Magnets & Copper Wire: A Pickup Building Thread

[slowburnaz]

Haha - I think this is going to turn into a running gag on this thread!

I haven’t actually wired this particular pickup up yet. For now, I have separate terminals for the beginning and end of the coil for each coil. I’ll figure that out when I wire it into the test bass tonight.

Haha! Awesome.

 

[dwizum]

@Freekmagnet you mentioned that changing the thickness made a difference - can you elaborate? Thinner vs thicker meant what, in terms of tone?

Wondering because I'm setting out to build some pickups for a solid body electric uke I'm starting to work on and I'm thinking about using the split coil bass design I just made, but shrunk down with much thinner blade poles just to help with packaging...

 

[Freekmagnet]

@Freekmagnet you mentioned that changing the thickness made a difference - can you elaborate? Thinner vs thicker meant what, in terms of tone?

Wondering because I'm setting out to build some pickups for a solid body electric uke I'm starting to work on and I'm thinking about using the split coil bass design I just made, but shrunk down with much thinner blade poles just to help with packaging...

I think that depends on the pickup. With sidewinders, more steel = more output and bass response.

In my earlier dabbling with AlNiCo 8 pickups, I felt like the mids sounded kinda congested. For that reason, I ended up abandoning these A8 sidewinders in favor of something else. Using thinner blades in this instance gave the cloudy midrange more clarity and evened out the sound considerably.

I have the pickup in the MM position. If it had a little more output from that position, I think I could almost get away with running it passive by doing some tweakage on the amplifier. The preamp is upping the overall output and I’m using the tone controls to boost a little bass and shape the brightness to taste.

 

[slowburnaz]

Haha - I think this is going to turn into a running gag on this thread!

I haven’t actually wired this particular pickup up yet. For now, I have separate terminals for the beginning and end of the coil for each coil. I’ll figure that out when I wire it into the test bass tonight.

Did you ever figure out the wiring scheme? ;-)

 

[Freekmagnet]

Did you ever figure out the wiring scheme? ;-)

Well no, actually. There's a wiring error on that pickup. I got it to work for now, but the ground wire shorts one of the coils when I hook it up. I have to rebuild it before I can definitively say what the wiring scheme should be.

I have some other things on my bench right now, but I'll be winding a few pickups sometime within the next few weeks. I'll let you guys know when I find out.

 

[dwizum]

Hey, does anyone know how to wire a sidewinder?


....


In other news, someone asked me about using my humbucker design in a 5 string bass which has BC sized pickups. It struck me as a little funny to see that, since BC seems much more common in 4 string basses these days, although this is an older bass and as far as I know the BC size was originally for Bartonlini's 5 string pickups, so I guess it makes sense. Anyways, the magnets I'd used were just a hair too short to be comfortable for the string spread on a 5 string, but luckily the supplier (mojotone) had them in a slightly longer length, so I'm making up a set. I may just switch to these longer magnets by default, since then the pickups could be used in any 4 or 5 string bass.

These will get zebrawood covers, I'm excited about seeing how they turn out visually. I had to order some zebrawood, it is supposed to arrive today.

 

[A9X]

Wow. Thanks to everyone. I've just read this thread through in a sitting, but I'll sleep on it before asking questions as there is a lot of good info included in here. I'm looking, or at least I was initially, at a narrow aperture SC, very even in response with the resonant peak high a la an Alembic Series. Output is not an issue as I'll use my custom preamp which is low noise. I measured the PUs in the last Series 1 I had, but I can't find the notebook now.

A couple of pages back there were some jokes. Here's mine.
Did you hear about the crazy pickup winder who put his pickups on the stove?
He was last seen singing "Ohm, ohm on the range..."

 

[dwizum]

@A9X you must be really wound up after reading this all at once!

 

[Jon Clegg]

A couple of pages back there were some jokes. Here's mine.
Did you hear about the crazy pickup winder who put his pickups on the stove?
He was last seen singing "Ohm, ohm on the range..."

Oh Henry!

 

[Freekmagnet]

@A9X - this thread is a good place to pick up a lot of information.

 

[dwizum]

I'm working on a new design for ukuleles and tenor guitars. 1/16" steel blades, ceramic bar magnet underneath. The blades stick down below the flatwork so the magnet sits between them.

6,800 turns of 43 gauge on bobbins that are only 7/16" wide, yet the coils are so tall and the blades take up so little room, they look half empty! The instrument this is going in isn't done yet so I won't get to hear it for a few weeks, but I'm excited to have something to try once it's ready. I used to think there was little in the way of support for bass pickup making, but there's far less for ukes and other small instruments.

 

[wraub]

I'm thinking this might explain the sound from the Velvet Hammer PUs I mentioned above- very clean and lots of clarity. Definitely different from the "typical" PU they replaced.
They are taller then normal P PUs also.

Yes, you've made a great example of what I call a Hi-Fi pickup. It's clean, clear, high definition, relatively flat EQ. It's designed to read the sound on the strings and accurately send it along to the amp, with minimal modification to the sound. It's the opposite end from a standard P-Bass pickup, which is specifically designed to shape the sound.

Most aftermarket pickups are made to modify the sound heard on the strings. Like what the P-Bass pickup does, but a little bit different. Taking the natural tone of a P-Bass and adjusting it into something better. Of course, better is a matter of opinion. And there's lots of debate about what is the "best sounding" P-Bass pickup.

When you put a Hi-Fi pickup in a P-Bass, you may or may not like the sound of it. The modification that the normal P-Bass pickup does will be gone. Will you like what you hear?

What made your pickup Hi-Fi is the shape of the coil and its position within the magnetic field. With the big magnet on the bottom and the narrow vertical steel blade, you've made a magnetic field that is an "I" shape. And you've wound the coil in tightly around the center. That puts all the turns into the most dense part of the field. All of the turns get the biggest voltage spike when the field lines pass through.

And, because the coil is tall and slim, the turns of wire at the outside of the coil aren't much longer than the turns in the center. The little voltage spikes in each turn are more closely aligned in timing. This is what improves clarity and definition.

In contrast, if you had made the bobbins short in height and wide, like a P-Bass bobbin, most of the turns of wire will be much further out from the dense part of the magnetic field. And the turns on the outside of the coil will be much longer in length than the turns at the center of the coil. The stackup of little voltage spikes gets spread out in timing, almost getting out of phase. That's what makes a P-Bass pickup "wooly"; thick and less clear, particularly at the low frequencies.

Almost all of my pickup development work has been with Hi-Fi style pickups. I keep pushing it farther, to see what the limits are. They work with my basses, where I'm playing with the frame structures, using the frame vibration to modify the sound on the strings.

Carry on!

 

[dwizum]

I would guess they have both taller coils, and probably fewer turns than a typical P.

I think the Nakashima quote in your signature could apply to pickup making, even though I'm sure he intended it to apply to furniture!

 

[Freekmagnet]

General pickup making quandary/question:

“Character” or flatter response?

 

[Jeff Siddall]

Flat response is sort of its own character. One that I like quite a lot.

 

[dwizum]

I like flat pickups. Then you can add/remove as needed.

But there are some undeniably cool and valuable "characters" among character pickups. I think it's worthwhile to pursue those, too.

So, both?

 

[ardgedee]

I thought that was why you had more than one bass.

 

[rudy4444]

I'm working on a new design for ukuleles and tenor guitars. 1/16" steel blades, ceramic bar magnet underneath. The blades stick down below the flatwork so the magnet sits between them.

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6,800 turns of 43 gauge on bobbins that are only 7/16" wide, yet the coils are so tall and the blades take up so little room, they look half empty! The instrument this is going in isn't done yet so I won't get to hear it for a few weeks, but I'm excited to have something to try once it's ready. I used to think there was little in the way of support for bass pickup making, but there's far less for ukes and other small instruments.

Ninty-nine percent of ukes have synthetic strings and re-entrant tuning, so there's not much call for a magnetic pickup for ukes. My personal tenor uke has a K&K piezo pickup. Since I built it there was no difficulty installing the pickup.

 

[Freekmagnet]

I thought that was why you had more than one bass.

Best answer so far.

 

[dwizum]

I decided to try some laser cut parts vs cutting my own flatwork and baseplates. These are from ponoko - laser cut acrylic. The order came much more quickly than the estimated time, and buying a bunch at once made them fairly cheap. I have yet to use any of these but I'm happy so far. Assuming no surprises, I think I'll continue to do the same thing I did for these designs - make a prototype myself "by hand" and then get a bunch cut once I'm happy with the design.

This is a bunch of bobbin flatwork and baseplates for ukulele humbuckers, plus some bobbin flatwork for the blade style split coil bass pickup I posted about several pages back.