05/04/2024
Thanks everyone for their patience. Even before I relocated to Japan, I had to use between 3-5 vendors depending on various orders. It common for one vendor to have standard baseplates, but out of stock with wide baseplates. One would have 4 conductor wiring but not vintage braid wire. Magnets were one of 3 vendors and magnet wire was always single source. I always made it work because I could do first class shipping was cheap and I'd still get parts with 3-5 days in Texas. Standard shipping is a complete s**t show here. I can get stuff in 10 days or other times its 6-7 weeks. Same for me shipping back. No consistency. That said, I really only have 2 options.
1st option is to order parts and pay priority international shipping, in many cases multiple vendors for a single pickup. This adds considerable overhead to the cost of the pickup. Easily, doubling the price.
2nd option is to not use all US sourced parts. While up till this point my parts were all US sourced, that means my vendors were based in the US. I'm pretty certain bobbins, hookup wire, some magnets and a few other parts were likely imported. I don't know because I've asked and never got answers. The industry lacks transparency. A big part of the cost is the magnet wire. I used Re*****on, which is without a doubt a US manufactured wire. I can get wire from Asia and cut my cost significantly vs option 1. I am pretty confident that several other winders that make hand wound higher output pickups are using imported wire. I say this because when I see a pickup that is high output around 16k+ and they say they're using plain enamel, that tells me a lot. I know there are using 44awg wire and I know that I have yet to find a US source for 44awg plain enamel. So, I think there's a precedence for winder to use imported wire. I think the tonal difference will have less to do with where its from and more to do with it now being the same size. The rest of the world uses metric while the US uses awg (American Wire Guage). So, the sizes will be in between. That happens to some extent now spool to spool.
I don't think option 1 is really an option.
Regarding option 2. Some of you have probably read my technical babbling about how inductance, resistance, and resonant peak all work together to provide for measurable characterizes. While I may not be able to get exact using new parts sources, I am confident the predominate feel and tone of the pickup right, it just may measure higher or lower DCR, but I can get the resonant peak and Q-factor in the right spots. The pickups would still be hand wound and carefully selected parts, but some parts would undoubtably Asian sourced, read between the lines. That said, I would be charging crazy prices like some bigger boutiques.
Anyway, let me know your thoughts.
I am wording a bunch of Japanese domestically sourced parts next week and start doing comparison with metric wire. Once I work out what I expect to be minor tweaks, I’ll hopefully start getting pickups out again without getting crazy with the prices. But I promise I will not compromise on the quality
