Repair of a broken humbucker mounting leg

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Greg Martin
Posts: 308
Joined: Thu Feb 23, 2012 7:18 pm

Repair of a broken humbucker mounting leg

Post by Greg Martin »

I have an old dimarzio humbucker with tall mounting leg ,that has been bent and broken off. Im wondering is soldering or brazing would be a repair option?
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Mark Swanson
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Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan USA
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Re: Repair of a broken humbucker mounting leg

Post by Mark Swanson »

I have soldered them back on before. Give it a try!
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David King
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Re: Repair of a broken humbucker mounting leg

Post by David King »

Soldering works great if you can fixture it with some enameled wire to keep everything in place. Another option is to turn a long legged plate into a short legged plate but you'll need to drill and tap the height adjusting holes in the ends of the legs. The holes need to center the pickup and be 3.08" apart center to center.
Greg Martin
Posts: 308
Joined: Thu Feb 23, 2012 7:18 pm

Re: Repair of a broken humbucker mounting leg

Post by Greg Martin »

Ill keep and solder the leg, maybe have a heat sink of some kind so not to over heat the windings .not much potting wax in this one either thanks
David King
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Re: Repair of a broken humbucker mounting leg

Post by David King »

No need to worry about the windings they will be fine. You just need a good-sized soldering iron in 50-80 W range if possible or just turn up the heat on a 30W to 850º. I use acid flux and lead free plumbing solder for these jobs as it's much more rigid and I have it around anyway. Otherwise you could buy a little strip of jeweler's silver solder and the liquid flux that goes with it and use a small torch to get the heat you'll need.
Any lead-free electronics solder will be more rigid than lead bearing solder so that's a third option

Insert the 3-48 screws into the good tab and the busted tab and drill two 3/32" holes into a block of wood 3.08" apart.
Push the screws down into the holes and line up the joint that way. The legs can be bent in and out slightly to close any gap. You might need to stabilize the pickup with a strap of masking tape over the top of the pickup and around the block of wood.
You could also just screw the tabs to the block with pickup ring mounting screws which are #2s and should fit through without bungling up the threads though I've never done it that way.
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