Searcy String Works

Max Laine is a lucky guy who lives in Finland. He found a pair of old and rare Lap Steel guitars made by Finnish guitar maker Malmström.

The 1950's guitars were in great shape but both of them had dead pickups. He removed the lower cover from one of them to see what the matter was. This is what he found.

Max had really done his homework. He told me that Leif Renwall made the pickups in Finland under the brand name "Le-Re". Renwall was a resourceful cat to say the least. You see, in post war Finland it was hard to get guitar parts. However there was no shortage of surplus field radio handsets. Leif understood enough about guitar pickups to know that the tiny coils and horseshoe magnets from the handsets were not powerful enough to give a good signal. But if he linked enough of them together in series he would have something. So that's just what he did. He bent up a small box out of chrome-plated brass sheet metal and soldered the corners. Then he would drop 4 sets of magnets and coils in it. Next he filled the cover with beeswax to keep things put. Finally he soldered on a bottom out of brass sheet metal.

Renwall seems like the sort of guy I would like to hang out with sometime. Max wanted to know if I could fix his pickups or make new ones for his prize guitars. I had never seen anything like these before in all my life so I told him to send them to me and I would do my best to revive them.

So they began their journey from Pori Finland to my little shop here in Nashville, some 4613 miles away. The first thing I noticed when I opened the package and set the pickups on my bench was the amount of green corrosion growing inside the cover. Seems as ingenious as the Le-Re design was it had one fatal flaw that would eventually undo this brilliant pickup.

Max had done nothing to the other pickup so I would get a chance to see exactly what was in one of these. The first order of business was to heat it up and get as much of that beeswax out as I could.

Then I de-soldered and removeed the lower cover. Hhhmmmm… while the basic concept seems to be the same there are some small differences with this pickup. The jump wires between the coil sets are insulated with rubber tubing.

After peeking inside I decided to run this pickup through my wax pot to melt the rest of the wax that was in it.

Once out of the wax pot it's easier to understand the construction here. We can also see more of that wretched green funk. I marked the magnets with a marker so I knew which way they went.

Pulling the yellow rubber insulating tubing off the jump wires show further evidence of what ultimately cause these pickups to die, more green funky corrosion. This funk doesn't have the stink that the New Orleans funk did but it is much more colorful.

If the rotten jumper connections were the worst of it then fixing these pickups would not be too hard. I started checking the coil sets and sure enough 3 sets were good. Wow! What luck!

I put all the good coil sets back in my wax pot and let the soak overnight. I wanted to be sure the wax got as deep into the coils as possible. You see, I had a suspicion about something. If I was right then a good wax potting in proper potting wax was very important.
In the morning I cleaned all of the green funk out of the cover and re-magnetized the magnets with a rare earth magnet. Then I reassembled the pickup using some new shrink tubing and some Gibson style pickup lead.

Then I potted the pickup in potting wax again.

I was so excited to hear what this little chunk of history sounded like that I installed it in my test guitar without even cleaning the wax off the cover. I banged out a fast MP3 of "Play that Funky Music " and E-mailed it to Max while cackling "It's alive!!!… Its Alive! Its Alive… It's Alive…It's Alive!!!"
Well, after the maniacal laughter died down I put the pickup on a shelf to be shipped out. Then I turned my attention to that other coils. … the dead coils… all of them laughing at me... taunting me…calling me rude names in Finnish… but I was rubber… and they were just… stupid…dead pickup coils… and their words could never harm me… because I don't speak Finnish and could not understand them.
The time had come to show those little suckers who was boss. I took one coil sets and tried to press the bobbins off of the magnet. It wouldn't budge so I went back to the trusty wax pot and let it heat up for an hour or so.

After the hot bath the bobbins slid off with a little effort.

As I started to remove the red paper tape my suspicions are confirmed. The corrosion has penetrated all the way to the solder joints at the other end of the wire.

But what caused the corrosion? And how did it penetrate the protection of a metal cover, all that wax and the tape around the coils to attack the solder joints so completely?

Well my friends, it didn't sneak past the wax. It WAS the wax. Pure natural beeswax is very acidic and will corrode copper and brass with ease. Because of this it should never be used for potting electronics. My wax concoction is comprised of 80% paraffin and 20% beeswax. This is something of an industry standard these days.

I made a few attempts to try to fix the solder joints without rewinding the coils but that didn't work. They were going to have to be rewound.
But what size wire was on the bobbin? How many turns were on the bobbin? Do these jeans make my butt look big? Or was it all those cheeseburgers?
Hmmmm… How would we decide?
It's time for a trip up the winding spiral staircase to that laboratory at the top of the tower! The thunder rolls and the lightning flashes as the heavy oak door creaks open to reveal…
Dum-dum-dum-dum!

The massive Searcy String Works "Intel Play" microscope. This crazy little thing is as handy as a pocket on a shirt, buddy. It's a little USB microscope. This short-lived product was aimed at children. Its images aren't the most sharp or clear but for this problem it will work just fine.

An old friend of mine taught me this trick for figuring out what wire was on some of these old pickups. It's simple really. Make a slide of known wire sizes…

… then place the mystery wire along side them and have a look …

Here we see our mystery wire on the left and some 45ga wire on the right. The 45 looked too small to me.

Here we see our mystery wire on the left and some 44ga wire on the right. That looks about right. Let's see what 43ga looks like.

Here we see our mystery wire on the left and some 43ga wire on the right.
Nope…that 43 is too big.

So… we have decided on a wire size. I will wind these coils with 44ga wire. Time to strip them down. If you notice a massive improvement in the photo quality at this point it's because I finally got a new camera!

Once all the bobbins are cleaned of old wire I decide to wind the first one in 1000 turn increments checking the ohms as I go. Each of these coils should read about 1K ohms give or take. Once I have the first one dialed in the rest should go easy.
After some trial and error I finally settle on 3000 turns as the magic number for these coils.

Before putting the coil sets back together I magnetized the magnets again because they were very weak.

The coils slipped back on the magnets with ease.

Then it was time to start making the connections. Every set of coils is linked together. Then a jump wire has to be connected to the open ends. That's 4 solder joints per coil set. Times 4 coil sets is 16 solder joints. Then the sets get soldered together… that's 19 joints. Then the end is connected to the case to ground and the start is connected to the hot line out… that's 21 solder joints in the one pickup. Damn! I better get started!

Once all the coil sets have their jumpers I tape them up and get ready to start putting things back together. But before that I had better clean all that crud out of the case.

To combat this case of the creepin' crud I turn to an old reliable friend. I used this product to clean the Katrina J-bass pickups. It's very effective. You would kick yourself if you knew what it was. But one of the qualities that mark a good pickup maker is his ability to keep a secret. I mean, if everyone knew how easy this pickup stuff was I would be out a job! No my friend, I'm afraid that I can not reveal my secret weapon. You'll just have to figure it out on your own.

Hmmmm what be that mysterious white powder?

Whatever it is it seems to be making short work of the green funk.

Finally everything is ready to go back together. I install the coil sets and solder the final 5 connections. I shrink wrap the solder joints to insure that things don't ground out.

Once everything is in place I break out the 100W iron and solder the bottom cover plate back on. I try to work fast so as not to heat up the cover too much and risk shorting the coils out. It's hard to hold the cover together while heating it without burning my finger. Finally I just give up and burn my fingers. Then I check it with the meter to make sure it's still alive.

The meter says its good to go!!!! So it's off to the wax pot for the last time before heading back to Finland.

After about an hour in the wax pot I carefully fished the pickup out and padded the excess wax off with paper towels. I checked it with the meter again. Everything was still in good shape. So I took the rest of the day off and decided to let the wax set up overnight. I want to go write Max and tell him his other pickup is done. But something in the back of my head tells me to wait…. So… I wait…

The next morning I get up before the sun. It's cold in the shop and the pale light of dawn casts the work area in an eerie shade of blue reminiscent of an 80's horror film. It was a harbinger of things to come…
I polished up the pickup and admired my work. I had done well. Even with the setbacks and delays I had managed to research and tackle my most difficult restoration to date. Two of them in fact! Max was gonna love this pickup. I had saved a historic bit of Finnish musical ingenuity. I wondered what Ol' Leif would say if he were here today. I bet he would say "Thank you, kind sir… thank you for taking the time to revive my creation."
Yep…it was a good day.… Until…

I decide to finalize my notes. So I grab the meter and check the DC resistance one more time. Nothing… I check to be sure the probes are plugged in then I check the pickup again. Nothing… I check to be sure that the range is set correctly then I check the pickups again… Nothing!!!!
WHAT THE!?!?
The truth was becoming obvious but in a state of denial I grabbed my other meter anyway. Still dead... There was no way around it. I was going to have to open it back up with see what was wrong. So that's what I did. I placed it in the wax pot to melt the wax again. After a little while I took it out. One last desperate check with the meter showed…. It was good!
That does it! I have to figure this out. I removed the bottom plate again. Determined to solve this freaky anomaly I was so focused on the issue that I failed to take any pictures at this stage. Removing the bottom cover showed nothing strange. I removed the coil sets and lined them up on my bench. Then looked OK. I checked them again with the meter. Dead! I started removing the shrink tubing from the jumper wires so I could check each coil set. They were still warm from the wax pot and the wax had them well lubricated. As I removed the last bit of tubing the problem literally jumped out at me. It seems that in my haste I had made a rudimentary mistake… a bad solder joint. When presented with the expanding and contracting wax the joint failed. But the shrink tubing held it in place. The cold wax pulled the wires apart. Heating the wax allowed them to move together.
Hey! Cut me some slack will ya! There are only 21 solder joints in this sucker! I checked the rest of the joints, covered them in new shrink tubing, and put the cover back on. This time it survived the potting process without issue

Finally this little bit of Finnish ingenuity, this tiny monument to improvisation in the face of necessity, was ready to join its brother, which I had sent back home to Max a few weeks earlier.

Max sent me some pictures of the guitar while he was rebuilding it.

Close inspection shows some crude and even primitive construction methods.

But step a few feet back and the instrument takes on a sleek and elegant form. All unsightly aesthetics are cleverly hidden away.

I'm proud to have been a part of this restoration. I know Max is proud of these two instruments as well.

I learned a lot on this rebuild. Max was kind enough to translate an article he found in the Finnish music magazine Riffi into English for me. From that I learned that there is a deep tradition of Island music in Finland. Cuban and Hawaiian styles were very popular.