Walter Broes
Enlightened Member
The way the reissue mini-buckers ended up is a bit of a joke (unless you bought one of the guitars that have them), but thankfully, having a pickup rewound is not expensive at all.
Pickups in Newwark St Starfire III
- Thread starter Synchro
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Synchro
Member
Maybe that's what I need to do. What specs did you wind to.
Walter Broes
Enlightened Member
Synchro, I don't have any (I had a NS 175's pickups rewound), I'm a humbucker-less person, but I'm sure the good folks on this forum will probably have some good measurements for a nice old Guild minibucker.
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Walter Broes
Enlightened Member
oops! 
SFIV1967
Venerated Member
There was a previous thread where I gave the part numbers of both mini humbuckers and Default just went to a guitar shop in Pennsylvania and ordered some as far as I know.
Ralf
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Still haven't received them yet. I need to make a call.
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Ralf was able to find Ackerman's Music as a supplier fairly easily, but the search engines over here show Ebay/Amazon/online music links for page after page. Google is almost worthless and so is Yahoo.
Synchro
Member
I'm trying to find the thread, but not having any success.
If it's FMIC you're ordering from it can be an interminable wait. Their service-parts take forever to ship.
SFIV1967
Venerated Member
Here you are:
http://www.letstalkguild.com/ltg/sh...er-NAMM-2014&p=1648157&viewfull=1#post1648157
Sheet Music also offers them: Mini Humbucker Neck: http://www.music44.com/Merchant2/me...ROD&Store_Code=X&Product_Code=9-9102-049-KMC2
Mini Humbucker Bridge: http://www.music44.com/Merchant2/me...ROD&Store_Code=X&Product_Code=9-9103-049-KMC2
Steve ordered from Ackerman's as he wrote above. FMIC has nothing to do with Guild anymore, but I am not sure how CMG handles those orders for Newark St. spare parts now.
Ralf
Synchro
Member
I'll call Córdoba tomorrow. I think that, assuming that Córdoba intends to correct the error, the best thing to do is buy new pickups wound to the proper values. If not, I'll call TV Jones and see what he can do with the OEM pickups.
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Hi SFIV1967,
The mini humbucker bridge pickups from Sheet Music are listed on their website as genuine Fender spare parts so it may be that these are also faulty and drastically under-wound as well! I recommend that you (or anybody else) confirms the resistance of the windings with Sheet Music before ordering; they also give a minimum 4-week delivery time from Fender.
The mini humbucker bridge pickups from Sheet Music are listed on their website as genuine Fender spare parts so it may be that these are also faulty and drastically under-wound as well! I recommend that you (or anybody else) confirms the resistance of the windings with Sheet Music before ordering; they also give a minimum 4-week delivery time from Fender.
SFIV1967
Venerated Member
FMIC is no longer responsible for anything Guild, all Guild parts are now under CMG, however there are probably many parts still out there with FMIC order number.
You are correct that one needs to check the resistance before buying. But so far we have not seen any spare mini humbucker. As far as I know as long as FMIC owned Guild they never shipped any mini humbuckers as spare parts, hence the long lead-time as quoted. As Steve was told the problem will be corrected under CMG one can only hope that as soon as they are available as spare parts from CMG they should be correct. But Steve has not received his ordered units yet, so nobody knows when this will be. If you are interested you should contact CMG about it.
By the way, the bridge mini humbuckers are not (!) faulty, they are totally fine, just with a lower number of windings compared to the original 60ies Guild humbuckers. Hence FMIC had no legal obligation to exchange anything after they shipped the product. The problem is that the original Guild spec from the 60ies was different and FMIC unfortunately copied a defective (?) humbucker that was out of spec. But nobody promised a spec number for the winding spec to customers that was not met. Guild had made it very clear from day one that the Newark St. guitars are a modern version of the originals but not a copy correct version. Similar to when you buy a Fender Stratocaster today it can be any version of it with different parts from the original 1954 version. Nobody would complain not to get the original 1954 sound out of it.
Ralf
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Synchro
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I have inquired through their website, but have had no response as of yet.
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I have been in contact with Cordoba. They know all about the issue, although another voice couldn't hurt. I suspect the pups I get will just be sent out for rewinding as soon as I put a meter to them.
Synchro
Member
I heard back from CMG yesterday and they say that they are working on a solution to the problem.
Synchro
Member
I also spoke to someone at TV Jones and they wondered if the pickups could simply be swapped, neck-for-bridge, bridge-for-neck. Are these pickups the same dimension, or is the bridge pickup taller?
Walter Broes
Enlightened Member
Don't they have different pole spacing? (?)
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Yes, they do. Matsickma says swapping them doesn't make that much of a difference. Acornhouse helped me pick up a 7.4k rewound bridge minibucker, so we'll have an a/b comparision when that shows up.
Synchro
Member
I wasn't able to check, being 50 miles away from my guitars at the moment.
I'll be interested in hearing how it goes. I am considering rewinding, but I don't have any idea what specs to give the rewinder. I don't use distortion and I'm not looking to have a super hot pickup in the bridge, but I want it to have adequate output to match the neck pickup. On my T-400 the bridge pickup is set considerably closer to the strings than the neck pickup and this guitar is the one with the most pronounced problem. My Starfire III and Capri aren't much of a problem, actually.