Upgrading Stock Epiphone Casino Pickups

Upgrading the stock Casino pickups for a more vintage sound

Creamery - Upgrading Stock Epiphone Casino Pickups

I recently ran one of my regular competitions to wind a set of handwound pickups and the winner, Mike, asked whether he could have his Epiphone Casino pickups rewound/upgraded for a more vintage tone - "No problem", I said. The stock pickups had a very high output, 12.1k in the Bridge & 11.6k in the Neck, an unsubtle set especially for a Hollow Body guitar.

Mike wanted to tone them down with a rewind and new magnets.

Upgrading Stock Epiphone Casino Pickups - What's inside

The first task was to remove the covers and see what's inside. The Epiphone Casino has custom bobbins with a string spacing narrower than a standard P90. The option was to either make new bobbins to match the cover pole spacing or simply use the existing ones. Mike had no issue with me utilising the existing bobbins so the challenge now was to remove the existing overwound coil wire in such a way as to not nick the sides. Any cuts or scratches to the very thin top & bottom layers of the bobbins could catch on the new coil wire when winding, snapping or pulling it leaving a few thousand turns of coil useless.