Hmm a few nice goodies there and bonus no soldering! Hey you could check to see if the pickups are wax potted, cheap ones they dont bother with..
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Well if they aren't, they should be pretty microphonic once you fit them and play the guitar.
To check for wax potted look for any wax resides on the underneath of the pickups, try scraping around with your fingernail or a toothpick. if you can find any wax they should be ok. What Simon means by microphonic, is that if the pickups are not wax potted, i.e. dipped in wax, they will sound a bit like a microphone and pick up a lot of noise from around you, just like a mic. The wax helps with stopping any feedback you may get from the pickups.
If they are not wax potted when they are connected you can talk into them and hear your voice through a connected anp. Hope this helps.
Also if you hold the guitar with the strings damped and turn up the amp's volume and gain, then with microphonic pickups you'll get a high pitched feedback sound, (the winding lengths on the pickups are small, so the fundamental notes are at a high frequency), a very different sound to normal guitar feedback.
Original PAFs weren't dipped at all, so were all slightly microphonic. The scatterwound nature of the windings kept this to a minimum, as where the wires cross over each other they help to damp any resonance. But sometimes un-potted pickups with neat parallel windings can be very microphonic indeed (especially when it's warm and the windings expand and slacken). I've had to replace three pickups for being very microphonic in the past - so much so that even with a clean amp at a low volume they squealed like mad. These days, I'd probably have a go at potting them myself, though two were only cheap pickups and they got replaced with much better ones.
Brilliant Simon. Thanks mate
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