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How important is wax (or epoxy/lacquer/etc) potting in voicing pickups?
I always have a few of my own guitars that I’m tinkering around with. I have a dark sounding guitar that I’ve been experimenting with brightening up, and over the weekend I decided I’d remove the pickup covers. Well, removing the covers made very minimal if any perceptible change in tone for me, but I noticed that the pickups were completely caked in thick wax. So I decided to melt away the excess wax so the pickups wouldn’t look so ridiculous aesthetically without the covers. It was a messy process but I was able to remove the wax chunks and get the wax thinned out overall.
When I got the pickups back in the guitar and plugged it in I was quite surprised at the difference in sound after removing the wax. The pickups were much brighter and sounded better overall to me. For folks that know more than me, is potting a significant aspect of voicing pickups?
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4 Replies
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is is from the perspective of a total electronics avoider, but it’s my understanding that potting the pickups done to avoid microphonics. It make total sense that a big change would happen to the sound if you removed the wax. I’ve asked Gerry Haze to comment, he’s headed off to vacation though, so it’s going to take a minute.
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Thanks @ianhatesguitars. I actually found a video you posted from TLG with Kent Armstrong about wax potting. In that video he mentioned he uses paraffin and that wax is easier to work with vs, say, epoxy, but it didn’t go into much detail about the possible effects of potting on tone.
I came across a post on the Fralin site mentioning they use a wax that provides protection but minimally affects tone, and I also found a couple of other posts (e.g., Lollar) indicating that too much potting can result in flat, dull tone, which was my experience.
https://youtu.be/kgKIRRXL8iA?si=DCYq4O6Uel_DJrBi
https://www.fralinpickups.com/2019/05/06/what-is-wax-potting/
https://www.lollarguitars.com/blog/2014/01/what_is_potting/
https://wgsusa.com/blogs/news/potted-vs-un-potted-guitar-pickups-the-pros-and-cons
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Yes, it does affect the tone, too much and it’s dull, just right and you get lively pickups that have great controllable feedback interaction with the amp. The especially thick paraffin and vacuum potted pickups always sound dull, and most of those have the neck wound too close to the bridge of vice versa and you have the dark and boomy neck tone on top of it being dull sounding.
I keep my wax pot a little hotter than most paraffin guys might do and use beeswax. This allows the wax to drain back out real well after potting to just the minimum amount. Beeswax also takes longer to stiffen back up. To get that thick wax cake you have to use paraffin at just above its melting point. I tape the rods in my single coils so the wax only really enters from the outside of the coil and partially penetrates. I also tape the outside of the coil on Tele pickups under the cover and string wrap, Jaguar pickups as the sides of the coil often get scraped and boogered up from putting covers on and of the the claw attached to the bobbin, and some of my Strat sets that are more Tele under Strat cover kinda stuff, but not for the vintage spec stuff. All of this keeps the pickups livelier by minimizing the potting of the coil, just into the safe zone for microphonics and squeal. My main goal with potting pickups with fixed covers, metal baseplates, PAF and Tele etc. is to have the metal parts fixed with a light wax layer to the bobbins and other parts. That’s where most bad squeal comes from, bobbin/metal interaction, just knock a Tele baseplate loose and hit it with some gain to explore the phenomenon. Beware as you get into potting that paraffin has a lower flash point than beeswax, right around 350° and if you leave it in a crockpot without a temp control or a saucepan in your stove you are asking for trouble. I use a small Walmart crock pot that rides on its keep warm setting right around 225°. Last potting note, butyrate does not like to be in the wax very long at all, it will deform in 60 seconds at 225°, my uncovered PAFs just get the baseplate and magnet side held in if it is absolutely necessary for the customer, otherwise none. The taped coils are really plenty in a PAF, the bobbin screws really hold everything tight internally. In a Firebird it’s just the tension between the cover and baseplate when soldered holding everything snug and it’s not quite snug enough, so they get more potting. PAF’s with covers I dunk the whole assembly for 60 seconds but the cover is quite a heatsink, so the butyrate bobbins are safe should they get cracked open later. -Tim
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Hey Ben
Sounds like Timothy’s done a much better job than I could at answering this. I don’t build pickups so I have relatively limited experience. I’ve potted quite a few pickups over the years, though, and the owners and I never noticed any real impact to the tone but maybe that means I was accidentally doing a good job on it. 😄
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