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The first thing I thought about when I read your letter was the occasional high humidity where you live. I grew up in southern New Jersey and remember when my guitar would be covered in moisture when opening my case. Leaving your guitar case open when you rehearse allows the lining of the case to…

There are several things that you can do to remove the excess steel wool. First I would remove the strings from the instrument as they become magnetized and attract the steel wool filings. To thoroughly clean the pickup I would remove the magnet. Remember how it was taken out!! You can use a fine brush…

I often use a fine tooth brush and masking tape. You can also use a fingernail brush and keep the masking tape close to catch the fine steel wool fibers. This happens often when polishing your frets, fingerboard and fine finishes. I avoid using steel wool because it can get inside your pickup and most…

Most of the time you can get excessive moisture in your case by leaving it open during rehearsals and where high humidity can be a problem. I use a humidity control called Desiccants. They are activated clay packets that can eliminate mildew and rust damage. The bags come in various sizes to protect a designated…

First I remove the strings and completely mask off the instrument so I don’t spray any cleaner or lubricant on the finish or hardware. To get rid of the debris I often use a fine bristle tooth brush that is moistened and gently scrub the pole pieces or bridge saddles. I also use a small…

When removing your pickups or doing any work on your instrument I always remove the strings before doing anything. This will help the pickups, switches and coils from getting snagged on the strings. So many rewinds I do are from anxious players or repairman trying to change pickups without removing the strings. This also helps…

So many times I go into a hot club and I see the players guitar case lying open in the hot dressing room. I find that keeping a case open will absorb all kinds of moisture and humidity. I would trying finding Desiccant packets that you can place in your guitar case to help remove…

Reworking someone else’s work can be double the trouble. If an unqualified works on your pickup, they can break or modify the components making for a quality repair. I’ve seen pickups with magnets ground, bobbins glued with epoxy, bobbins drilled, tapped, burnt, bent, gouged, cracked, exchanged, painted, dyed, shrunk and dozens of other bad modifications….

The square or round holes are tooling holes and are used for exiting some beginning wires on various model pickups. The old Patent Applied For humbuckers used the square hole on the bottom end of the bobbin to exit the beginning hookup wire from the coil. Later the square hole was removed on the “T”…

If you got all the water out of the controls and pickups soon enough it should be OK. Water can damage all the ferrous metal parts and can even cause the magnets to rust. Using a warm hair dryer to evaporate the moisture will reduce oxidation in the metal parts. Leo Fender was clever when…