedvark good point, the main reason is space.. prior to melting the wax there was a lot of air in there and the wax took up more space, it would have meant adding the wax in in three stages rather than two. But, frankly, rocks in first would probably have been the better way to do it now I think about it!?
Interesting video.
Maybe I'm missing a link, but is there another video testing these pickups you just potted?
Kinda curious how they sound.
Thanks!!
Clay
the same but no feedback,isnt that obvious? is everyone's i.q a single digit number?????????????
It's pretty straight forward, the covers will be soldered on at the back, you'll need to break the joint or de-solder it and gently remove the cover. Putting the new cover on is straight-forward but will leave an air gap that will cause microphonic feedback, you'll have to wax pot the pickups before putting them back in the guitar.. But that's what this video is for :-)
wtf mate, its awesome when you go closser to the amp with the gain cranked up and that fucking noise comes out!!!! ask Matt Bellamy 😂😂😂
the potting pickups still do.. need to be a little closer, but still do
My pleasure! You absolutely MUST pot the pickups with the covers on, when you take it out of the wax rub them down with tissue and the excess wax will come off perfectly. Enjoy!
Your problem is definitely not the pickups, your guitar is not shielded properly and it sounds like you need an earth/ground lead from your bridge/trem.. basically you need to tell this to an experienced luthier or repair guy, unless you're comfortable ripping out your wiring and shielding your guitars cavity..?
If there are air bubbles in the coil or between the pickup and the cover you can get nasty squealing feedback.. using this wax-potting process fills those gaps with wax and stops the feedback :-)
Thanks for explaining why a combination of waxes are used.
No sound check? Come on mate!
I bought some Chinese knockoff EMG's and I'm having the same squeal sound. Is it possible to do this on humbucker with a sealed plastic shell or should i shoot for some IronGear pickups?
great video and great work (obviously, you dont need me to tell you that, but i felt like saying it ..) I just learned from someone that potting is actually sealing the coils in a solid material, and using wax to actually penetrate the coils is called "coil immersion".. so its one of those things, all coil immersion is potting, but not all potting uses coil immersion. hahah nice.
I did my pickups last night. I had Dimarzios but I added covers to them. They squealed so bad it was unusable so I did the wax potting. Man what a difference and the sound is great now. I used a $10 crock pot from Wally World and hung them in the wax. It took 20 minutes for the bubbles to stop When pulling them out I did not drain them to keep as much wax in the covers a possible. They look great and sound great! Thanks for your video though it helped.
I've seen a number of videos on HOW to properly wax pickups, but this is the first I've spotted that explained WHY. Thanks Ben, as always you've done a great video. I did love the orgasm comment... ;)
Shouldn't you put the chrome covers in upside-down? That way the bubbles don't get stuck on the inside of the top of the cover.
I thought the same thing..turn the pickups over
great video! just want to know, some pickups come with their coil windings covered with adhesive tape, should this be removed before potting the pickup?
MARBIZARRO good question🤔
Can you make a video before and after what the pickups sound like please thank you
I flipped the covered ones upside down, rigged my sonic toothbrush to vibrate the wax into the coils.
It's so cool watching Ben's older videos and see how far he's come.
I admire his work, I hope one day I can afford one of those beautiful instruments they make over at Crimson.
Thanks for the tutorial. I have a question. I potted my pickups step by step like you said but they still do the noisy squeal, specially the neck pickup and when the distorsion it's on Heavy and it gets worse with a chorus or some effect, but they get better when I turn the volume or the tone. They are epiphone's probucker and My Guitar it's also an Epiphone Les Paul Standard Plustop Pro, Is there something I'm missing? or I need to change them?, I need them to play Heavy Metal and I can't.
a little bit of good info...... But did we really need to spend 6 out of 12 minutes watching wax melt and pebble insertion? Not trying to be a dick, just saying. Those covered one's should have been upside down to remove all the air.
I love it, since I have never heard of this until today, strangely, and I recently started building all kinds of things from scrap- i made a guitar, coils AND strings, from wire from a computer monitor, the magnets, other pieces, pretty much everything.. you can make an entire guitar from an old tv, a computer, a monitor.. isnt that crazy!!.. Im going to try to pot and immerse my coils in wax.. I did have some feedback (undesirable) and when you tap the guitar neck, it goes to the pickups..
How do I know If my Pups need potting in the first place? and also where do I get the two wax types ..??
Nice Video. Have you ever thought of melting the wax in a large glass jar so you can cover and reuse after your done?
Excellent video! Thank you for teaching us all. Can you please explain why some companies do not pot their pickups and why some do? Does potting vs. no potting have anything to do with the resulting tone of the pickup? Thank you Crimson Guitars.
Hi once I have potted the pickups with the covers on, can I remove the covers and they still no longer be microphonic? Thanks!
I've got some squeeling pickups.
Time to give this a try.
Thanks, mate!
This video for some reason is very relaxing to watch. lol
Absolutely love your videos. Thank you so much
ok! thanks for your proposal I'll try it
Would this be more effective in a vacuum chamber?
Technically yes, but that isn’t really necessary
Real Nice wooden pickup covers.
OMG! Eleven years ago! Yep, under 60 degrees C, or 50 degrees C is my aim. I suspend my pickups. I found using an "InkBird" temperature controller with a single electric stove hob, a fine balance of thermostat and InkBird controller set points tends to do a very good job. I found thermostat control lets the temperature run over temperature so the dual setup works really well. I once dropped a mini humbucker in hot wax only to see it shrivel up and get busted. So, good temperature control is essential.
Thanks for the information
Does it need a vacuum seal?
03:28 dont eat the yellow snow
sean sneddon first thing i told my son when I took him ice fishing
Unless Your Zakk Wylde ;)
I did it, it works. Thank you.
Can I use Ear Wax ?
try for yourself, breda
try for yourself, breda
Just my opinion, but if you have enough ear wax to pot pickups, maybe it's not a pickup problem? Just sayin'.....
Once again, I love the music
I have a set of covered gold plated humbuckers from Guitar Madness that squealed like a S.O.B. The guitar was unplayable. I just did this last night, and let me tell you, it was stupid simple, and it did what it was supposed to do. I got my wax at Menards. Cost a little under $3 for a 16oz box. I put 1 bar in a small glass bowl, sitting in a pan of hot water, 140 degrees, dunked the pups for about 10 minutes, DONE! Yes you can do this yourself! Thanks for the vid.
Thank you for making this video. I have a question that may have been answered but I couldn’t find it. If the covers are on your humbuckers, aren’t they going to trap air?it seems like you would want to invert them.
I have a stacked humbucker (strat size ) canno take the plastic cover off, can I dip the entire pickup with the cover as well ? Assume I can but wanted to get your feedback, Thx
oh shit how much do i have to pay to pot them cause i have gus g blackouts which are passive but by using the modular preamp it makes them active and whenever i turn the lights on in my house they start to have feed back whats the problem please help and when i let the strings and i dont touch them they start to squel so much
yeah im ok with taking the wires off and putting them back together i have copper wire for the cavities but what is this thing about ground lead from tremolo cause i have a floyd and you know that they put the ground wire on back where you adjust the springs so do i have to get an other wire and replace the one i have?
I had a go at potting pickups today for the first time and have been at it all day. My finding was the time scale was not critical and in the end there was no need to stand byt it and inhale the fumes lol because the time it took for the bubbles to stop could take upwards of 20 mins to 30 min! Also The wax I used appeared to cool quickly/ have a fairly high melting pount I found 65c was minuimum really actually found this proces was best at around 70c and no I did not melt any plastic! This may help some one :)
I would like to know if the waxing alter the sound of the pick-up or there's no coloration of the sound at all? By the way... I got a pickup that is very noisy with high gain on. A kind of white noise/hiss. I compared it with the same guitar model with the same settings and the noise of my guitar was much more audible. Does a microphonic pickup can be responsible for this poor signal-to-noise ratio too? Maybe the problem is somewhere else too...
you should rig a rice-cooker with a rheostat/thermostat to regulate temp. just leave your wax in it with the rocks and put the lid on it. Set it for 150 permanently, and just switch it on first thing in the morning on pickup potting day. (with a big red LED that reminds you there's a small vat of hot wax in the vicinity).
I may have missed it somewhere among the many videos, but I was wondering if you had any views on cavity shielding methods - shielding tape vs shielding paint - and perhaps the benefits that shielding provides?
That was what I was thinking. Being "right-side up", the covered pickups would be trapping air under the covers......putting them into the wax upside down (or sideways) would eliminate that trapping issue.
Very nice video, could you tell me if it is right to use paraffin OIL instead of paraffin WAX?
Hey CrimsonGuitar, i want to place a pickup cover on my seymour duncans, should i solder on the cover first then wax it? or wax pot the open coil pick up, then put the cover on, solder it down then wax pot it again?
Probably should of turned them upside down. Instead of trapping a nice air pocket by putting those nickel ones in like that.
flip those covered ones over, there'll be air trapped under the cover.
True that!
Quick qestion about pickups.
I want to change the covers on my dimarzio tones zone humbucker pickups and I was curious about how to go about it
A warm, or heated, blade will make it easier to cut the wax block. That, or wrap the block in a bag and smash it with a hammer :-)
My question to you is, would't the air escape better if they had been placed face down? So that the cover wouldn't be in the way.
Wot if you want to remove the wax from a pickup?? Can you put the pickup in water at the same temperature??
Can i pour candle wax on all over pickups and inside components to reduce noise
Ben... what is the appropriate temperature that the meter reading should be in this method???
I use chaep white candles as a source of paraffin wax and you can get the beeswax from ebay
They are often potted in a vacuum so the air is literally sucked out of the bobbins
crunch crunch crunch...mmmmeh...what's cookin' doc?
I think those covered ones should have been kept upside down or at least sideways ??
At 3:10 I had the strangest craving for buttered white rice.
one question, why not put the rocks/heat balls in first before the wax ?
over time the candle wax will melt and disintegrate, Paraffin doesn't
sorry i want make sure is the Proportion:Ferris Wax 20%,Beeswax 80%?
I wouldn't call it violent guitar porn, more like a horror movie.
It would help if you put them bottom side up so the air would escape. Duh
So pickups only work when there is no Air in the pickup its self?
You need a better double boiler than this for your upcoming luigi custom wound pickups
+Headknocker I absolutely agree!
I'm sure a new improved setup is in development, watch a few seymour duncan videos & you'll see the sealed potting fixture that SD uses.. Could be made for around $100 including the vacuum pump..
why didnt u pump the air out? take a lesson from wiillseasyguitar he has a better tutorial !
your right i agree with that and will may not make flashy guitars.. but his guitars sound alot better too and ben relies on.. hey look at this wood its mahogony it sounds way better than alder.. but in electric guitars it doesnt matter.. pretty woods are just for show nothing more.
couldnt of said it better myself and he doesnt believe in tonewoods
I leave the pickups in the wax (155f) for 15 seconds. I work on one at a time, moving them around until the bubbles stop. I'm not dangling the things. They're never microphonic, it does change the tone though.
I did not experience any tone change when I did this. Been playing for 36 years here so I know what I’m listening for. If your pups squeal, you need to do this.
My Fender Stratocaster has this unpleasant squealing sound when I turn on any distortion so I'm guessing it's because the pickups have become microphonic. The problem is that no one here seems to know how to do this procedure, so I'll have to do it. Where do I find a resource that has every single step broken down so I don't ruin my pickups?
throw them in a pot of melted wax,wait till the bubbles stop.did you watch the video?
Guitar recipes by Crimson
Funnily this technique that every pickup winder on the globe uses, if they do not use a vacuum system, is being touted by Radioshop pickups as something they came up with. Ha hah ha.
Seriously? That doesn't seem like the sort of bullshit those guys would say.. they make great pickups either way imo. B
Wild Ord I think u should urself he probably has
do u have a video on how to make pickups at all
Just a question , why putting pickups in wax ?
Thank you for explaining why paraffin and beeswax. I am new to winding and I have really wondered about that
Glad it was helpful!
Do you really need so much wax ? Isn't submerged pickups enough ?
If you actually watched the whole vid he added more wax because the ratio wasn't right
omg, why dont heat the knife for an easy cut
Hey guys what does pot waxing do for pickups?
Wont the wax melt off if your guitar is placed some where moderately hot?
No, the melting temperature is much warmer than anything we experience in normal life.. Put it this way, if the wax is melting in your pickups you're on the way to being cooked alive yourself! B
why do you need to pot your pickups?
Can I use cream cheese?
Half and half by weight or volume? Looked like a lot more paraffin wax.
he said 80/20. Eighty percent paraffin and twenty percent beeswax.
***** You still have to measure either by volume or weight. If it's by eye your going by volume and it's inaccurate, not unacceptable but inaccurate.
I was just quoting the video. I don't pot pickups that often, but when I do, I am repotting factory pickups. And the process i use is for MY pickups only. I would never do this to someone else's. I take mostly paraffin (if any bees wax) and i melt it in my oven. I remove it far away from my oven wait until the temp of the wax reaches around 130-145 degrees and i lower them into the wax and leave them there until it starts to re solidify, yep. then I remove it, clean it, install it.
that's pretty much it.
Wax potting pickups has 2 primary purposes. One is to get rid of microphone like qualities. For example if you plug in to an amp, mute the strings, and talk into the pickup and it amplifies your voice, wax potting cures that. Meshuggah uses it to get rid of feedback from all of the gain they use. Also, yes you do need to remove the tape from the pickup prior to wax potting, so make sure you get new tape!
I did this and didn’t remove anything. I just dunked the entire gold covered pup for 8 to 10minutes, until the bubbles stopped, then tested afterwards and they work fine.
I heard you can simply use a rubber band wrapped around where your tape is to avoid your tape getting unraveled.
Looks yummy
thank you
but then again, that defect actually adds something interesting like a new feature to my diy instrument made from scrap.. like an electronic drum slash guitar thing. you can even hear your voice go through the pickup if you're close enough.. but anyways, i want to make a nice one, with 60hz canceller once i get the proper equipment..