I wanted to share with the club... that I fixed my intermittent 70's Series pickup today by submerging and boiling it in water (epoxy side up) for 12 minutes on a bed of glass marbles (marbles keep the plastic cover off the bottom of the pan where it could melt). I then removed the hot pickup from the water and immediately flexed/twisted the housing really hard with thick rubber gloves on, and I also moved the lead wire coming out of the epoxy a little bit, and then let the pickup cool. Before boiling it, the pickup would only work if I put pressure on the housing, and would cut out later in use. Moving the lead didn't help, either, so I sent it to Alembic and they determined it was faulty. Mica and Ron put together a monster of a set of pickups and I was back up and running.
I knew that epoxy could be removed after boiling it and getting it in a softer, more removable state, and as a last ditch effort I tried this. First, I was planning to get the epoxy soft enough to dig around the lead wire coming out of the pickup, and then remove some material around the wire --hoping-- to see an issue there. Digging any further would have been a bad idea. But, I thought about how flexing the housing worked in the past for a few minutes, that is until the bass was jostled, un-settling the pickup again. So I figured flexing it while hot might miraculously work and move whatever was out of place, back in place, and it it did! I'm blown away by my luck with this. I just had to try this before tossing the pickup. It now sounds and still looks as it should , and no movement or flexing makes it stop working anymore--it's solid and working again.
I wanted to add that I've been using the new generation pickup set that Mica and Ron put together for a while now and noticed some differences in sound in the modern set vs 70's pickups. The modern Series set has more output, and more of -all- the frequencies are apparent, and has a ballsy, strong low register read on the E string. I consider the modern set as Alembic tone on 11--lol. The vintage set is very even, warm and clear with less output. The vintage set is so nice. The vintage set can be ramped up with the trim pots. I consider the modern set to be a beast in today's pickup world. Susan W. told me when we were doing the replacement pickups that the Alembic instruments of today are incredible, and that I need to get one made and experience how far Alembic has come. I get it, and I'm very impressed.
