Magnets & Copper Wire: A Pickup Building Thread

[Freekmagnet]

Fair enough, but that's more than one parameter changed.

Not sure if I was being ambiguous or misunderstanding the terms of art when I said 'taller'... How would two pickups built with the two bobbins below differ in output or sound quality, if at all, given the same wire, same number of winds, same aperture, if the only difference was one was taller? The substantive changes was the taller one would have more wire closer to the core (but more wire would also would be farther from the string*), and the core itself would be taller (more ferrous and/or magnet mass, depending on whether the magnet is in the core or under it).
View attachment 4136415

Okay, this gets closer to what I was wondering. How would the sound differ if your coils and magnets were 3/4" tall or 1.25" tall, but the number of wraps and bobbin dimensions were in other regards the same?

*(EDIT: Bruce answers this part of the question in post #435. Thanks!)

I think my answer still applies. Basically, think Telecaster bridge pickup vs Jazzmaster Bridge pickup. The taller pickup would be more focused and brighter and the wider pickup would be fatter or "fuzzier" as Mr. Bruce put it.

The more magnet or steel to fit the taller coil, then you're going to be increasing the inductance of the pickup. If it's just a magnet, you're using a bigger magnet, so it will be louder and brighter. If you had the same sized magnets underneath with a steel core, adding more steel may cause you to lose a little bit of top end. That loss may or may not be perceptible. The output level would be about the same.

The best way to find out is to wind two coils like you described yourself. I can give you my own speculation, but it's not really meaningful until you actually perform these experiments and hear the results for yourself.

Sound "quality" is a really subjective topic. That's more of an issue of personal taste, really.

 

[slowburnaz]

Do these electrical principles mean that the opposite is true with sidewinders (since tall, narrowly-wound coils when turned on their side would put coils further away from the magnet than squatter, wider coils)?

Sidewinders are a little weird, but possibly not for that reason... in a sidewinder, if the coils are tall and narrow, most of the wire is still close to the magnets, as they're still oriented parallel to the "tall" dimension of the coil. But, since you still need to "focus" the magnetic field toward the strings with either steel pole pieces or blade, the portion of the magnetic field lines that intersect the strings is longer than you'd have with a typical tall/narrow coil.

EDIT: I see I'm late to the party, as Bruce already said as much, and probably more succinctly.

 

[dwizum]

Thanks Bruce for digging that reference back up. Sometimes I have to read things half a dozen times for it to sink in.

I hope I'm not veering this too far into a murky tone wars debate, but I'm mentally preparing to do a "from scratch" and less conventional pickup, so I'm trying to make sure I understand some of the options in terms of overall format before going down any particular path.

I know @Freekmagnet's sidewinder experiments are well documented here. Is anyone else doing a bass sidewinder that's not a mudbucker copy? Do sidewinders "need" steel poles or blades on the ends, or is a single blade in the middle enough? I'm interested in sidewinders because it seems like a versatile design. If one of the main influences on tone is the width that the pickup senses, then it strikes me that a sidewinder could be configured to have an extremely narrow range (just one blade in the middle) or the widest possible (blades on the outsides too). But I don't know if I'm understanding the magnetic field and the way the blades would influence it relative to the strings well enough. Like, here's an embarrassingly simple question. When you assemble a sidewinder, do the magnets in the coils have opposite poles facing the middle? I'd imagine they need to in order to allow the assembly to come together. But then how can you possibly make it humbucking, since you need opposite polarity and opposite coil direction for traditional humbucking, and that assembly would have the magnets both oriented the same? Or are the magnets oriented up/down instead of side to side? That way, I suppose you could have one coil with the north side facing up and one facing down. But then the magnetic field would be 90 degrees off in relation to the coil compared to a typical magnet/coil pair in a typical pickup.

Can you tell I've never taken a sidewinder apart?

 

[MPU]

I've made sidewinders with steel blade (magnets in the coils), steel poles and ceramic blade (ceramic blade magnets in the coils as well). Magnets face the same orientation to the middle. Lane Poor had sidewinders with steel poles and sidewinders with ceramic blade as pole. That documentation has been removed, but I can try to draw the way the pickups were made.

 

[MPU]

4000 rounds of 42 wire on each coil. I used plastic premade bobbins on wider covers, on narrower covers I made bobbins myself.

 

[ardgedee]

Sound "quality" is a really subjective topic. That's more of an issue of personal taste, really.

By "quality" I meant to ask what it sounds like -- for example the way Bruce described the sound of his pickups was useful information. Actual better-or-worse is of course in the ears of the beholder. From reading about pickups here and elsewhere I get the impression that there are innumerable "right" ways to build them, since there are all kinds of tonal goals.

 

[Freekmagnet]

Is anyone else doing a bass sidewinder that's not a mudbucker copy?

There’s actually quite a few sidewinders floating around out there, actually. The Q-tuner is probably the most famous. Jerry Sentell has a few posted on his website. I can’t think of any others off the top of my head, but I see them every once in a while when I’m surfing the internet, dorking out over pickups.

Do sidewinders "need" steel poles or blades on the ends, or is a single blade in the middle enough?

Sidewinders will function just fine without blades on the ends. Adding the blades makes them sound fuller. Depends on what kind of sound you’re going for.

 

[dwizum]

@MPU thank you for the explanation, that makes it much more clear. Somehow mentally I was picturing the steel blade/slugs in the middle sitting on top of the ends of the magnets, but having it between them lets you put two like ends towards the blade without them repelling each other.

Off to do some magnet shopping... I'd like to fit a sidewinder in a Bartolini BC shape. If I can't then maybe I'll bump up to something wider. Actually what I would REALLY REALLY like to do is fit one in a jazz pickup shape, but that seems unlikely. I wish there were more Jazz pickup options other than single coils or split coils.

 

[Freekmagnet]

Somehow mentally I was picturing the steel blade/slugs in the middle sitting on top of the ends of the magnets, but having it between them lets you put two like ends towards the blade without them repelling each other.

There’s a lot of ways you can build a sidewinder. Magnets on the sides of the central pole. Magnets powering the central pole from underneath. Magnets on the ends of the steel side poles. And of course, the way @MPU so eloquently illustrated. The list goes on...

Actually what I would REALLY REALLY like to do is fit one in a jazz pickup shape, but that seems unlikely.

You can do it.

I wish there were more Jazz pickup options other than single coils or split coils.

To amend my answer to your previous question, stacked pickups are basically sidewinders laid on their sides. That would include stacked Jazz pickups.

 

[ardgedee]

sidewinders laid on their sides

The mind reels!

 

[dwizum]

To amend my answer to your previous question, stacked pickups are basically sidewinders laid on their sides. That would include stacked Jazz pickups.

Ok - the stacked pickups I've seen have mostly been things like Nordstrand's fat stacks, where it looks like they use one set of rod magnets and typical top and bottom flatwork, with an extra piece of flatwork halfway up the rods to provide a physical barrier. Then wind two coils on it, one above and one below the middle flatwork. I just sold a set of them so it's fresh in my mind. Seems different to me than the sidewinder configurations we're talking about, but I guess there's a lot of potential freedom in a given configuration. Are there examples of stacked coils that have a blade or slugs between the coils? And/or on top or bottom? I've played a handful of guitar stacked coils in strats and didn't like any of them. They all felt anemic. The Fat Stacks were surprisingly good though.

What about a "single coil" sidewinder - or a side by side split coil so you get humbucking...

I can't tell if I'm Alice or the little kitten...

 

[slowburnaz]

I haven't made any sidewinders in a while, but I do remember that I had to play with how to wire them up to get it right.

Right now, I can't remember if I would wind both coils in the same direction, but connect the end on coil 1 to the start on coil 2 (for series), or if I wound them opposite directions and connected the end on coil 1 to the end on coil 2. I think that for sidewinders, something about the wiring was odd, since they do buck hum, but it's also not like you took a standard side-by-side humbucker and pointed the tops of each coil toward each other.

Here's one I did a few years back:

 

[slowburnaz]

...and my first attempt at a sidewinder:

 

[Freekmagnet]

Gosh, all this talk about sidewinders is making me want to take another look at some of my old designs!

 

[MPU]

@MPU thank you for the explanation, that makes it much more clear. Somehow mentally I was picturing the steel blade/slugs in the middle sitting on top of the ends of the magnets, but having it between them lets you put two like ends towards the blade without them repelling each other.

Off to do some magnet shopping... I'd like to fit a sidewinder in a Bartolini BC shape. If I can't then maybe I'll bump up to something wider. Actually what I would REALLY REALLY like to do is fit one in a jazz pickup shape, but that seems unlikely. I wish there were more Jazz pickup options other than single coils or split coils.

The top one of my drawings will fit in jazz covers. You can use thin blade instead of the poles.

 

[dwizum]

I'm going to just come out and ask at this point, because I'm having terrible luck finding any sort of selection of magnets. It seems like pickup making vendors rarely if ever carry anything except rods and bars meant for guitar humbuckers, which are totally wrong for being creative. And generic magnet-selling vendors seem to either focus on neodymium magnets (which I'm not sure I'm ready for) or if they carry ceramic or alnico, the sizes and shapes are way off, and/or they're extremely expensive.

Where are you guys finding magnets?

I'd love to get my hands on an alnico or ceramic bar that was a good size for a jazz-shaped sidewinder. This is the closest I can find:

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Right height and width, but 3.125" is probably too long for a 4 string jazz, by the time you wrap some wire around it.

Places I've looked include mojotone, philadelphia luthier, tone-kraft, ebay, amazon, and a number of other vendors that were mentioned in the suppliers thread stickied in the beginner subforum of the pickup makers forum.

 

[Freekmagnet]

I'm going to just come out and ask at this point, because I'm having terrible luck finding any sort of selection of magnets. It seems like pickup making vendors rarely if ever carry anything except rods and bars meant for guitar humbuckers, which are totally wrong for being creative. And generic magnet-selling vendors seem to either focus on neodymium magnets (which I'm not sure I'm ready for) or if they carry ceramic or alnico, the sizes and shapes are way off, and/or they're extremely expensive.

Where are you guys finding magnets?

I'd love to get my hands on an alnico or ceramic bar that was a good size for a jazz-shaped sidewinder. This is the closest I can find:

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

Right height and width, but 3.125" is probably too long for a 4 string jazz, by the time you wrap some wire around it.

Places I've looked include mojotone, philadelphia luthier, tone-kraft, ebay, amazon, and a number of other vendors that were mentioned in the suppliers thread stickied in the beginner subforum of the pickup makers forum.

All I can say is, “Yup.” Making bass pickups is a lonely existence.

Don’t be intimidated by neodymium. It’s just another magnet. The main thing is finding a size that is easy to handle and is not too powerful.

 

[Freekmagnet]

@dwizum - there’s a guy on eBay - barefootnit - I think - he’s got some larger cylinder magnets. He has big bar magnets too, but they’re too short for a bass.

 

[dwizum]

I suppose I could get those "barely too long" ceramic bar magnets and cut them shorter. Someone please tell me if cutting a magnet is a stupid idea.

Or I should just make 5 string Jazz pickups since those 3.125" magnets are probably just right for a fiver.

I'll check out that eBay seller!

Maybe I should just buy some neodynium magnets, too. They're all over the place, at least.

 

[slowburnaz]

I suppose I could get those "barely too long" ceramic bar magnets and cut them shorter. Someone please tell me if cutting a magnet is a stupid idea.

Or I should just make 5 string Jazz pickups since those 3.125" magnets are probably just right for a fiver.

I'll check out that eBay seller!

Maybe I should just buy some neodynium magnets, too. They're all over the place, at least.

I've never tried it myself, but from what I understand, cutting ceramic magnets is VERY difficult.