Upgrading the stock Casino pickups for a more vintage sound

Creamery - Upgrading Stock Epiphone Casino Pickups

• I have an Epiphone Casino Coupe, which sounds wonderful unplugged and plays really well. Unfortunately, plugged in it sounds dull and muddy. I don’t have much experience with fully hollow body guitars, so not sure if that’s just what they tend towards. Or, whether it’s the brass pickup covers, or just crap pickups.
• Looks like Epiphone is about to drop a load of new guitars! Amongst them is a new Epiphone USA Casino hollow-body model featuring P90 pickups; we first heard of this model during Winter NAMM 2020. But that’s not all: images that have turned up on an Epiphone forum suggest that a whole batch of other models might be about to launch too.

I recently ran one of my regular competitions to wind a set of handwound pickups and the winner, Mike, asked whether he could have his Epiphone Casino pickups rewound/upgraded for a more vintage tone - 'No problem', I said. The stock pickups had a very high output, 12.1k in the Bridge & 11.6k in the Neck, an unsubtle set especially for a Hollow Body guitar.

Epiphone Casino Change Pickups Tab

Mike wanted to tone them down with a rewind and new magnets.

This fresh Epiphone Casino boasts a layered maple body, a '60s C-profile mahogany neck and Dogear P-90 pickups, and is available in three color options: Worn Olive Drab, Worn Ebony and Worn Blue Denim. Other features include Trapezoid fingerboard inlays, a Graph Tech NuBone nut and 22-fret Indian laurel fingerboard. A few year I picked up an Epiphone Casino, wanting to 'replace' the one I had in the 70s. After living with it for a while, I realize that I really need to replace the stock pickups. The sound of the guitar unplugged is great - open, airy, nice bite and sharp attack (if not a lot of sustain).

Upgrading Stock Epiphone Casino Pickups - What's inside

Change Pickups On Epiphone Casino

The first task was to remove the covers and see what's inside. The Epiphone Casino has custom bobbins with a string spacing narrower than a standard P90. The option was to either make new bobbins to match the cover pole spacing or simply use the existing ones. Mike had no issue with me utilising the existing bobbins so the challenge now was to remove the existing overwound coil wire in such a way as to not nick the sides. Any cuts or scratches to the very thin top & bottom layers of the bobbins could catch on the new coil wire when winding, snapping or pulling it leaving a few thousand turns of coil useless.

Upgrading the stock Casino pickups for a more vintage sound

Creamery - Upgrading Stock Epiphone Casino Pickups

I recently ran one of my regular competitions to wind a set of handwound pickups and the winner, Mike, asked whether he could have his Epiphone Casino pickups rewound/upgraded for a more vintage tone - 'No problem', I said. The stock pickups had a very high output, 12.1k in the Bridge & 11.6k in the Neck, an unsubtle set especially for a Hollow Body guitar.

Mike wanted to tone them down with a rewind and new magnets.

Upgrading Stock Epiphone Casino Pickups - What's inside

The first task was to remove the covers and see what's inside. The Epiphone Casino has custom bobbins with a string spacing narrower than a standard P90. The option was to either make new bobbins to match the cover pole spacing or simply use the existing ones. Mike had no issue with me utilising the existing bobbins so the challenge now was to remove the existing overwound coil wire in such a way as to not nick the sides. Any cuts or scratches to the very thin top & bottom layers of the bobbins could catch on the new coil wire when winding, snapping or pulling it leaving a few thousand turns of coil useless.