Guyatone LG-65 pickup repair

I've got an awful lot of vintage Japanese guitars lying around the workshop and every so often I get upset seeing them covered in dust and being tripped over so .... 

I clean up a bunch and put them on the site so someone else can use them. 

This little Guyatone LG-65T was one a few of these buried in sawdust looking a little sad so I got them out and started fixing them up and putting them up for sale. 

These are generally pretty good and easy to get playing nicely because despite being "cheap" guitars, they're well made and designed and have stood the test of time. I've owned and sold A LOT of thee over the years and I still love getting them playing and moving them on.

This one was mostly good but the bridge pickup wasn't making any noise at all. Of course the first things to check on these is the rocker switches and wiring to make sure everything is still making contact. These all looked good so i measured the pickup for resistance and ..... Nothing.

I pulled the pickup out and measured it again, just in case but still nothing so apart it came.

I was expecting to do a full rewind and I've a done a few of these over the years and they're really not too much work. With the cover off you can see the simple design and build of these pickups, but, despite this they're actually a great sounding pickup, like many simple designs.

I removed the cover (which is glued onto the metal base) to see if there was anything obvious causing my short. With no evidence of any issues I took the tape off the coil and started looking for ends or broken wires. 

Again, there was nothing really obvious I unsoldered the lead wires and measured the resistance from each end of the coil. With nothing reading on the multi-meter I started to unwind the coil from the end, leaving the start intact. 

After a couple of winds I cleaned off the insulation and measured again and BAM. There it was. A healthy coil from start to finish. With literally only a few winds taken off it was showing strong resistance so I cleaned up both ends and resoldered the lead wires back on.  

Everything tested fine so I wrapped the coil in the original green electrical tape and I glued the cover back onto the base plate.

 

With the pickup back in I cleaned and serviced the guitar and gave it a set up. The original bridge was missing the saddle part so I fitted a new metal floating bridge. The rest of the guitar is all original and everything works as it should. 

These are great little guitars and play and sound surprisingly good for the sum of their parts. I still, after 30 odd years of doing this, find it amazing that you can buy a 60 year old guitar, in all, or mostly original working order that plays and sounds as good as this for such little money. These entry level vintage Japanese guitars are still a treat after all these years.

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