ShortScale.org

Making pickups. It's easy, isn't it? There are tons of new pickup companies around (I've noticed in a few in the UK at least), most of whom deliver a good quality product. Who has made their own pickups on this board?

I'd like to make a couple of hot Jazzmaster-style pups to fit in the chrome Simeto covers:


Here's a kit for less than a tenner, but the poles aren't magnetised. That's useless, right? Or rather, how do you magnetise poles? (edit: use a couple of powerful neodymium magnets... somehow)

Single-Coil-Pickup-Alnico-5-Staggered-Pole-Pieces



Would it be possible to buy the fibreboard for my custom flatwork, alnico 5 rod magnets, some wire then start winding? Is there anything more to it than that?

According to Dan Erlwine......

The last step was to charge (magnetize) the polepiece magnets. This is done by gluing (with epoxy) a magnet to each jaw of a small machine vise—south facing in on one jaw, north facing in on the other. When a new, uncharged pickup is slid between the two magnets, it becomes magnetized. If you want the tops of the pickup polepieces to face south, the bottoms of the polepieces must pass over the south magnet, and the top of the polepieces must pass over the north magnet. Erick charged one pickup with the south polarity facing up, and one pickup with north facing up (reverse polarity). Coupled with the reverse-winding mentioned earlier, he produced a set of pickups we refer to as "reverse wind/reverse polarity."

Piece of piss. So, how long do you stick your unmagnetised new pickup between the high powered magnets for?

timhulio wrote:Piece of piss. So, how long do you stick your unmagnetised new pickup between the high powered magnets for?

This entirely echoes my first question when I was taught how babies are formed via a terrible video we watched in Sex Ed at school

Like this, but with more panache:
Youtube, magnetize

I got some magnets from Cermag.
I haven't started making anything with them yet though. :oops
They take paypal and were pretty fast at sending my order out.

If I were you I would make my own flatwork using vulcanised fibreboard (like fender).
Something like this on ebay

How are you doing the winding? Isn't it like 7000 turns? I'm interested in try something like this out so glad you started the thread

No idea about pickups beyond yes please I'll definitely have some Fredric pickups please.

Important question: how tricky is it to put pictures of tiny wolves on them?

Dave wrote:This entirely echoes my first question when I was taught how babies are formed via a terrible video we watched in Sex Ed at school

Same. In fact I recall asking my dad that question when he was on speaker phone with a business colleague.

Find Lollar's book on pickup winding and making pickups. It's out of print but basically is responsible for most of these "boutique" people making pickups.

Also read this forum

http://music-electronics-forum.com/f11/

BacchusPaul wrote:No idea about pickups beyond yes please I'll definitely have some Fredric pickups please.

yes..

timhulio wrote:Piece of piss. So, how long do you stick your unmagnetised new pickup between the high powered magnets for?

It doesn't take more than a few seconds to magnetize the pickups. A few quick passes through the vice with a Neodymium magnet on either side charges them. If you don't want to setup a vice, you can just hold the pickup and keep the neodymium a few mm away from the pickup to charge the poles (it's a little harder than it sounds, since those neos are incredibly strong, but definitely doable).

As far as making a Jazzmaster pickup that will fit under those pickup covers:

The covers don't look nearly as wide as a Jazzmaster cover, and the width of a jazzmaster pickup plays a big part in it's town, however, a slightly narrower, and slightly taller pickup, with rod magnets, is definitely going to give you a fender-y sound, somewhere between a strat and jazzmaster, depending on how tall you make the bobbin.

timhulio wrote:
Would it be possible to buy the fibreboard for my custom flatwork, alnico 5 rod magnets, some wire then start winding? Is there anything more to it than that?

You, you can buy your own fiberboard pretty cheaply, cut it out, get some rods, pound them, get some wire, and wind them up.

Is it difficult? no. Is it easy? Not necessarily, it takes a bit of planning, fine tuning, and some finesse with the winding, but someone who's got the patience to make pedals and do other guitar projects, shouldn't have a problem with it.

Sadly, I don't think I could get excited enough about pickups to want to go into making them commercially. It's not like the pedal business leaves me the time anyway at the moment.

I checked the pickup forum, and the obvious big expense is the winding machine. To make one or two it could be possible to temporarily rig something up with a power drill on a lower-speed setting. As for counting the revolutions... I was kinda planning to stop once the DC resistance hit 7k.

I don't have a bench vise, so perhaps the neodymium magnets could be glued to blocks of wood in a U-shape.

i thought/read a little about this and saw the drill tip for winding but they said only load enough wire for 7,000 tunrs or whatever you wanted. There was a stewmac article about making a P45 with a bar magnet which looked a good way to try

timhulio wrote:Sadly, I don't think I could get excited enough about pickups to want to go into making them commercially. It's not like the pedal business leaves me the time anyway at the moment.

I checked the pickup forum, and the obvious big expense is the winding machine. To make one or two it could be possible to temporarily rig something up with a power drill on a lower-speed setting. As for counting the revolutions... I was kinda planning to stop once the DC resistance hit 7k.

I don't have a bench vise, so perhaps the neodymium magnets could be glued to blocks of wood in a U-shape.

My first winder was made out of a fishing reel that I hand-cranked. It was fairly efficient, and only took me about 30-40 minutes to wind a pickup. Using a power drill seems to be popular, as does double-side taping a bobbin to a sewing machine (without actually taking the sewing machine apart).

As for the neodymium magnet, you really don't HAVE to mount it to anything, you can just hold the magnet in your hand, or stick it to a metal bar and run the pickup over it. Otherwise, the U-Shaped piece of would should work well too. If you want any videos of any parts of the building process broken down, or need some parts, just let me know. I've got a lot of scrap flatwork, so I could send some your way, if you are having trouble tracking some down.