Picked up an 40s era Fender w/Boxcar pickup. Looking for tech info

[Kevin Shiflett]

I've been searching old posts for the pickup specs, and I think I might have found the right into but wanted to check here with folks for knowledgeable me of the topic.
From what I've read so far:
The Boxcar pickup was only used for a few years in the 1940's before being replaced by the Trapezoid pickup.
The specs I saw in another post: "Dual Professional 7,855 Turns 42 PE rectangular pickup". Not 100% sure that's the guitar I have.
The control plate is stamped D270

I want to check the pickups ohm but am not sure of the original values.

As I side note: This is the first steel I've seen with slightly angled position markers.
I wonder if that was done for ergonomic reasons or something else.

Pretty sounding steel so long as I don't run the vol knob wide open. Somewhere between 1/2 to 3/4 yielded beautiful open, bell like tones. Wide open its very bright. The kind of bright that can give you a haircut at 50 paces.

[Rick Aiello]

I made my boxcar a new bobbin a little while ago … wound it with 10,000 turns of 42 AWG … DC resistance 9.1,k ohm

Hope that helps …

[Kevin Shiflett]

Thx! Any into I can get help

[John Castelletti]

I have had Nick Fryer wind a lot of pickups for me. He is knowledgeable and great to work with - his pickups are outstanding. I would check with him fryerguitarpickups.com

[Tim Whitlock]

Another recommendation for Nick Fryer. He is an expert on the trap pickup and did great work in rebuilding the traps for my '50 Custom.

[Glenn Wilde]

Tom Brantley rewound a '46 for me, it sounded great.

[Kevin Shiflett]

Thx guys. I'll try reaching out to the pickup winders mentioned.

[K Maul]

I’ll throw in a shout out for Jerry Sentell for pick up winding. He rewound my boxcar pick ups. I don’t really know how many turns but I asked him to overwind it slightly to maybe get a little deeper sound out of it and I’m very happy with the way it sounds.

[Rick Aiello]

I just found this … Jason Lollar had sent me his CAD file on the earliest boxcars:

The partitions are Forbon ... Vulcanized fiber .... that were shellacked

The coil form is simply shellacked card stock paper ... Hence the warping over time.

The coil was AWG 42 ... Wound 8000 to 10,000 turns ... DC resistance between 8-10 k ohm ...

We made replacements for a few years …

[Kevin Shiflett]

Thx Rick that was exactly what I was looking for.

[Tony Oresteen]

As to the brightness check the pots & caps. If the vol pots are high say 1k, try a 500k or a 250k.

Checking caps requiers a capacitor meter. I bought one off ebay 10 years ago fof $20 - plenty sill there for $20.

I check EVERY cap I put in a guitar. They can vary a lot. Changing your cap can help tame too high sounding pickup.

Also consider putting a treble-bleed setup on your vol pot.

I'd try these before doing a rewind.

Good luck!

[John Castelletti]

Pots are all over the place, on mine the originals are 1 Meg with. a .05uf cap