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Post subject: Getting a job at Fender?
Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 9:48 pm
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I am curious as to know what kind of qualifications would be required in order to get a job as a luthier or custom pickup winder at Fender. I am a fairly good woodworker, although I never had the opportunity to build a guitar in highschool and as far as I know there is only one place in Canada that teaches guitar construction and that is on the west coast. I have been pondering for the longest time about getting a pickup winder from Stewmac as well as some pickups and kinda learning from all the guides I have collected from around the internet on making them, but I would imagine it would take a lot of experience in either field to get a job working for Fender.


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Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 6:14 am
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Welcome to the forum! Try this link
http://tbe.taleo.net/NA6/ats/careers/jo ... NDER&cws=1


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Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 8:52 am
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Hi AcousticSmash: no idea whether Fender is taking on staff at this point in the economy, but I wouldn't be surprised if you were expected to start at the very bottom in the factory and work your way up - unless you are already a well-known master builder...

Regarding the pickup winding: it's always good when people want to do stuff for themselves. To me, the point of self-building is to obtain combinations of features that the mainstream manufacturers don't offer. I wonder what pickup options you have in mind that you'd need to wind your own pups to get?

BTW: that pickup winder from Stew-Mac is fairly pricy. To give the thing a more affordable try out it is simplicity itself to construct a hand-powered winding jig. You just need a handle, an axle and a way to mount pickup bobbins on the other end. And a bar in front against which to feed the copper wire. A few thousand turns of that handle later and you have your new pickup wound and ready to proceed to the hot wax...

I feel a man like you could achieve that easily, and it would get you started. It would impress a future employer, too.

Good luck - C


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Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 9:10 am
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Ceri wrote:
BTW: that pickup winder from Stew-Mac is fairly pricy. To give the thing a more affordable try out it is simplicity itself to construct a hand-powered winding jig. You just need a handle, an axle and a way to mount pickup bobbins on the other end. And a bar in front against which to feed the copper wire. A few thousand turns of that handle later and you have your new pickup wound and ready to proceed to the hot wax...


Stew-Mac has a good page on Doing It Yourself without the pricey winder:

http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/Electro ... -5967.html

I did it this way.

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Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 9:14 am
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orvilleowner wrote:
http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/Electronics/Pickup_building/i-5967.html

I did it this way.


Hey, yeah? Be SO interested to know what you made...

Excellent page link, BTW.

Cheers - C


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Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 9:48 am
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Ceri wrote:
Hey, yeah? Be SO interested to know what you made...

Excellent page link, BTW.


I ended up with a dead pickup about 30 years ago. I unwound it completely back then just to check it out. I trashed the wire, but kept the magnets and flatware, of course -- not much to these pickups things!

Finally, about 3 years ago (IIRC, time flies), I used the method at Stew-Mac (using a hand drill) to rewind it.

I wound it at quite a slow speed. Not having a counter, I would stop periodically and take a reistance reading. I stopped when I got to about 5.7K ohms, like the other 1975 pickups I had. The inductance fell in line with the others too, about 2.2 H. I potted it in a melted wax bath and it's currently installed in my doubleneck (the hardtail neck). It came out great (assuming you thing 1975 strat pickups are great, I do).

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Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 9:56 am
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That's very cool, Orvilleowner. Most impressed.

And delighted to find I'm not the only one who takes a while getting round to tasks. Now, where's that 1867 Strat that I've been meaning to fix...?

Cheers - C


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Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 10:18 am
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Ceri wrote:
And delighted to find I'm not the only one who takes a while getting round to tasks.


Well, that rewinding wasn't really a task that I waited 27 years to complete. When I took it apart, I had no thoughts about ever rewinding it to get it to work. I just kept the naked pickup as a novelty item: "hey, want to see a pickup without it's wire?" To show friends that pickups weren't much of anything!

I only started scheming about rewinding it when I saw there was wire for sale at Stew-Mac ... then I found that web site about how a normal person could do it ...

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