second go around on building a bass

[superquick]

Well I finally got it to where everything could be put together and I couldn't help myself, so I threw it all together to see how she plays.



I first strung up the E string and on the first wind, it blew out on me right at the top. Talk about a bad sign to start things off. haha. I continued on though and used an E string from an old set and it strung up perfect. Then i just did a rough set up on it and plugged it in. At first I only got sound from the E string, but then i recharged the poles and it sounds awesome now. It has a nice punchy sound and it plays really easy. I'm quite surprised actually. Now to tear it back down and put the shine on

[superquick]

well I have been extremely busy and I'm trying to get it finished up before christmas. I've got the body about where I want it. I lost count of how many coats i put down





now i'm working on getting the final coat on the neck and finishing up the headstock

[JIO]

[superquick]

That's the shape that i was going for. Either that or ironically a droplet of water

[Hopkins]

I still think the headstock looks rather pregnant, other than that the bass looks great.

[superquick]

I did take a bit off of the treble side before setting in on the finish. Whether it'll be enough to really notice or not, I'm not totally sure. It seems to be more noticeable in the pictures than it is in person

[superquick]

It's finished! well sort of. I got something going on with my pickups or wiring or something. I plug it in and the signal coming into the amp is real weak. You can hear it but compared to my other basses it is nowhere near as loud. Also when you have both of the volume pots opened up full, it sounds great, but if you turn one just a little, the sound changes drastically. It sounds the same and all the sudden it just drops out. Not much adjustment at all. The tone knob changes the tone a little, but not a whole lot. If anybody could help me out on why that's going on, I'd much appreciate it.

[Andyman001]

Did you ground to the back of the pots? If so you could have over heated them.

[superquick]

I did ground to the back of the pots, but i don't think my iron gets hot enough to do any damage. I tried just straight wiring the pickups to the jack and it still has the same problem. weak signal, which leads me to believe that the pole pieces aren't magnetized enough, or I didn't put enough winds on them. I tried running it though my envelope filter at full sensitivity and there's no effect to the sound at all so the signal coming from the pups has to be weak

[Hopkins]

What method did you use to wind the pickups. What do they ohm out at?

[superquick]

I used a dril bungeed down to to pieces of board glued together at a 90 degree angle. To keep up with the turns I used a magnet and sensor from a bicylce odometer and souldered the wore to a pedometer and it worked pretty well. I just made a flat surface out of mdf to mount the bobins and used a long screw through one of the boards to press the trigger on the drill. Then to magnatize the poles I used one small bar of neodymium and stuck it to each of the poles on the same side of the magnet to keep the polarity the same. However, on my first trial with them, I got no signal and tried recharching them using the same method, and that managed to make a weak signal come from the pups. So before I put the bass together this last time I used two bars stuck together for each pole and the signal seems to be stronger, but I can't remember exactly how it sounded before. On my first build I used p bass pickups and the pole pieces are strong enough to pick up a staple. The poles in my pickups don't have enough magnetism to do even that which would lead me to believe that my poles are bad, or the magnets I'm using to charge them aren't strong enough.

They ohmed out at 3.19 k at 3500 winds and 2.63 k at 3000 winds. I know that standard bass pickups have up to 10,000 winds but I could only fit that many on mine. I found after I wound them that the poles for jazz pickups are longer and that what I have are for guitar. So could that be it? the fact that the poles I used are too short? Or have I gone wrong somewhere else? Maybe by touching the poles directly with a magnet which I've found to be not the usual method for charging.

Thanks for the help guys!

[Ol'Bass'ead]

If Im not mistaken, youre supposed to use permanent magnets under the pole pieces. I am not understanding this 'charging' of the magnets. Ferrous metal may not stay magnetized.

[HaMMerHeD]

My understanding is that you get a flatter frequency response with low-impedance pickups, but the output signal is very low. EMG gets away with it by integrating preamps directly into the pickup body, amplifying the signal to acceptable levels.

If you could only fit 1/3 as many coils as you need for an acceptable level of passive output, the wire you used may have been too fat, or perhaps your pole assemblies were too large. What gauge wire did you use? Stewmac sells 42 and 43 AWG wire for winding pickups. I've seen other companies selling 44 AWG.

[superquick]

Alnico bar magnets are sometimes put under pickups in humbuckers for guitars from what I've seen, but never to keep poles magnetized. I've always seen people charge their own pickups using neodymeum bar magnets.

And if EMG does that then it would make a lot of sense, because the tone coming from the pups is really great. It's just a weak signal. I tried running it through another pedal of mine with all of the effects turned down, but the volume turned up and it bumped the signal up to where it needs to be. I was just using it as a pre amp. I then ran that pedal to the envelope and it worked perfect.

For pickup wire I used the 42 gauge from stew mac, and to wire everything else i used 22 gauge solid core wire.

[T-34]

Your neodimium magnets may be too weak to fully charge alnico poles, what strength are they?

And 3K is on the lower side for jazz pickups, so this and maybe undercharged polepieces will make the pickups with low output...

[superquick]

That's what I was thinking it was. The low resistance paired with weak magnetism. I'm not entirely sure what the strength is on the magnets though. I did buy them from ebay. Is there a better source to buy them? If so I'd definitely be game to order some stronger magnets before I bought new pickups to put in the bass

[superquick]

I found the packing slip that came with the magnets. It says that they're N48's and I believe that it is nowhere near strong enough to charge the poles. When I put a paper clip near the poles there seems to be no magnetic field at all. On all of my other bases, and even guitars, there is a very prominant field. The poles can even hold up a hair pin. I'll order some stronger neodymiums. I didn't even pay attention to the strength when I bought the ones I have

[suraj]

When I wound my first pickup, I had 13,000 winds on it (severely overwound) with alnico 5 magnets. The manufacturer of the magnets told me not to touch that magnet to a neodymium magnet, it will not charge it that way. So What I did was, used a vise, stuck two neodymium discs to each jaw of the vise, and passed the pickup between the two magnets, trying not to touch the alnico's to the neo's. It charged them up quite strong, and the pickup actually sounded great, and very very loud..!! charging the right way made all the difference.

[T-34]

Right, Stewmac has magnets of the right strength and how-to instructions too (I am not sure I am allowed to post direct link to commercial sites here).
I didn't buy mine from them but from local supplier here in France, my magnets are of the close size - disks 5 mm thick and 1.5 cm of diameter (roughly 1/4" by 3/4"). These pack hell of a pull, about 5 kg (11 lbs) and very difficult to separate once they stick to each other. I was able to magnetize new alnico pole pieces and even remagnetise the pickups in reverse polarity.

[superquick]

I really should have done more research before building these. The poles I got are for humbucker pickups. But I have learned a lot, however by messing up and having to fix it. I'll order the disk magnets from stew mac and give them a try on them and see what they do. Thank you Guys. That is a huge help