thinking about making a pu

[Arie X]

So I've got a winder, and a spool of 42ga poly coated wire and want to make a pu for a Fender Bronco. Stock pu on these is a six pole Strat pu, but I was considering either a 4, 8, or a blade design.

aside from a few other things some questions come up:

-Bobbin material. G10 FR4, Delrin, or 3D printed PLA -or?

-How many winds? Typical Strat amount with typical Strat values? I want to accentuate the lows with a fair amount of mid fundamental and just a bit of highs.

-Pole material. I have access to extremely high purity AISI 1006 or plain old 1018. -suitable? In my line of work 1006 is the preferred choice for particle accelerator focusing and steering magnets but is this overkill? The 1006 I would have to machine from billet whereas 1018 can be had in rod format.

I would scatter wind and pot with brushed on shellac over a base wrap of DMD. I don't want to mess with hot wax nor epoxy and don't have vacuum equipment anyway.

Just concepting stage right now and would appreciate feedback.

thx

 

[dwizum]

The magic in pickups is surfing the "inefficient" parts of the design to get the tone you want vs just making the "best" pickup from an inefficiency perspective. 1018 isn't as good as other materials from a numbers perspective but it sure sounds good.

In terms of winds, I've found that bass pickups need somewhere between 6 - 12,000 turns in order to sound good (in a mainstream sense), the difference really being the shape of coil and type of magnet. A more efficient coil (packed in the field better) and you can get away with fewer turns and still get the output you want.

In a typical strat sized coil with typical magnets and 42 gauge wire, given the tone goals you described, I'd probably start with test coils of 7k, 8k, and 9k turns then use the one that sounds best. 9k might be tight.

Bobbin material - just choose whichever of those options is easiest for you to work with. If you're doing fender style eyelets in the flatwork then you need something that doesn't melt. The printed flatwork may be disqualified for that reason. Although you can just do a lead-wire style hookup as seen on PAF guitar humbuckers to get around a flatwork material that won't hold a hot eyelet.

What are you using for magnets?

Also there's a giant and very informative pickup making thread in luthier's corner if you have not seen it yet.