removing pickup cover

hi, first of all im sorry if this isnt the right place to put this but i didnt know where i can put it. if somebody can move it to the appropriate area i'd be thankful.

ok i decided to remove the pickup covers on my humbuckers, and i wanted to know if i should remove the wax from the top of my pickup (its surrounded by wax but i only want to remove the top) or just leave it on. if i remove the wax, will it kill the pickup?

thanks.

don't all jump at once...

thanks for the help i figured it out.

The cover protects the coil wires from damage. If the covers are made out of metal, they also add some effective shielding to keep out noise. So removing them comes at some cost.

The wax is there to keep the coil wires and bobbins from moving, which helps to prevent uncontrolled feedback, and also keeps dust from wearing through the varnish insulation and shorting out some of the turns. So removing the wax comes at a cost.

Without the covers in place, the wax will quickly get coated in dust. Open coil pickups usually have cloth ribbon wrapped around the coils to cover the wax, but that was probably not installed on factory-covered pickups.

There was probably some wax between the top face of the coil and the underside of the cover to prevent any rattling or buzzing. You can gently scrape this off with something fairly soft, like a wooden toothpick. Using a knife, or a metal scraper, will scratch the face of the plastic bobbin, looking ass. And you must be very careful to avoid damaging the coil wires.

All in all, I'd recommend leaving your pickups covered. My go-to guitar has covered pickups. One pickup had a factory cover; I covered the other one so they looked matched. 20 years with no troubles at all. And they sound great!

thanks that really helped. i figured i'd just remove the wax at the top of the pickups and leave the rest on. maybe i should wrap some cloth around the pickups to protect from the dust.. but im too lazy to remove my pickups again.

to me, it sounds and looks bettter uncovered, and i dont notice any hum or buzz even when my guitar's right in front of my monitor.

oh also when i removed the cover, the coils couldn't be seen. it seems like its wrapped in some black thing. do i still have to wrap that or can i leave it?

if there is a black ribbon wrapped around the side of the pickup it sounds like it should be ok...from what you have described.

I know on my guitar with uncovered pickups (only one) there is a black ribbon around the sides, it sticks on to protect from dust and what not..(it doesnt have to be black)

yep thats it. it looks like elctric tape.