wax potting SG pups

[Roybot]

I have a 1976 Gibson SG and the pickups squeal something terrible (but sound awesome otherwise). Can Gibson humbuckers that are sealed with black epoxy be wax potted? I was thinking the wax may be able to seep in through the adjutable pole pieces holes but I'm not sure.

Thanks...Roybot

[timthetortoise]

Black epoxy? Are you sure it's not just regular vinyl tape? If it's tape, you can pot them without much effort. You may have to loosen the tape up a bit if it's very tightly adhered, but that's doubtful. If it's REALLY epoxy, that in itself should be a potting method. Epoxy has a reputation for staying where you put it and keeping whatever it's on, in place. If it's covered in epoxy, whatever problem you're having probably lies elsewhere, because even after that long, it's gonna be hard to get the epoxy off without damaging the windings.

[Roybot]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's some kind of epoxy. I'm not talking about where tape normally wraps around the coils but the bottom is hard black epoxy. It appears that the nickel covers are not removable due to the epoxy/polymer type material used to seal them. I'm sure this type of Gibson humbucker is not that rare...mid '70's stuff.

[timthetortoise]

Oh, that could be a problem then. Well, if you don\'t care about degrading their value (I\'m not too keen on actual Gibson pickup values), you could cut through the sealant fairly easily with a Dremel cutting wheel around the edges about 1mm in from the outside of the cover. Other method would be CAREFULLY using a sharp chisel to get through and pry the cover off. I wouldn\'t recommend attempting to pot the pickup with the cover still on, only because it will make a huge mess of the pickup and will likely not get to the parts that actually need to be potted (even when there are microphonics, coils are wrapped very tightly and it would be much easier to get the wax in from the outside as opposed to trying to seep it in from the poles). Definitely check the value of these before doing anything.